2019, The Year In Review

On today’s show we are looking back on 2019. The year in retrospect. 2019 is notable as much for what happened as for what didn’t.

For me personally, it was a year of mixed results. We completed construction on two projects. We completed the refinance on two apartment buildings. We sold three assets for a good number.

We have a major assisted living project finally get into construction after months of value engineering. We were working really hard in order to achieve an acceptable construction budget.

We completed several acquisitions including securing a new development site for a high rise project.

But not everything went according to plan.

The podcast has been very successful this year on many levels. My goal from the beginning was to produce one piece of quality content each day. It didn’t matter where in the world I was located, I always found an internet connection to upload a show. If I happened to be at sea for a few days, I would upload a few shows in advance so that they would publish on schedule. I truly appreciate the feedback from you the loyal listeners. It makes me happy to know that the show is having an impact. You have downloaded more than 500,000 episodes and counting. That’s awesome and I recognize that your time is valuable.

My wife and I ran an experiment of what it would be like to live on board a boat for 3 months of the year. It was not a vacation, just a different living arrangement. There were mixed results. My work productivity definitely suffered during those months. I learned a lot about myself, and my own habits during those months in Europe. I lost about 15 pounds, managed to eat healthy, and exercised pretty much every day.

Once back at home, I struggled to establish my desired habits on a consistent basis. I wasn’t getting to the gym regularly. My daily meditation practice was not consistent throughout the year. Over the year I managed to successfully complete a number of projects. I put a few projects on the back burner, and brought laser focus to the ones that remained.

The purpose in conducting a retrospective is to extract the lessons from what happened in the past year and to express gratitude.

There are so many memories of the past year. It’s a little like mining for gold. The gold consists of those lessons that are hidden in all those memories. Like mining for gold, you need to sift through tons of rock and silt. Buried in the tailings from the mining operations are tons of things that serve no useful purpose. These are the emotional baggage that comes with emotions like regret, shame, fear. You can choose to hang onto the tailings, or you can choose to hang onto the gold.

As you think back on 2019, run your own retrospective on what work, what didn’t, and what did you learn.