Summary of 8,760 Hours

This is my summary of the year planning guide 8,760 Hours: How to get the most out of next year. This summary is no replacement for the original writing, it is intended to be better than not reading the original guide.

1 Introduction

1.1 Why plan at all?

Our brains are not optimized for achieving our larger goals in life. They are sculpted by evolution for survival and reproductive abilities, but not much else!
We need system and processes in place to help us get around these evolutionary "abilities" so that we can get the most out of our lives.

1.2 Your life in a nutshell

Life is incredibly short, there are still 8,760 hours in a single year! That is a lot of time to get some real stuff done.

1.3 How to use this guide

How author of the guide plans for an year.

First I do an initial overview of my life. This helps get the mind ready to do the whole process and starts me thinking about what I'm doing with my life, where my priorities are, what I want--in general, and roughly over the next year.
Next I review, in detail, the state of all areas of my life, and specifically any major projects completed in the past year or still underway.
Then I spend some time thinking about the ideal future--how I want my life to look.
Finally I extract from my ideals what I want to focus on for the next 8,760 hours (1 year) of my life, and optimize those plans for success by taking advantage of several motivation and anti-procrastination tools and tricks.
I try to spend at least a few days using this process at the end of every calender year. The more time you spend on it the more value you will likely get out of it.

2 The tools

The author uses mindmaps for reviewing current year, writing ideal future and goals for next year. You can use any method that you like.

2.1 The twelve life areas

There are many ways to breakdown your life into different "buckets". Author suggests following twelve categories

Value and purpose - Your philosophy of life. Your sense of purpose.
Contribution and impact - How you give value to the world.
Location and tangibles - Your material sufficiency.
Money and finance - Your savings, investments, assets and debt.
Career and work - Your work, job, career and business.
Health and fitness - Your eating habits, diet, exercise habits and activity levels.
Education and skill development - Your learning, education and mental development.
Social life and relationships - Your home life and relationships with family members.
Emotions and well-being - Your general feeling about life, positive or negative. Your subjective well-being, self-esteem, self-respect and self-compassion.
Character and identity - Your identity and model of yourself. Your strengths and weaknesses.
Productivity and organization - Your setup, systems, processes, tools and techniques.
Adventure and creativity - Your hobbies, pastimes and things you do for fun and adventure.

3 A snapshot of your life

3.1 The initial overview

To start, you want to get the brain thinking about this stuff by answering following questions about past year and your current situation:

What went well? What did not go well?
What did you try hard? What did you not try hard enough?
How would I summarize to a friend the status of this area?

3.2 Getting specific: your present reality

For each of the areas, we will map out a complete "status report" that includes and assessment of that area and any relevant information or metrics. The status report should have,

Detailed answer to questions from previous section (3.1) for that area of your life.
A short paragraph summarizing your thoughts about that area of your life.
Project completed in the past year.
Milestones and important events from past year.
Accomplishments and failures.
Key life metrics (for ex. income, study hours etc).

Additionally author specifies questions related to each individual life areas.

4 The next 8,760 hours

4.1 Your idea future

The first thing to do is to know what ideas you are aiming for.
Go through all areas of life and review how you would want it to look in a perfectly ideal world.
Some questions to help you think about each life areas:
- What do I want this to be life?
- What would this look like if it was perfect?
- What is something I always wanted to do here?
- Are there any specific projects/goals to complete in this area?
- If I were to die in 1 year what would I do?
- For the metrics in these areas, what do I want them to be?

4.2 The next 8,760 hours

Extract what to do over next one year from you highest ideals and largest gaps.
It may help to start off with a theme in mind for the upcoming year. This next year can be your "Year of __________________". For example, "Year of independence"
Go through your ideal life section and extract some specific goals from it. Can they be organized into projects? Are they specific and measurable?
Try to limit your major goals to 3-5.

5 Optimization for success

5.1 Building on major goals

For each specific goal or project try to answer the following:

What will success look like? How will the world be different if this succeeds?
How can I measure it?
What sort of metrics (measurements) can I use to track progress and success?

Spend at least few hours every month in reviewing big picture and all projects. Add review process to you calendar now.

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