🌿 A Personal Retreat Day
Pause — to realign with what truly matters
I chose a day to step away from appointments, silence notifications, and bring only a notebook and pen. Not to “find myself” in some vague way, but to intentionally pause — to look honestly at how I’ve been living, and gently decide what to keep and what to let go.
🧭 Why I Needed This Retreat
- Work and information overload kept me in constant reaction mode.
- My energy was leaking into tasks I didn’t dare decline.
- My goals were tangled, with no clear sense of priority.
I asked myself three guiding questions:
- What am I truly pursuing that matters?
- What am I avoiding that’s causing delay?
- If I could keep only 3 priorities for the next 3 months, what would they be?
🧘 A Minimalist Retreat Day
- Morning: 10 minutes of breathing, 3 pages of free writing, 30 minutes of silent walking.
- Midday: Review old goals, cross out 50% of “nice to have” tasks.
- Afternoon: Face specific fears (fear of judgment, fear of failure), write realistic counterpoints to each.
- Evening: Choose 3 core focuses for the next quarter and turn them into actionable plans.
✨ What I Realized
- I’ve been using busyness to avoid the discomfort of uncertainty.
- 20% of my work creates 80% of the value — yet I spend the least time on that 20%.
- Other people’s expectations aren’t always my responsibility.
- “Must-do” tasks are often old habits; “should-do” ones are quiet but essential.
- Health, sleep, and close relationships are the foundation — without them, optimization is meaningless.
📆 My 30-Day Commitments (Measurable)
- 90 minutes of deep work each morning, no notifications.
- Power down at 10:30 PM, asleep by 11:00.
- Move for 30 minutes daily.
- One unscheduled day per week for long-term thinking.
- One kind act per day toward someone around me.
📌 Post-Retreat Decision Principles
- If a task doesn’t serve one of my 3 core focuses → decline or delegate.
- If it takes < 2 minutes → do it now; if > 2 minutes → schedule it.
- Every task must have a “landing point”: deadline, owner, and success criteria.
📈 How I Track Progress
- Each evening: rate 0–2 for deep work, movement, and sleep.
- Each Sunday: review the week, drop one low-value task, add one small experiment.
A retreat isn’t an escape from work — it’s the courage to pause and live with intention.
One quiet day showed me what’s worth protecting, and what’s ready to be released.
The rest is daily discipline — turning promises to myself into reality.
