Weekly gratitude practice—I go through my calendar for everyone I talked to this week, notice all the interactions I feel excited-in-hindsight about, write them a thank you note detailing what, specifically, I valued about the interaction, and send it to them
This is far and away the most fun part of the review, and is one of the points that really helps the habit stick. Of all of my systems, this is one of my strongest recommendations for other people to try! I think we all have a systematic bias about improving the lives of the people we care about, and this is a small way to overcome that
It significantly improves my mood, by getting me to dwell on all of the awesome people in my life. And, especially, trying to put into words what specific things I liked about what they did, rather than just sending a vague thanks
People often seem concerned that this will feel forced, or make other people feel awkward, or make me seem insincere, but I haven’t encountered any of these issues. The key is that the system isn’t about forcing gratitude—the point is to think about things that happened, and only write a message for the ones where I feel sincere gratitude. And people universally react positively to the message
It’s also really useful! When I eg meet someone new who I really like, sending a thank you message is an excellent way to signal “I like you and would enjoy keeping in touch”. And this remains sincere, because I rarely want to keep in touch with someone I didn’t enjoy talking to
I’m late to the party but this is a great post. In particular, I think this is really important:
I meet with quite a few people to ask for career advice and always try to email them afterward to:
Express gratitude for their time
Dot-point key takeaways
Highlight any ways in which my view point has shifted after meeting with them (e.g., ‘I was thinking of doing X, but now I think Y’)
The intention is that this:
Provides clear examples of what I got from our meeting (rather than just vaguely repeating that it was very useful)
Strengthens the connection
Provides them with the opportunity to correct anything I have misunderstood (e.g., ‘You said that X was a key takeaway, but I actually meant Y’)
Provides an indication of what advice would be useful if talking to others in a similar position to me
Hopefully encourages them to meet with others in the future because it was a positive experience
Makes me feel like I’m giving them a little something back for being so generous with their time
Thanks for sharing this! I think it’s a cool idea, and plan to try out this habit.
It also reminds me of two other ideas I liked (in addition to the “following up” part of this post):
“Repeat-backs”, as discussed by The Management Center
The Management Center also recommend doing this verbally after discussions with one’s manager
That screenshot is from a doc shared here
Some further discussion here
Part of Neel Nanda’s weekly review process