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
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