A few years ago, my husband and I decided to apply agile to our life. If you’ve been following the newsletter for a while, you might remember. In fact, you might have been convinced that, like many resolutions made in January, this one would drop off by Valentine’s Day. To be fair, I wondered about that, too.
We set our family goals using key categories such as Home and Family, Financial Abundance, Live Well, etc. For each area, we identified a list of actions that would bring us closer to achieving the end goal. We took our ideas, some sticky notes, a flip-chart and our agile life was born.
A year later, we were completely blown away by the results! We spent a full year using agile to manage our life.
Were we completely rigorous, every single week? Heck, no. But overall, we stayed pretty consistent which proves that literally anyone can do this.
Our Year 1 Agile Results
Tasks Completed by Category:
- Amplify Home and Family: 76
- Live Well: 68
- Be Fabulous: 43
- Create Financial Abundance: 57
- Build Community and Make an Impact: 34
- Embrace Adventure: 31
Total Tasks Completed: 309
Tasks Left in the Backlog: 17
Sure, we managed to knock out tons of tactical goals but we also made some major mind and life shifts. We have more clarity and have embarked on several plans that have us moving in the direction of our dreams. There’s real change in the works!
Here’s a sampling of the simple tasks: fix filing cabinet lock, paint the living/dining rooms, buy emergency water supply, insurance coverage review, consolidate investment accounts
And here’s a few that were more profoundly amazing: research moving to Europe, take PUGS Financial Freedom 101, create a Happiness at Work Class, visit Spain, visit Belize
The best part? We accomplished a lot in in a year and it wasn’t hard. Not only that, but we are having fun doing this together. We have greater levels of alignment on goals and we even feel closer.
The big takeaway is that anyone can apply agile to LIFE. We went super low-tech and just used flip-chart paper and Post-It notes. We had a weekly stand-up meeting where we would celebrate accomplishments, identify help needed, and challenge priority or accountability if needed. All this took about 10-15 minutes a week!
What the heck is agile? It’s an approach typically used to manage software development but it also applies to anything. Simply put, it’s a way of planning and doing work in which making changes (which are inevitable) becomes more fluid and things that really are “pipe dreams” surface as such. It helps teams prioritize, stay accountable, and more.