With my wife we have a tradition that we are doing since a few years: each of us get's do two solo retreats of a few days (between 2-4). The beauty of doing two per year is that it takes out the pressure of wanting the retreat to be perfect because it's the only time you'll have to properly relax or make progress on something big that year.

What went well

As I'm in my hotel bed at 07:00 writing I'm reflecting on what went well and what I'll change. Here quickly the stuff that went well:

• I finished the first draft of the first quarter of my next book

• I migrated all the hundreds of Q&A from Intercom back to Podia

These are two big tasks that I'm relieved I did! It was so much nicer to be able to do that in a retreat than at home. Especially the migration was something that just needed hours of focus and it was nice to be able to do that in a lovely hotel room while watching Netflix, instead of doing that a few minutes here and there.

The big mistake I did in this retreat

But in this retreat I made one big mistake: I let the stress I had on other projects and parts of my life eat parts of that retreat. Or said more positively I had things that I had to fix that I wish I would have fixed before the retreat.

What I've learned in this retreat is that I like the idea of keeping a retreat to either do nothing, or either make something big happen. But I hate when parts of my retreat are used to manage late tasks and things that I am anxious about.

It's good that I could use that retreat time to fix those things. But I believe that next time I could fix those late tasks and anxious elements before the retreat to keep the retreat a true "creative" or "getting shit done" time.

As I'm writing I notice that the only thing I don't want to use a retreat for is this:

Don't use a retreat to work on late tiny tasks.

How to fix it: design the pre-retreat

All in all, this was a pretty nice retreat, but for the next retreat here's is what I'll want to do: design a pre-retreat time. Next time I'll try to block some time, one week or so before the retreat to ask myself:

• What is a task that I have in the back of my head that could "kill my focus" during the retreat?

• What's something I feel I'm late that I want to make progress on before I take a break?

Here the idea is to make some sort of progress on the things that could come in your head during the retreat and say to you:

Hey! Remember I'm this dumb task you should do! And I'll be here popping up the whole time because this is the only time I feel you have the energy to make me happen! So hello! Oh and sorry that I'm taking the focus aways from the fun creative time!

Yeah, my tasks are speaking to me in my head.

Was this a good retreat?

Definitely! I'm very happy with the two big pieces I got done, and I'm even satisfied that I solved a few other issues during it. Sure next time I'll fix these issues before the retreat to make the retreat even better.