Since I first read Steve Pavlina’s article “20 Ways to Improve” a couple years ago, I’ve made a habit of doing this exercise a few times a month as a way to continually re-assess what I should be working on and thinking about in my life, or in relation to my current projects.

Here is Steve’s intro:

“A simple yet powerful idea I learned from Earl Nightingale is to grab a blank piece of paper (or a blank computer screen) and brainstorm a list of 20 ways to improve. You can write down anything — ways to increase your income, improve your health, better your relationships, etc. The focus is on generating ideas to make your life better.”

Re-reading his article recently, I realized that I have interpreted the approach and intent a little differently to suit my own ways of thinking and working.

Subtle Tweaks

In his article, Steve says the exercise may take 30-60 minutes, but I rarely spend more than 10 minutes on it. I think Steve and I are generating different kinds of ideas, at different levels of detail. I try to come up with them as quickly as I can. Each one is a single sentence or maybe even just a phrase, and I try to write without thinking or pondering or editing too much. For me, the exercise is a way to get out of a contemplative or analytic mindset, and tap into my intuition.

I start by putting twenty dashes on the paper or in the editor on my computer, so I can quickly see how many I have left to go without counting.

The first dozen or so ideas usually come easy. I always seem to run out of steam at about sixteen. That is the moment to keep going! Often the most interesting and unexpected ideas appear after the easy ones, when I’m fidgeting and squirming and trying to convince myself that sixteen is good enough.

In Steve’s framing, the scope is life in general, but this exercise applies just as well to specific projects or areas of life. If it seems daunting to think about twenty ways to improve your whole life, start with a specific topic or project, or a challenge you are facing.

Review

I keep all my lists in a single folder, so that I can go back and compare my newest lists to those I wrote a month or a year ago.  What keeps coming up?

I regularly review these lists to look for patterns, and summarize what I find: What items or themes keep coming up again and again? Are these areas where I need to focus? Or, more importantly, are there things on the list that I have been nagging myself about for months that, with time, I can see just aren’t that important after all?

For example, I had one item that kept surfacing in different forms for over a year, related to a new system of organizing notes and drafts for writing projects. Looking back on it now, I was actually fairly functional without trying such a system, and was hesitant to start work on the new system because of the time it would take and the disruption it would entail.

The consistent self-hectoring wasn’t providing any benefit to me. By writing it down and externalizing, I was able to see just how much it was bothering me, move it to the “someday I’ll work on this” list, and get on with my work with one less worry on my mind.

One final review tip: Don’t look at previous lists until after you have finished the current one.  I’ve found that if I review first, I’m inclined to think that something that was on a previous list should be on this list. If I haven’t done it yet, how can I leave it off? The goal of the list is to find out what you think you need to do today, in the current moment.

Beyond Improvements

When I was in elementary school, our report cards had three kinds of grades:

• S: Satisfactory
• U: Unsatisfactory
• NI: Needs Improvement

Steve’s exercise is focused on the NI or the U categories: the parts of your life (or project, etc.) that aren’t quite working and need attention. This bias can make completing the exercise regularly feel sort of like continually getting a report card with all NI’s on it: You aren’t doing well, and you better pick it up, or you’re going to fail!

Running yourself down is not the point of the exercise, so I think it makes sense to offset the list of improvements with a list of twenty things you have already improved or that are going well. Spend time coming up with an equal number of items in the “Satisfactory” or “Much Better” categories, and make note of your accomplishments as well as what you could improve.