Threemes: One Year On

I entered 2024 with one of the strongest "productivity systems" in place that I've ever tried: a combination of yearly theme (loosely following the Cortex model) and my own Threemes system. The latter had already been running for much of the prior year, and seemed to be working well, but I was less sure about the introduction of a yearly theme. I was hoping that it would help focus my monthly theme picking, and drive a stronger overall sense of direction throughout the year. At the time, I wrote:

I'm considering this a trial, but secretly hope it will stick.

So did it? Well, yes and no. (Quelle surprise 😂)

Whilst I have often found it useful to take a moment and consider my yearly theme, I'm not entirely sure that it really helped focus my attention all that much. On paper, I think I can make a fairly strong case that it did help ‒ indeed, I will aim to do so in my upcoming theme article! ‒ but if I really take a step back and look at the year critically, most of my project and task decision making was driven by in-the-moment necessity and interest. So would it have been any different without the theme in place? It's hard to say.

One aspect that I feel was aided by the presence of a yearly theme was the removal of guilt. There were definitely points in the year (particularly once I was made redundant) when I had pangs of concern that my focus was in the wrong place. Having yearly and monthly themes in place helped allay those fears, and gave me a good structure to keep making progress in the areas that mattered most. Looking back, I think that sticking with my existing theme choices was always the right decision, and it certainly short-circuited a certain amount of hand-wringing.

I'd also say that whilst my yearly theme perhaps played less of a clear-cut role, it did manage to achieve one of my desired outcomes: it became a very good crutch for deciding what monthly themes and focus areas I should pick. In general, I tried to keep at least one of my Threemes focused on "setting the stage", which in turn helped drive some of the biggest productivity wins of the year.

That said, I also found it fascinating to go back and re-read my original article in preparation for this one, as it included some real moments of "ah damn, you actually do know yourself quite well, huh" 😂 A classic example is the inclusion of this concluding statement:

I'll be interested to use this post as a touchpoint to return to and remind myself how the system is supposed to work, or as a comparison to track its evolution.

I finished 2024 with a strong opinion that my monthly themes were getting overloaded, and becoming increasingly insurmountable. It had been months since I last completed even a single focus point. I had forgotten that Threemes were meant to sometimes be broad and focus on life goals, rather than simply side projects. In a note I wrote for this very article back in January, I said:

I need to try and settle on a monthly ranking; have one primary focus, one secondary focus, and one generalist life goal.

The funny thing is, rereading what Threemes were meant to be, it's clear that this "brand new" idea was a core part of them all along ‒ I had simply forgotten! Still, it is a valid criticism of how the system has naturally evolved, and something that I do need to reign in moving forward. In the first couple months of 2025 I've already begun reminding myself of this mentality switch, and I think it has already been beneficial.

I've begun very carefully considering both cognitive overload and urgency in terms of how I rank the three monthly themes. Whatever goes in that first slot ought to be the most critical task of the month, but it will also likely be the one that requires the most dedicated time and brain power. As a result, the third slot must be filled with something that I can dip into with little additional prep and at any time. I'm already discovering that doing so has allowed me to make better use of my evenings, by giving me a low-stakes, low-attention task that I can chip away at for a half hour or so before turning in, allowing me to end the day on a note of productivity, rather than simply disappearing down a Shorts hole (* shakes fist angrily *).

A February Deadline

One other very clear discovery from 2024 is that December is a terrible month to try and perform an annual performance review of your entire life. Between family, friends, work, and Christmas, it feels like every single thing in the world is trying to grab your attention. Our 2024 winter was far from atypical, and my free time was at an absolute minimum. Weekends are all gatherings and parties; week nights are packing and presents. There are cards to write, decorations to hang, and every form of logistics you can imagine to arrange: food orders, travel plans, cake feeding, delivery schedules, and on, and on.

In my yearly planning calendar, I already have a dedicated, permanent slot filled for "Christmas" in my December themes section, but I also wanted to fill the other two with "year in review" type tasks. My (incredibly naive) aim had been to do all of the data analysis for the entire prior year, plus begin drafting up each of the three blog posts, so they could all go live in the first week of January. Ha! 😅

For starters, it quickly became apparent that attempting to crunch the numbers on a whole year before that year had ended was more than a little futile. Yes, I was able to get a jump start on some data gathering activities, but it's fairly dry and tedious work when you don't get to see a final picture evolving in front of you. If I'm completely honest, it left me feeling demoralised and massively impacted my overall productivity. There's a reason I suddenly started playing League again around the same time...

It was also a poor fit for the tasks that I needed to do, leaving me with an ever-growing to-do list. I've come to recognise that a monthly set of themes will only ever succeed if my urgent tasks are either relatively few in number, or very aligned with my Threemes. December managed neither of these.

As a result, I've amended my calendar template and shifted some deadlines around. I found having a very low-stakes, enormous task very useful, and sorting photographs is an ideal fit, so that has gone in as "default theme number two" for December moving forward. The data crunching needed for the yearly By The Numbers article has moved into January ‒ a much more appropriate time, when I can be working with complete datasets and deriving actual insights. My hope is that my Year In Review article can be written alongside, also in January, as I found this naturally happened this year anyway.

That makes January a very good fit for a month of last-minute pushes. I've always found myself to be one of those people that is most productive with a tight deadline, and I regularly spend the Christmas period thinking about the tasks and goals that have been left undone or incomplete, which gives me a real boost as we head into the New Year. Making January a whole, dedicated period for finishing things off feels like it might work quite well 🤞

Which only leaves my yearly theme. When I first wrote about the idea, I had conceived it as running alongside the calendar, from January to December. But looking at how my time is likely best spent, and considering that it would be most beneficial to set a new theme having completed all of the deep-thinking of the year that has just finished, trying to kick this off in January feels, well, a bit silly.

Instead, I'm shifting my "theme year" to run from February to January. That gives me a whole month of limbo, to knuckle down and make some real progress, before I have to set my sights on the year ahead. It also shifts my "new year" goal setting out a month to most other people, which feels broadly beneficial.

I realise that it's already March and my new theme is yet to be announced, but I'm not taking that as a failure. The reason I'm shifting things around is because the start to this year proved that the old pattern was simply untenable, and I'm taking that failure and using it to build out a much more robust system for next year. At least, that's the hope 🤞