The Epic Year Project: Speed Up Personal Growth

The Epic Year pro­ject is about speed­ing up per­son­al growth.

What do you remem­ber from a spe­cif­ic year in your life?

When it comes down to what we remem­ber from past years, we tend to remem­ber … the epic stuff. 

What do I remem­ber from a spe­cif­ic year?
And why do mile­stones matter?

Let’s take a closer look:

Milestone Density

When think­ing back on a spe­cif­ic year, most of us will remem­ber things like:

And so on.

Besides being pos­it­ive and mem­or­able, what these types of mile­stones often have in com­mon is that they seem to pro­pel our lives forward.

I won­der how many mile­stones one must have in a year to feel that life is mov­ing forward.

Four is the Magic Number

The magic num­ber seemed to be four; if I had exper­i­enced four leap-type events in one year, that year felt monu­ment­al in hindsight. 

In 2010, I mar­ried wifey on a Caribbean beach, worked in New York, star­ted blog­ging in English, and got a stu­dio apart­ment in the Financial District of Manhattan. Those were four sig­ni­fic­ant leaps in my life — and a life-chan­ging year for me.

In 2013, I remem­ber quit­ting my job and start­ing a digit­al PR agency, Spin Factory. That’s two giant leaps, but hon­estly, I can­’t remem­ber any­thing else but hard work from that year. 

In ret­ro­spect, 2013 does­n’t stand out as an epic year.

I’m sure that mar­ry­ing someone new each year would be quite mem­or­able, hav­ing a kid or clos­ing your old busi­ness and start­ing anew. But plenty of leaps won’t require pre­ma­ture divorce, pro­cre­ation, or jump­ing ship. 

Like blow­ing past a sig­ni­fic­ant per­son­al mile­stone. Or doing some­thing that you’ve been afraid of doing your entire life. Or exper­i­en­cing some­thing extraordin­ary for the very first time. Or teach­ing your kid to ride a bike!

Read also: The Blog Project: 10 Years of Improving My English

Go For Epic Years

Achieving four major mile­stones each year isn’t easy (nor should it be), but I’ve found such a yard­stick to be valu­able and fun.

I like to call such years epic years.

Epic year = exper­i­en­cing four (or more) major mile­stones in one year.

Read also: The Every Day Rule: Manage Your Identity To Achieve More

I will, for sure, do my very best to have epic years mov­ing for­ward. I will keep track of my years by doing annu­al reviews:

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