Why I’m Writing About My Roles-Based Retreat
I’m writing about this because I want to share my experience in working through a personal roles-based retreat. Sometimes it’s helpful to read about someone else’s experience to determine if you too want to have a similar experience (or not). I will share the process I followed and my observations and adaptations.
I’m also writing because I sense the roles-based approach that I used (developed by David Sparks, aka MacSparky) is not well known in productivity circles. I’d like more people to know about it because it significantly helped me. I think many others might also find it beneficial.
Why I Took a Roles-Based Retreat
About a year and a half ago, in January of 2021, I took a 3-day personal retreat following the method outlined by David Sparks, a.k.a. MacSparky, in his Video and PDF Personal Retreat Planner.
At that time, I’d been studying productivity for a couple of years. I learned about a lot of great tools and techniques but I didn’t have my own personal “Why?” figured out.
A lot of productivity education seems to assume that productivity is its own reward — that just being more productive is valuable in itself. I don’t see it that way. Who cares if you’re being productive doing things, but they are not the things that matter to you?
For productivity to make sense and have value to me, I needed to know what was important to me, so I could apply my productivity knowledge to do those things. In the past, I’d attempted to identify what was important to me by using the typical approach that begins with answering the question, “what are your values?” That never did much for me. It seemed way too esoteric and nebulous, removed from my real life.
When I found David Sparks’ role-based productivity system, I knew it was what I had been looking for. Instead of attempting to base my intentional life on a list of vague values, it started with the concrete roles I was already living out in my life. Following this process gave me a practical, holistic, and comprehensive understanding of what was important (my values) to me.
For more details about my roles-based retreat journey and how I used the results to design projects that reflected my values and skills, see How a Roles-Based Productivity System Brought Clarity and Purpose to my Life in Retirement.
The Length of the Retreat and the Location
Sparks recommends that you spend two nights and three days (two half days and one full day) on your personal retreat. I found this amount of time, although it sounded like it might be too much, was almost insufficient for me to get the required work done.
It took me much longer than I thought it would to define my roles, write an ideal description for each role, answer the eight “tough questions” for each role, and plan my follow-up. It’s a lot of exhausting work! You need time to do the mental work, but you also need some time for mental breaks so you can jump back into the work refreshed and renewed.
Sparks also recommends that you not do your retreat at home, but go to a different location. I went to a modest desert resort mid-week within an hour of my home in Phoenix. There were very few people there and I could fully focus on my retreat process.
On one of my follow-up retreats about 6 months later, I brought my wife with me. While I spent most of the first afternoon and the next day working, I was constantly distracted thinking about where she was, what she was doing, and if she was OK. We were together for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I was not nearly as productive and focused on this retreat. The next one I did by myself, and it was a much better experience.
Note: Sparks suggests that you bring all your food with you and not leave the retreat location. I found it was a welcome mental break to drive to a local restaurant to get dinner both nights. Bring snacks, food for lunch, and whatever you like to drink (I kept charged with lots of caffeinated Diet Coke). I also took the second evening off and watched a movie on my iPad. I was burned out from a day and a half of concentrated work.
My Preparation for My Roles Retreat
a. Get Familiar with the Method
Before leaving for the retreat I watched Sparks’ video and read the Personal Retreat Planner several times. Since I knew I’d be referring to the Planner a lot, I printed out a copy for easy reference.
b. Decide What Tools to Use
I also decided what tools I was going to use to record and keep track of my thoughts. Since I guessed there would likely be lots of revisions and additions during the retreat, I ruled out taking any analog tools like paper and pen. That turned out to be a good decision. My outlines would have been a total mess if I’d tried to record them and modify them all on paper.
Ultimately I decided to use the MindNode app on my 12.5” iPad Pro with a Magic Keyboard. I’m very comfortable with MindNode and use it with almost all of my projects. I like the graphical interface as opposed to a traditional outliner.
By using MindNode, I could create a separate node for each role, and then have child nodes for listing and answering each of the “tough questions” related to each role. I wrote my ideal role description as a note attached to each role.
By the time I completed the retreat my mind map was huge — but very effective and useful. Instead of using several apps, I had one very flexible tool with everything in one place. I could easily scan through all my work, and it was easy to jump around to different roles when I had a thought. For primary work on one role, I used the focus feature in MindNode, which dimmed out all of the other nodes. Also, when I was done I could easily export my work in the form of an outline for OmniOutliner.
You can and should use whatever works for you. I’m guessing an outliner like OmniOutliner would also be effective in recording your thoughts and work.
c. Start Thinking Early About Your Roles
Before the retreat, I also started to think about the roles that I had. I made a tentative list of these roles that I modified and added to during the retreat.
I found it helpful to do some of this foundational work before I started the retreat. I had a head start and had been thinking about my roles for a week before I began the process.
The 4-Step Roles-Based Retreat Process and My Responses
As I stated before, the role-based retreat process I used was that developed by David Sparks and explained in his Video and Personal Retreat Planner. There are four steps to the process. See Sparks’ Personal Retreat Planner for a detailed explanation of the process and his insights.
Although it sounds like this is a 1-2-3-4 progressive experience, this was NOT a linear process. While working on one role component I would think of something I needed to add to another role and would jump over to the other role to make the addition. I was constantly reviewing, re-reviewing, revising, and jumping back and forth all over my roles mind map.
The basic steps are:
1. Identify the roles you have in your life (you can also include any roles you aspire to have in your life).
I approached this by listing all of the things that I do in my life, and what the role was that each pointed to. I identified (during the initial retreat and revised during subsequent retreats) my nine core roles as:
- Husband
- Father
- Son
- Friend
- Lifelong Learner
- Teacher (writer and presenter)
- Healthy Active Person
- Reliable Person
- Hobbyist/Recreational Roles (broken down into 6 areas of interest)
2. Write an ideal description for each role of what you would look like if you met your ideal behavior in fulfilling each role. This is not intended to be a goal to achieve, but rather an ideal to strive for and measure your behavior against.
When I first wrote the ideal descriptions, I did so in paragraph form. I started many sentences with “I should ….” After reflection, I went back and revised them to be ideal descriptions of behavior, and just said, “I am ….” They needed to be written what the ideal behavior looked like in practice, not an admonition to be a certain way. This positive shift makes it easier for me to focus on how I’m doing in reviews.
During subsequent retreats and my weekly reviews, I turned my ideal description paragraphs into bullet-point lists. I find this makes each point stand out more, and makes it easier for me to review each specific item.
3. Answer the “tough questions” for each role. These include:
- What About This Role Brings Me Delight?
- What About This Role Brings Me Dread?
- What (or who) Am I Undervaluing?
- What Should I Keep Doing?
- What Should I Be Doing More?
- What Should I Stop Doing?
- What Should I Put on Hold?
These were not only “tough questions,” but this was the toughest part of the process for me. It required me to examine each role from multiple angles and make some hard choices and distinctions. It was vital to the process for me to stay honest and answer questions the way I really felt, not how I thought I should feel.
4. Determine your next steps by asking, “What Actions Should I Take?”
As I worked through the tough questions for each role, action steps would naturally arise in response to the questions asked. I set up a separate child node at the bottom of each role to list my action steps.
MindNode has a feature to designate a node as a task (circles that accept checkmarks when completed), which highlighted to me that these were tasks to be accomplished.
Wrapping Up My Roles-Based Retreat
1. Final Review and Revisions. Before ending my retreat, I did one final review of all of my retreat work (my big mind map that contained the whole process results). I made any adjustments or modifications that came to mind.
2. Transferring Action Steps. After arriving back home I transferred my action steps into specific tasks inside my task manager, Things. Where my action steps involved habits, I set those up in the habit-tracking app Streaks.
When I completed a task I marked it as completed not only in my task manager but also in the task node I’d set up in my large mind map that covered all of the work I did in my retreat. That way when I did a comprehensive review of my roles in subsequent retreats, I could easily tell which action items I’d completed and which still needed attention.
Weekly Reviews of my Roles and Determining How I’m Doing
As a chaplain and lawyer, I attended a lot of religious, spiritual, and professional retreats. I knew that it was easy to do great thinking during a retreat and then forget all about it soon after returning home.
To keep that from happening this time, I started a weekly review system. My intention is to review all of my roles and ideal descriptions each week and ask a series of questions: How am I doing? How could I improve? Am I generally making progress in this role? (All questions shamelessly stolen from David Sparks).
I’ve automated the process with a custom action in the Drafts app. When I click on it I get the questions, a copy of each role, and the roles’ ideal description. I learned how to do this from the videos in David Sparks’ free Drafts Field Guide.
All Tasks Now Grouped by Roles
In my task manager, Things, I use a feature called “areas” to group new and repeating tasks under their related role. Each area is named after a role, and my task list shows me the tasks for each day under the associated role.
I find this extremely helpful to keep me focused on my roles. At a glance, every day, I can understand that a particular task is important because it relates to one of my roles. This provides additional motivation to complete the task.
Follow-Up Retreats Every Six Months
Although Sparks recommends quarterly follow-up retreats, I’ve found that bi-yearly retreats work well for me. During these retreats, I do a comprehensive review and re-thinking of my roles, tough questions, and action steps.
I make modifications as necessary and update my review template in Drafts. I think about the progress (or lack of it) I’ve made in each role, and what new actions I need to take to keep me progressing in the right direction.
Final Thoughts
My purpose in writing about my roles retreat experience is not to convince you to do exactly what I did. Far too many presentations on productivity methods assume a “one size fits all” perspective, and urge you to follow the model the author is presenting. And often there’s a promise that if you do, wonderful things will happen.
Following this process, and continuing with it, has made a significant difference for me. I now have a much better understanding of what is important to me, and I’m much more focused on doing the important things. Starting with roles helped me to give specific thought to all of the roles in my life, not just the “work” roles. This has made my thinking and system very holistic and comprehensive.
The reality is everyone is unique, and nothing works for everybody. You may find this approach is a perfect fit for you, you may want to pick and choose and adapt some techniques and reject others, or you may not find it appealing at all. Those are all OK responses if that’s what fits you best.