Issue 5 of my Personal Strategy Compass Substack email newsletter (premium) has been published and sent. It has some new insights and some practical materials to help you move forward with my favorite personal productivity tool – Personal Quarterly Offsites. And I’ve made part of it available for free.
Over the years I’ve borrowed good ideas from everywhere—design thinking, Open Space Technology, agile sprints, scenario planning matrices, soundscapes—and adapted them to my Personal Quarterly Offsite (PQO) practice. The newest import comes straight from academia: declaring a major.
In the April issue of Personal Strategy Compass, I unpack why giving your next quarter a single “major” can turn scattered activity into meaningful momentum. If you’ve ever finished a quarter with an impressive‑looking checklist but no real sense of progress, this concept is for you.
Why a “major” beats a mountain of goals
Reduced overwhelm. Mental RAM is fragile. Picking one headline focus frees up capacity for deeper work.
Decision filter. When a shiny new opportunity appears, I ask: Does it move my major forward? If not, I park it.
Compounding depth. Concentrated effort compounds, just like interest. Breadth rarely does.
Tools you can download today
The issue includes a free PQO Major Finder Toolkit (worksheet, decision matrix, and commitment statement). I used it to help me decide to declare “Strategic Simplification” as my own major.
I liked this tool so much that I’m making it available for free download here.
AI can help, too.
In the paid version of the newsletter (hint, hint), I drop a ready‑to‑run ChatGPT prompt that will let AI do some of the heavy lifting for your next PQO. And there are even more goodies, tips, and insights. But the real benefit will be from starting your own Personal Quarterly Offsite practice.
[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (https://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]
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