Reading the article on Bill Gates' think week retreat and Peter Drucker's "Managing in a Time of Great Change" got me thinking about how to implement these concepts into my own life.

Drucker mentions early on in the book that the future has been made by changes that have already occurred. He indicates that the "theory of business" of any enterprise should take these changes into consideration for the business theory to be valid. He says that successful companies have management/managers that have thought about the changes that shape the future and how they, the enterprise, adapt the theory of business.

After reading an article about Bill Gates' Think week, I realized that Gates was applying Drucker's lesson of retooling the theory of Microsoft's business. During this biennial retreat, he holes up at a secluded retreat, reads and ponders over 100 articles and ideas about how Microsoft should respond any number of new challenges that lie on the horizon. Most those articles are documents internally generated by groups and people within microsoft.

I believe that Drucker's ideas about evaluating and responding to change are important to the viability of a company. I also thought that the same type of evaluation can help with one's own personal goals or "theory of life." Gates' think week was the mechanism that helped me understand that one needs the time and space to step back from the operations of the business and life in order to focus and reflect on these changes.

So I'm planning for my "Think Weekend" for late March. The goal will be to evaluate my projects, committments and areas of focus at the higher levels of perspective that the David and Covey speak about. Hopefully this evaluation will take into account the changes that have occurred in my life and around me so I can determine if a project is still worth pursuing.

I've found a retreat center that has Internet access, no TV and cheap rates during the "off season." I'm preparing by filling up a banker's box with folders containing Active and SomedayMaybe Projects (as defined by the David) that need more planning, and Areas of Focus in my life that need more definition. Whenever it strikes me, I'm also tossing in, with the help of 3x5 cards, the changes that have ocurred which affect areas of focus, current and pending projects in my life.

My question to all here is: How have you evaluated your projects and areas of focus beyond the Runway level? Have you done such a retreat/think week. What ideas do you have to focus and evaluate your projects beyond the weekly review?