Move Forward by Looking Back
How I reflect on my year and set intentions for the next.
Quick note
Before I dive in, I want to say that my first post on Substack which you might have read was a little tough-lovey and I honestly wasn’t expecting anyone to see it. While I do stand by it, I have to say I understand nuance and people posting links to their blogs for reasons I will never know. So I hope you didn’t take offense or think I’m some negative Nacy! More to say later but let’s look at 2024!
A Good Time for Looking Back
This time of year is full of peppermint in chocolate, songs of bells that jingle, and movies of full adult elves adventuring around New York. It also brings a slowdown in most people’s work lives which means more time for family, friends, and yourself. I look forward to setting aside time to reflect on all that happened in the past 12 months. There are so many ways to be intentional about this kind of reflection and I’d like to share the ways I’ve enjoyed doing it the past few years.
The Process
First, I warm up my mind by reading over what I wrote down last year. Sometimes I laugh at what I did or didn’t accomplish. It’s actually nice to see what I didn’t accomplish and think about if it’s still important to me and what I could do differently in the next year to accomplish it.
Once I’m in the right mindset, I look over my calendar, write down every event or moment, and assign it a ++, +, ~, -, or --. These correspond to how positive of an experience it was for me. Once it’s all laid out, I try to abstract commonalities or themes. I look at the people involved, the location, the work situation, what I was doing, what and who I was interacting with, what was I feeling, my emotional state, etc. The more data points you can remember the more you can find trends.
I think about all this data and try and figure out what was working and what wasn’t. From this, I extrapolate goals or intentions on what I’d like to do for the next year. What I should do more of and what I should do less of. Here’s an example.
It wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to tell me that I enjoy working running events with all my friends versus corporate events where I know no one. These are two back-to-back events from my calendar and I didn’t need to wait till this moment for the understanding that I wanted to do less corporate events. Later in the year, I said, “No” to a well-paying corporate event and it felt good to be in a position to know it wasn’t what I wanted and that the money wasn’t worth the gig.
I prefer to do all this on physical paper or on my iPad, writing with the stylus instead of typing. I like the slower pace of handwriting. However, if you were to type it, I could see another level of this that takes all these keywords and makes word clouds out of the positive and negative events for even deeper analysis.
Now the Hard Part
Sharing those intentions, goals, and findings is the hardest part. It requires some vulnerability and accountability. It’s important to share with your trusted people more than anyone else. Go ahead and share on Social Media too if you want but I don’t think it’s important to do so and I don’t think it helps. Sharing with the people who truly know you and understand you is the recipe for success.
Ask for their feedback. See if you had blind spots, or if they saw themes and commonalities you didn’t see. Ask for their accountability and check in a few times a year. Close friends and family will want to be a part of your journey and you’ll want to be a part of theirs. Share in it. Nothing gets done alone so embrace your community along your journey.
and more
A few years ago, a friend shared this wonderful resource: Year Compass. It’s a booklet that guides you through a similar process I described above. It has some great thought-provoking questions too and I love doing it as another part of my review.
Last year, I created this large format calendar to keep track of my work and personal life events. I used blue highlighter for work, pink for family, and orange for friends and community. You can see the picture of it above. There is quite a bit of blue. I love this calendar because it’s such a great high-level view of my year. I highly recommend it and it’s inexpensive. You can download this file and print it at a local FedEx, Staples, or Office Depot for about $5. I print it at an Arch D blueprint 36”x24” size.
This year, I’m also going to try a similar guided review booklet made by one of my favorite podcasters. Shane from “The Knowledge Project”, says he goes through this one himself. Shane’s year reflection guide is more business oriented so it’s right up my alley as a freelancer.