Why it serves you to do a year-end review

Most businesses are familiar with year-end reviews. However, I’m also an advocate for a personal year-end review. I first learned about the idea of a personal year-end review from Sarah Peck. And what I appreciate about her approach is that it is not simply about going through your list of goals to identify which ones you hit and which ones you failed to hit. No, rather a year-end review is a slowed down, deep reflection about your year. It’s an invitation to identify what you celebrate about this year, what you are most proud of, what you’ve learnt, and how you’ve grown over the last year.

Looking back over your year also helps you put into perspective the year ahead and where you want to focus your energy in the year ahead. In this article, I will share the insights I’ve gained from both Sarah Peck and Rich Litvin and the questions they have formulated, as well as some other helpful tools that will support you in doing your personal year-end review.

Sarah Peck’s approach

Sarah Peck recommends putting aside an hour or two for your review and to journal, reflect, and write (preferably in long-hand). She reasons that long-hand writing also allows for drawings and sketches. The benefit of journaling your thoughts is that you can go back to them a year later to compare how you and your thinking have changed over time.

Here are some powerful questions to consider as you reflect on your year:

1. What did I want at the beginning of the year? What were my biggest dreams?
2. What do I consider my major milestones for this year?
3. What went well this year? What am I celebrating?
4. What am I deeply grateful for this year?
5. What did not go so well this year? What are some of my biggest regrets?
6. What surprised me this year?
7. How have I changed as a person?
8. What did I learn this year? (This could include what you learnt about yourself as well as new skills you developed)
9. What feels unfinished that I still want to get to in the new year?
10. Which relationships were most important, influential, or meaningful to me this year? How will I continue to nurture those relationships?
11. Which relationships did not serve me this year? What do I want to do about those relationships?
12. What is most important for me in the next year? How I will I know that I’ve accomplished my goals at the end of next year?

 

Rich Litvin’s Approach

Rich Litvin is a hugely successful coach. He is co-author of The Prosperous Coach. Rich offers some really deep questions to consider as you reflect on your year and plan the new year ahead.

Just like Rich, I’m an advocate for finishing your year strong. Something I’ve noticed that often happens around this time of year – especially in the Southern hemisphere – is that people go on autopilot. They are simply pushing through to get to the end. They lose interest in what they are doing. They simply go through the motions to get to the other side. They are just holding out until they can go on holiday.

I used to live my life like that. I used to “get through” things, push through, hold out, endure. Now, I look back on that time in my life and recognise that it is no way to be. Pushing through things, means I forego my own authority. It means I am not fully present to my life and I’m putting off my happiness, and it also means that I might hold off on opportunities to create the life I want NOW, telling myself that I will get back to these things later, when I feel better.

In the meantime, precious life slips through your fingers, and you are missing out on the joy that is right in front of you in this moment. You are missing out on leaning into your future self NOW. Because believe it or not, you are creating your future self by the choices you are making in this moment. So, even when you are choosing to check out of your life right now, you are still creating your life. What will your life look like if you are constantly checking out?

My invitation is to ask yourself who you want to be? How do you want to remember this time of year? And when you look back one year from now, what will you be glad you did now?

Here are some of Rich’ questions for you to ponder as you review your year:

1. What are you most proud of this year both personally and professionally?
2. What was the hardest thing you had to overcome this year? What did you learn from it?
3. What and who energised you the most?
4. What and who drained you the most?
5. What and who are you still tolerating?
6. What were the one to three activities or habits that created 80% of your success, happiness, and health?
7. Who were the three to five people in your life that helped you produce 80% of your results? (Clients, colleagues, friends, loved ones).
8. What were the one to three activities or habits that created 80% of your problems, unhappiness, or poor physical and mental health?
9. What goals did you not accomplish? What got in the way?
10. How are you different at the end of this year from 12 months ago?
11. What coincidences, lucky moments, or miracles occurred this year? How did you create them?
12. What is one thing that you spent money on that provided the most value?
13. How did you waste the most money this year?
14. What are you grateful for?
15. What are your top three insights from this review?

Once your review is done, you can fast forward to next year and ponder the following questions to support you in creating your 2022 with clear intentions:

1. What is your Zone of Genius – i.e., the thing that you are best at and when you do it, it feels effortless even though it might feel hard for others to do?
2. How can you tap into your Zone of Genius more often in the next year?
3. What is missing from your life? How are you keeping it out, either consciously or unconsciously?
4. What are you tolerating in your life, either because you don’t think anything better is possible, or because you secretly believe you don’t deserve better?
5. What is the top two things on your list that you’ve been procrastinating on for weeks, months or even years? What are the fears that are stopping you from taking action on these two things?

Goals vs. Resolutions

I’ve always appreciated Gretchen Rubin’s distinction between goals and resolutions and for this reason, I’m not a fan of simply setting goals for the new year. I also want to slow down enough to think about who I want to become as I move through my year and as I reach for my goals. Who you are being as you pursue goals that are meaningful to you, is far more important than simply pursuing the goals so that you can check them off your to-do-list. 

For this reason, I also always invite my clients to consider the following three questions as they plan their year:

1. What beautiful human experiences do I want to have this year?
2. What will help me learn and grow the most over the next year?
3. In what way can I contribute to others in my life or my wider community? How can I make a difference this year, even if it’s just in ONE person’s life?

Wheel of Life

Another useful exercise is to complete a Wheel of Life to identify the areas in your life where you are thriving, and the areas that desperately need your attention. As with most things in life, the aim is to find a balance between the different areas of your life. No-one will ever reach perfection in every area of their life, and perfection is not what we are after. What we are after, is the bigger picture of your life and where you want to focus your energy and attention for the next year.

The Wheel of Life is basically a pie chart divided into the different areas of your life. You reflect on each area of your life and allocate a score from 1- 10 to indicate the quality of this specific area of your life where 1 represents poor existential quality or struggle and 10 represents joyful thriving and fulfillment. The different areas of your life can include the following:

1. Health and Wellbeing: How does your body and mind feel? How would you rate your overall physical and mental wellbeing?
2. Wealth: What is your relationship to money? How do you feel about your financial situation?
3. Spirit: Do you feel connected to something larger than yourself? What are your most important values? Are you finding ways to honour your values in your daily life?
4. Family & Friends: How do you feel about the quality of relationships in your life? Are you expressing/giving and receiving love and support in your life?
5. Love and Romance: How do you feel about romance in your life? Do you feel deeply loved and appreciated? Are you making time for love and romance in your life? Does your relationship inspire you?
6. Work/Team: What is most meaningful to you about your work? What drains you? Do your team inspire you? What or who energises you? What or who drains you? Are you showing up as a personal leader in your work and life?
7. Personal Growth: How much time do you invest in self-improvement or professional development? What do you need to unlearn, learn, or relearn? How are you holding yourself back? How are you playing small?
8. Fun: Do you give yourself permission to have guilt-free fun? How much time do you devote to re-creation and fun? Does your recreation time re-energise you or cause more stress in your life?
9. Technology: How does technology energise you and support you in reaching your goals? How does it drain you? How do you use technology as a distraction?
10. Environment: How do you feel about your physical environment? Do you feel part of your community? Do you feel safe and supported in the environment you live in? How are you creating community for yourself?

Homo Prospectus

Leadership and Psychology Professor Martin Seligman and his colleagues argue that our species is misnamed.  Though sapiens defines human beings as wise; we are not necessarily wise. They reason that what humans do especially well is to prospect the future. We are thus homo prospectus. Our ability to anticipate and plan for the future, helps us adapt to an ever-fluctuating world. We create the world we live in through our imagination and our imagination forms the cornerstone of our success as a species.

So, in support of your innate nature to anticipate and plan for the future, here are future-oriented questions to consider:

1. Imagine thee years have gone by and they were the best thee years of your life… What were the top one to three things you accomplished that have given you a tremendous sense of pride, success, and happiness?
2. If in three years’ time you are disappointed with your results, why will that be? (Let’s be honest, we always know in advance why we’ll fail at something).
3. What’s your breakthrough goal? (If you were only allowed to focus on one goal next year, which goal would be most likely to ensure that every other goal was accomplished — even if you were not allowed to work on them).
4. Who do you want to be by the end of next year?
5. What’s one thing you want to start doing next year?
6. What’s one thing you want to stop doing next year?
7. Who in your life deserves more attention next year?
8. What’s one word or sentence that sums up next year?

Conclusion

Spending some time reflecting on some of these questions, really considering how they apply to your life, could be the greatest gift you give yourself for the new year. It’s a way of becoming more intentional in how you show up in your life. If you decide to take the time out to do your annual review and to sit with these questions, I salute you, and I want to acknowledge you for your courage. It takes courage to slow down in a world that rewards haste. Kudos to you for not simply running ahead without considering whether your ladder is even up against the right wall.

References:

1. Breytenbach, C. (2021). Setting resolutions of a different kind. Available online at: https://chantalbreytenbach.com/setting_resolutions_of_a_different_kind/
2. Chandler, S. & Litvin, R. (2013). The Prosperous Coach: Increase income and impact for you and your clients. Maurice Bassett.
3. Peck, S. (2018). How to do an Annual Review: 10 questions. Available online at: https://www.sarahkpeck.com/2018/01/annual-review/
4. Rubin, G. (2015). The Happiness Project: Or, why I spent a year trying to sing in the morning, clean my closets, fight right, read Aristotle, and generally have more fun. New York: Harper.
5. Seligman, M. E., Railton, P., Baumeister, R. F., & Sripada, C. (2016). Homo prospectus. Oxford University Press.