Year End Review- How To Conduct One For Yourself

“The road of life twists and turns and no two directions are ever the same. Yet our lessons come from the journey, not the destination.”
– Don Williams Jr.

As another year draws to a close, I often spend time reviewing the last year, and I’m sure you do the same.

Today we’re going to cover a simple process for taking stock of the past year – where you’ve come, what you’ve accomplished – and use that to help plan where you want to go next year.

Conducting Your Year End Review

I like to do reviews based on concrete results. I’ve seen others who recommend you start of asking yourself how you feel this year went, or giving yourself a ranking from a 1-10 – but I believe these subjective rankings are not helpful, because research has shown that such long term rankings are heavily influenced by how you feel in the short term. That is, even if your life is a 9/10, you might give it a 5/10 just because you’ve had a few bad days (or vice versa, you might be at a 5/10, but give yourself a 9/10 because you recently had a couple good days).

Since this is meant to give you real results, and not just be an academic exercise, we’ll go through a process that helps you articulate in detail what your year was like, and then step back to judge and look over your whole year.

Question #1: What obstacles have you overcome, and what have you accomplished?

Think over your whole year – start in January, and consider month by month what you did, what you overcame, and what real results you achieved in your life. The reason I lump these two questions together is because frequently I find that people downplay their accomplishments. For your personal development, it’s not just about what you’ve done, it’s also important to consider how you got there.

And if you have accomplished something, or created something, recognize it and give yourself credit for it. I like how Seth Godin puts it:

“What did you ship?”

To ship means to create something, get it out the door, and give your gifts to the world. I’ve read his book Linchpin (where he discusses this) three times now, and I really enjoy it – highly recommended.

Look over your list, and consider also:

What’s the most important item on this list?
What are the top 3?
What really sums up my year?

Note: Seth didn’t coin the term “ship”, nor does he try to claim credit for it. In Linchpin Seth credits Steve Jobs as saying “Real artists ship” – that is, not constantly just think of how to make it perfect, but actually produce something.

Question #2: What did you learn, and how have you changed?

Again, start in January and work forward. This question seems to surprise me every year. I’m amazed that while it feels like time has gone by so fast, and that I haven’t changed at all, when I take a moment to reflect on it I realize I have learned and grown in ways I would have never imagined when the year began.

We often are aware of the big changes, or sudden lessons we learn from major life experiences – but think back to the small interactions you’ve had, and the small changes and tweaks you’ve made in your life based on the little lessons you’ve learned over time.

I think it’s easy to discount these little lessons, but in the long run it’s all those little experiences that make you who you are – and give you the wisdom to make well informed judgments and decisions in the future.

Again, look over your list, and consider:

What’s the most important item on this list?
What are the top 3?
What really sums up my year?

Questions #3: How satisfied are you?

After reviewing the lists you’ve put together, consider how satisfied you are. Since we’ve got some concrete items for you to reflect on this year, now is the time where you can rate yourself from a 1-10, or whatever it is is you like.

And remember – don’t just consider the black and white of what you’ve accomplished. While that’s important, and ultimately I am all about results, for your personal growth its important to consider what you overcame, how you got there, and what you’ve learned along the way. Businesses better make money because they answer to their stockerholders – but you answer only to yourself, and in my opinion your life experience is the most important thing.

How satisfied you are will help you answer this next, final question…

Question #4: What’s missing, and what’s next?

We’ve considered what you’ve overcome, accomplished, learned and how you you’ve changed – and with that we can now plan to go forward.

Ask yourself -

What’s missing for your list of things you’ve shipped?
What big goals or dreams would you like to achieve next year?

Especially consider the obstacles you’ve overcome, as an indication of just how much you’re capable of

For more, you’ll want to check out:

Reflection Questions: The Most Important Questions You’ll Answer This Year

Planning For Next Year

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end”
– Semisonic, Closing Time

After you complete this review, you’ll be left with some open questions, and things you want to achieve next year.

The end of this year comes with the beginning of another – and the promise of a fresh start, and more opportunities to accomplish your goals. Here are some resources to help you

Three Key Resources To Help You Next Year

Personal Development 101 – If you don’t have your copy, you’re missing out. This is a 100% free 8 week intensive personal development course. At the end of it, you’ll have defined your dreams, your goals, and will be taking action every single day to move yourself towards them.
How to Create Your Personal Development Plan – This in depth article is the exact same process many life coaches would charge $200-500 over the course of their sessions for you to learn, but you can print it out and do it today.
How To Stop Wasting Your Time and Start Accomplishing Your Goals – My recently released ebook. This is an early “beta” release – I’ll be adding to it and updating it based on your feedback. At over 140 pages where I boil down the exact techniques you would expect to pay $250 an hour to learn from me one on one, it’s a tremendous value. If you are serious about moving forward, and accomplishing the items on your What’s Missing, Big Goals and Dreams lists we created in Question 4 above, I encourage you to take a look and see if it’s right for you: How To Stop Wasting Your Time and Start Accomplishing Your Goals