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Looking Back At the Year that Was: Create a Yearly Summary
This is the next article in my series on the annual rituals that I use to say goodbye to the year that just ended and welcome the new year. I’ve introduced the word of the year and updating the life timeline as critical elements in my annual review process. The next element — the yearly summary — is meant to capture a bit more emotion than the life timeline.
An Analog from the “Real World”
Many businesses and organizations create an annual report. While some annual reports are forward looking, most are focused on celebrating the successes of the year and reflecting on the business conditions as a whole. Most don’t get to the level of reflection that I try to get to personally — unless of course it is garbled up in marketing schmutz for “we screwed up, we’ve learned from it, but we’re not going to tell you how.”
In my personal version, I like to get much more personal and reflective — focusing on how the year changed my life going forward.
There are two steps that I always follow. I’ll also round out the article with links/suggestions for some tools you can use if this feels really awkward to you.
Step 1: Reflect on the Year
I spend some time reflecting on the year in my journal. This is usually just a bullet list or…
