How To Do An Annual Review
As the last few days of the year trickle into view, it’s a time when we naturally think about what has gone on in the past year and review the time that we have spent. Has it been used wisely or are there things you wish you'd done differently?
Why Do A Year-End Review?
We are all driven by a sense of progress. If you’re anything like me, the end of the year becomes a time when you get the urge to reflect back on the year that has passed and look towards what the future holds in the New Year. Sure, we can just as readily set new goals on December 1 as we can on January 1, but this crossing of the threshold as we start a new year holds archetypal significance for us and the journey we follow throughout our life.
To make sense of the bigger picture of our life story, we need to delineate chapters which is why the year-end review can help with this process.
What gets included in a year-end review is up to you based on your priorities. But if you're trying to get started with doing an annual review for the first time or find something better that works for you, here are some recommended starting points that I find most useful.
Deep Health Review
While there are many ways to evaluate our life, one of the most impactful to me is to look through the deep health lens to get a clear picture of what our overall health and the different aspects looked like and how they have changed in the past year.
Because our health is multi-faceted, it really makes a difference to look at a deep health framework to understand what is going well in your life and what needs more work and focus to get back on track.
Doing your Deep Health review with the Deep Heath Questionnaire doesn’t just have to be done once per year. It’s also helpful to use whenever you face changes or set new goals during the year.
Complete a deep health questionnaire and compare it to past scores. Click this link to download a copy.
What Areas Make Up Your Life?
If you listen to any self-help guru out there, they will have their own framework for the different dimensions of your life. Like the Deep Health complete picture, these are the slices of the pie of life that we consider when evaluating the current moment of our life and the time frame we have been through.
Some systems will give you 10 sections, others 6, or maybe as little as 4. However you want to evaluate your experiences, I think somewhere between 6-8 is ideal so that you can get a full picture of things like work satisfaction, relationships, finances, and experiences, as well as deep health components like spiritual health and mental health.
Consider where you're currently at with these slices of your life. Looking at where you’ve come from over the past year will help you to appreciate the progress that you have made.
Review Your Calendar and Notes
If you don’t keep track of at least some of the ways you spend your time in your calendar or note-taking in a journal, now is a good time to start.
By having the thoughts and experiences of your life captured in the moment, you are keeping a much more permanent record of the stories you are creating. Anytime I feel like I haven’t had enough fun experiences or accomplished enough for myself, I scroll back through my calendar and the notes I’ve captured and can see more clearly the progress there. And so it helps you to look back through all these moments to get that overview of your year as you review it.
What were the highlight moments or experiences?
What were some of the best things you accomplished?
What challenges did you face?
All of these questions that you can review when looking back through your notes will help you to hold yourself accountable when you think about what the next year looks like for you.
More things to take note of as you review your notes from each month this year:
What new places did you visit?
Who did you meet and what relationships did you build?
What new skills did you acquire?
Books You’ve Read
Another category I use when reviewing my year is to see what books I read. I used to do this out of competitiveness to see how many books I read which is why I stopped using GoodReads as consistently to track books. But GoodReads makes it so simple to rate and record any books I've read and gives me a glance at the timeline in books for the year.
Books are an important category to review because along with any notes you’ve taken in journals or just what you’ve written down as lessons you’ve learned through the years, books tell you more about what you were curious about and wanted to learn in the past year. This is particularly true if you do read non-fiction and are trying to learn and acquire new skills with the books you choose to read.
Progress For What Comes Next.
No matter what you review and how you evaluate your annual review, it’s important to look at each year as a stepping stone and progress forward toward bigger goals. We will always encounter obstacles and setbacks along the way.
So as you take the time to close out the year this weekend, look back on what has happened for you in the last twelve months so that you can better prepare for where your journey takes you next.