Happy New Year!

Yeah that is a little bit too late but I just had my yearly review done. Similar to journaling, which I wrote about previously, I had been recording or reviewing my life yearly. Basically at the end of the year, I look back at my past year and answer some prompts/questions from a template. I got the template from Ali Abdaal here.

The reason the title is happy new year is because I was supposed to do the review every first day of the year, but I had postponed it till now. Reviewing what you have done and what you have accomplished (or not!) is kinda scary, which is one of the reasons I have been postponing the process. It also has a bit of pressure since from the ‘performance’ in your past year, you need or should set the target for the next year. In a way it is exactly like the yearly Key Performance Index (KPI) or Yearly Plan that corporates always push on you, but this is way more personal and real, because you can bluff and fluff your KPIs, but you are not lying to anyone else besides yourselves (at least that’s what I think).

So I dutifully update and review mine, and I have been doing this three times already, since 2021 (reviewing 2020) so I can say that the process is quite useful. It helps in creating a compass of your career/business/family or whatever area in your life that you feel important. And also looking back, I realise that some of my dreams in there that I have forgotten, in addition to some that has come true! For the ones that I have forgotten, it reminds me back of them, and forces me to consider whether I still really want them; sometimes I downright at the dream(s), showing that your priorities change in life. For the dreams that have come true, in a way I have also forgotten them as they become an accepted fact of life, so it helps me in reminding myself to being grateful.

Also when filling what happened for some months, it was hard to write down what happened. I noticed this was during the months that I was a bit busy. It is not that nothing exciting or memorable happened, it was just that I was more preoccupied with the work (or the anxiety of getting the work done?) that I can’t recall what I was doing. My takeaway from this, if I am stressed out in the future in doing work, I will tell myself that I won’t even remember what I was doing, so I shouldn’t be stressed out or worried at all. At least that is what I am planning to tell myself…

If you are interested in doing the exercise, here is the link again (It’s still January, but even if you read this in September, no harm in doing so).
And here is the video of how to do it:

Thank you for reading.

Credit for template goes to Ali.