sunday coffee vol. 11
We do not learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on experience
Wise people learn from their experiences, and use what they learn to live a better life moving forward.
Every year, I aim to do 2 things in the week leading up to January 1st:
An Annual Review of the past year
Planning + Goal Setting for the new year ahead
Doing them in this order helps me to use the learnings from the previous year to inform my goals for the new year.
Goals often stack year after year if you’re not constantly switching interests + disciplines - so, if we continue to review and learn from our wins and mistakes, we should continue to get better year after year.
There are TONS of great ways to run an annual review out there for free. This is just 1 way to do it.
The best way for you is probably unique to you - in the same way this method is unique to me.
If I were you, I’d try a lot of different methods. Take what you like from each of them and then put those pieces together to make it your own.
I’ve included some of my favorites down in the resources section.
Anyways, let’s get into our annual review.
How to Run an Annual Review
The smartest people don’t have all the answers, they just ask the best questions.
Better questions get you better answers.
Tim Ferriss put me onto this idea when I was pretty young, and it’s stuck with me ever since.
So when running my annual review, I like to ask myself 6 questions through 4 different lenses.
The questions are meant to get me thinking about the high and low points of my year in a meaningful way, while the lenses are meant to help me focus on what I believe are the 4 most important areas of a good life.
The questions are:
6 Questions to ask yourself
What am I proud of from this year?
What gave me energy this year?
What drained my energy this year?
What am I not so proud of from this year?
What can I learn from all of this?
How can I use this info to improve my life, and live in a way that I’m proud of?
And the lenses I like to ask them through are:
4 lenses to reflect through
Health
Wealth
Love
Fulfillment
If any of these areas are off track, life is harder to enjoy.
If you don’t have your health, you can’t do or enjoy much.
If you don't have a certain degree of wealth, you may not be able to afford basic necessities, making life stressful and challenging.
If your life is lacking love, things feel hollow. Not just romantic love, but any kind of love that brings your life color and light.
If you feel unfulfilled, you may move through life like a shell of yourself.
Take a good honest look at yourself and think hard while answering these. The more you put into this exercise, the more you’ll get out of it 🙂
Wrap-Up
Today, we covered 1 way to run an annual review.
Every year, I do this by asking myself 6 questions through 4 different lenses.
To recap, those 6 questions are:
What am I proud of from this year?
What gave me energy this year?
What drained my energy this year?
What am I not so proud of from this year?
What can I learn from all of this?
How can I use this info to improve my life, and live in a way that I’m proud of?
And the 4 lenses are:
Health
Wealth
Love
Fulfillment
Leave a comment with your favorite question that you ask yourself at the end of each year!
Thanks for reading, and Merry Christmas to all who celebrate 🙂
ps: next week will cover the second piece of this, planning and goal setting for the year ahead.
Resources
Sahil Bloom’s Annual Review
Tim Ferris’s Fear Setting
Chris Guillebeau’s How to Conduct An Annual Review
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