Forget Work Appraisals: Do Your Own Year Review

Why you can’t really move forward if you don’t know what’s behind you. 3 ways to mirror, signal, manoeuvre with an any-time annual life review.

Reading time: 3 minutes

As you travel on through life, whatever be your goal, keep your eye upon the doughnut and not upon the hole.

My chemistry teacher wrote this in my school-leaving book. It’s good advice but I can’t help thinking I’d rather have jam doughnuts.

If you want to see how far you’ve come in your projects, relationships and life in general, and therefore how far you need to go, a review of some sort makes sense, doesn’t it? If you’re going from here to there, you need to know how the journey’s going so far. Reflecting on the last 12 months is a useful exercise and keeps you focused on the doughnut (or jam).

An annual review is an opportunity for self-development. You can look at personal and professional growth, relationships, project progress, and as much other stuff as you’d want. It helps us realise how brilliant we already are; we can celebrate achievements (no matter how small), and most of us have a doubtful and insecure inner child, so it’s a chance to show her how far we’ve come.

You can do this at any time – don’t wait until December 31st. Anniversaries like birthdays or anything that comes around once a year are ideal, or just make a calendar reminder.

Is there an app for that?

Probably, but I don’t use one because there’s something magical about writing things out in longhand, journal-style.

You will need:

Your template you’ll use to help recall the last 12 months – see below
Beverage of your choice (keep the brain hydrated)
Your journal, diary or calendar entries from the last 12 months as prompts
A little intuition
A splash of not over-thinking
A few hours of peace and quiet. These can either be a single block of time or the time you have available spread over a few days.

I choose to spread my reflection time over a few days. Breaks allow things I’ve forgotten to bubble up into my conscious brain, and a little yoga between days oiled the wheels.

Here are three templates that’ll help keep it simple.

The Wheel of Everything template.

WHEEL OF EVERYTHING ILLUSTRATION

In my wheel, I put the following elements to prompt my thinking:

Health and fitness
Work and business
Friends and community
Personal life and family
Learning and knowledge
Travel and culture
Hobbies and creativity
Emotions and spirituality
Money and finances.

And, having thought about all that, my proudest accomplishments, the biggest challenges I faced, and my plans for the next 12 months.

Traditionally, with the Wheel of Everything, I’d score each element on a one to 10 scale to get an idea of how I feel about it. Otherwise, think about what went well, what didn’t, and what will I focus on next year. A ‘what?/so what?/now what?’ way of interrogating each element.

If you want a deeper dive, you can take each one and add your own SWOT analysis, or do a SWOT for the year as a whole. What are the Strengths that got you through the year? What were the Weaknesses that gave you Opportunities to develop, and what were the Threats that were beyond your control?

SWOT ANALYSIS GRID

The Year Compass

The Year Compass annual review template takes a different approach. It looks for summaries using questions like ‘ What are six sentences about my year?’ with a series of prompts for each sentence, and sections for accomplishments and challenges.

Think of what you need to let go of, where forgiveness is needed, and what to say good bye to from the year, before you look ahead to the coming 12 months.

This approach helps bring closure and peace if you’ve had a difficult 12 months. It can help us make sense of what’s happened and, when we analyse certain situations, enables us to tell ourselves a better story about events past.

It’s the mental declutter and it can spark creativity. So often we live day-to-day and don’t lift our heads to see the patterns that form, or make connections between people, ideas, or information.

In the year compass, we can evaluate relationships: those with ties we want to strengthen and those we want to loosen and draw away from. Those where we want to resolve tensions and areas where we want to find new relationships.

Best Year Yet

One year, my husband and I did a group coaching call with a client who ran a ‘Best Year Yet’ course. This combines and annual review with a plan for the next 12 months.

My year was full of little wins, nothing major. I got to know a new friend better; I had my hair cut short and really liked it; I started my Substack newsletters; I got an idea for a book; I had a short break in France with a couple of friends; I changed my diet and deepened my yoga practice.

There were funerals and other sadnesses, frustrations and the joys of living in a body that’s getting older.

I learned lessons: to keep trying and iterating if it doesn’t work first time; I started believing I can do it, even if ‘it’ is just getting up off the floor without grunting and making a big deal of it.

My best moments were walking the dog in the countryside; applying my backside to the chair and fingers to the keyboard to write, and getting paid for it. I come to the mat at the end of each day for a quiet moving meditation that embeds my experiences and points my brain in the direction of more.

An annual review lubricates creativity, gives us a hug and fuels our souls.