Year End Review (Pros and Cons)

1. Introduction

 

“ You got to deal with yesterday to best discover tomorrow. You got to be able to touch the past and to allow you to see the future.” John C Maxwell

 

We all know that in order to prepare the future we need to plan today and have a look at what did not work in the past in our lives and why and then adjust any plan that we may have. Sadly, most of us do not usually do it we just move from one year to another one without evaluating our overall performance to get valuable insights to adjust our life plan. we often find ourselves or end up blaming the circumstances and people as to why we are not improving or growing.

 

2. Why do you need a year-end review?

 

• It is the opportunity to improve your overall performance in your private life, social life and workplace. It allows you to assess whether you are on track and growing to reach your full potential. “The only guarantee that tomorrow will be better is to continually grow with the aim of doing more and becoming more”.

 

• Taking the time to reflect on your achievements/shortcomings and assess them will give you valuable insights.

 

• Knowing where you stand in your overall life plan for those who have personal growth plan and definite goals.

 

• Review your diary or journal to assess your progress towards your goals by identifying the most time consuming activities which do not bring a greatest return to your calling so you can focus on high return activities to reach your full potential.

 

• Overall review of your performance against the set goals and milestones as results do not lie – they can be directly linked to what you have been doing the year.

 

 

 

 

 

3. What are the benefits of a year-end review?

• It helps you to identify the areas where you did well and challenges you face during the year. Usually if you regularly do a review of your overall performance on a weekly and monthly basis it will set the groundwork for the annual performance review.
• It will help you to find out where you are spending your day vs your priorities so you can take corrective actions for next year.
• Review and make observations (write all observations). You may come up with maximum 2 pages that will make or break some of the habits that do not serve you. I have personally implemented that practice since last year and I have always got great insights that help me to be more effective and productive.
• Reflect on all your findings. What should I do less and eliminate and what should I do more to excel? activity is not accomplishment. Who should I share with? What do you do to improve this? What do I feel or know?
• Make crucial discoveries: all the things you discover will help you to improve your overall performance. Growth is not automatic. Inspection is the foundation of expectation.

 

4. How do you perform a year-end review?

 

Look at the following three areas:

 

• Things that have gone well
  Writing up the year’s highlights is really refreshing, our minds tend to forget all of the small, progressive wins, but once you get started they’ll come flooding back.
  It might be your work projects, personal projects, time spent with friends, time spent with family, the photos you’ve taken, the books you’ve read, etc.

 

Don’t rush this stage.
By identifying the various sources of joy in your life, it becomes easier to plan how you’ll keep them up for the rest of the year.

 

• Things that haven’t gone well
  After all the wins, these don’t sting quite as much, and it can even feel like a relief to name the areas of your life that still require some attention.
  It might be the things you’ve put on hold, relationships that have deteriorated, struggles in your work, opportunities that passed you by, or whatever else is on your mind.

I personally find this helpful because it lets me mentally separate the mistakes that were my fault from the “shit happens” parts of life, and also identifies some starting points for the third category…

 

• Things to do next.
  This should be a list that excites you.
  It can be made up of more activities that will spark joy, fixing the things you’ve neglected, and identifying some new opportunities that weren’t on your radar at the start of the year.