Productivity

Annual Review

Review your yearly goals, things to celebrate, goals for next year, things to improve, open questions, and highlights, lows, and learnings.
Useful when
  • You want to gain perspective on where you have been and currently are in your life
  • You want to assess whether what you're doing in life is indeed what you want to be doing
  • You want to identify areas for improvement and set goals and themes for the next year
About

“Doing a year-end review is the single most impactful exercise for your productivity, clarity, and motivation I’ve ever encountered, full stop.” — Tiago Forte

In the absence of regular reflection, we move from year to year without celebrating our successes, learning from our failures, and assessing whether what we’re doing in life is indeed what we want to be doing.

At the end of each year, we might wonder where the last 365 days went. An annual review helps you consider how you spent your year – the highs, the lows, and everything in between.

When you zoom out and look at your year as a whole, you gain perspective of where you have been and currently are in your life. From there you can decide if you’re on track moving towards your goals.

Annual Review consists of six sections:

1. Review of yearly goals

2. Things to celebrate

3. Goals for the next year

4. Things to improve on

5. Open questions that still needs to be figured out

6. Highlights, lows, and learning

Examples
Examples

“Annual Review will give me a chance to take stock of what went well and what could have gone better, while also giving me a moment to enjoy the progress I’ve made over the past 12 months….A good Annual Review is also about looking toward the future and thinking about how the life I’m living now is building toward a bigger mission. Basically, my Annual Review forces me to look at my actions over the past 12 months and ask, ‘Are my choices helping me live the life I want to live?” — James Clear

This framework has
6
questions
Useful when
  • You want to gain perspective on where you have been and currently are in your life
  • You want to assess whether what you're doing in life is indeed what you want to be doing
  • You want to identify areas for improvement and set goals and themes for the next year