A Simple and Effective Year End Review | 114

I want to give you an effective and quick method for doing a year-end review. I’m breaking down the year-end review I’ve been doing for the past 4 or 5 years. What I love about this year-end review is that it’s super simple and quick to do. All you need is your calendar and notepad. Some of you may recognize this method from Tim Ferriss (one of the people who got me into entrepreneurship).

Step 1

Create two columns on your notepad. Label one side POSITIVE and the other NEGATIVE. 

Step 2

Open up your calendar and start in the first week of January 2023. We’re going to go week by week and review our entire year. As we go through the calendar, write down the positives in the positive column and the negatives in the negative column.

My positive column often has things like date nights with Kayla, grabbing coffee to catch up with friends, big client shoots, launching new projects to the public, trips to new destinations, etc.

Each year, my negative column seems to get smaller and smaller. This is by design, not by chance. Anything that brings back negative memories from your calendar ends up in this column.

Step 3

Identify the most impactful 20%. Go through both columns and identify the 20% of activities that had the biggest impact on you. We’re following the 80/20 rule here. Circle those activities from the positive side and the negative side.

Step 4

Plan for the new year. Take those circled positive activities and do more of them in the new year. Anything circled in the negative column needs to be avoided.

And there you have it. A simple and effective year-end review that can be done in less than an hour.

Let’s live a life by design, not by default, in 2024.