Looking Back and Looking Forward

For the start of the new year, I’d like to do something a little bit different today. I recently talked about the idea of yearly themes, so I’d like to give you a tool that will help you reflect on the year we’ve just completed and look forward to the year ahead.

Below you’ll find a series of questions that I’d suggest spending an hour or two going through and answering for yourself.

Reflecting on Last Year

Resolutions, Goals, Themes

What goals, resolutions, and/or themes did I set for myself last year?
How did I do? Did I make progress towards my desired outcomes?
Where was I most successful? How did I do that?
Where was I least successful? What got in my way?

Energy Audit

Go through my calendar and/or journal for last year. What activities gave me the most energy? What people did I enjoy spending the most time with?
What activities drained me of energy? Where would I like to spend less time?
Pull out the top 3-5 positive and negative things to do more and less of respectively next year.

Reflection

Looking back to the beginning of last year, what’s different now?
How have I changed?
What have I learned?
What things came up several times for me that might give ideas for a theme for the new year?

Looking Forward to The Coming Year

Theme

Using my reflections from last year, what might I explore as a theme for this year? Remember, themes are broad, resonate for you personally, and directional.
Write a short description of what that theme is and what it means to me.
Outline some ideal outcomes. Think about the different dimensions of the theme, if relevant - personal, professional (personally and/or for my team), financial, etc..
What might get in my way?

Aims

How am I going to fulfil that theme? Keep it light - the idea here is not to have a bunch of goals that you’re going to feel bad at if you fail, but some rough things to aim for.
Thinking of the same dimensions as above, how do I want to allocate my time this year? Get some things in the calendar now.
Where shall I start? Write down some first step actions to take, starting this week.

Start, Stop, Continue

Finally, with the above in mind, what am I going to:

Start doing?
Stop doing?
Continue doing?

Tracking Progress

I’d encourage you to review what you’ve written here, particularly the Looking Forward part, at least every quarter.

Does my theme still resonate? What adjustments might I want to make?
How am I progressing towards my aims? Do they still make sense?

Feel free to adjust accordingly - there’s no right or wrong here, you’ve just created the opportunity to have a great year ahead!

When you're ready, I offer 1:1 coaching for leaders who are looking to take their life and career to the next level. Send me an email and we'll set up a time to have a chat.

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