Look back before stepping forward

There is always a natural ebb and flow to life. In the corporate world we are often encouraged to be always striving, pushing, driving, for the next "thing". This mindset can foster an "always-on" culture, making it difficult to take the time to review, reflect and oplan for personal and professional growth.

One time where this pace seems to pause is over the holiday period. Many of us take time off, to spend with family and loved ones, and take a well earned break. This is then usually met with a demand for planning and prioritisation for the next years tasks as soon as January rolls around.

Before we put pen to paper and plan out 2025, I'd like to encourage you to consider taking some time to put a full stop on the end of 2024.

This looks long, TL;DR?

Give yourself an hour. Split this into 3 sections, backwards looking, contemplation and planning.

In backwards looking answer

• What have I accomplished this last year?
• What could/would I have done differently knowing what I do now?
• What would I like to change going into the next year?
• Who & what am I grateful for in the last year?

For contemplation spend 15-20 minutes reflecting on your answers. Go take a walk and clear your head.

Finally move onto planning by answering

• At the end of the next year, what do I want to be able to have achieved?
• What, in my routine, will I do less of or more of, in order to accomplish this?
• What knowledge and support can I use to maximise my chances of success?
• Who & what do I want to actively invest my time in?

Use the output to make concrete actions.

Remember to always be honest with yourself and answer what is right for you, and not what you think others expect of you.

I've got time, give me details

Reflection is important

In software development, the Retrospective is a cornerstone of agile methodology, and rightly so. This enables teams to celebrate success, learn from mistakes, and perform better going forward.

Whilst many software developers will happily use this tool professionally, I rarely see this taken as a personal step. Honestly people are missing out.

Running a personal End of Year

I split the task into 3 stages, a backward looking fact gathering, a period of thought and contemplation, and finally then forward planning.

First up, allocate a time and space to do this. Sounds trivial, but you aren't going to successfully do this at your desk next to your coworkers, and you need to ensure you're not too rushed. Taking an hour out in a coffee shop with your headphones on is a great choice for example.

Questions to ask yourself

These should be backward facing, and you can use any questions you like. The ones I go for are

• What have I accomplished this last year?
• What could/would I have done differently knowing what I do now?
• What would I like to change going into the next year?
• Who & what am I grateful for in the last year?

The accomplishments can be personal or professional, remember this is your review as a whole, plus you get to set the rules.

The "what would I like to change" question may feel forward looking, but the "going into" part is vital to the framing. In reality this should be a shoot from the hip response, without too much thought. Instead focus on what you want to change immediately, i.e. what will you work on in the next week / month. This isn't binding and you get to change your mind later.

Give space for thoughts

This is probably the most important step, and the easiest one to try and rush. Why is that? Now I don't want to get too philosophical, but in general we have decreasing amount of boredom (how long do you wait in a line before glancing at your phone?), coupled with that we are regularly measured in some way against the quantity of our output, of which thinking produces precisely nothing directly.

How do I force myself to think? Pen and paper are great tools, which dovetails nicely into removing sources of distractions such as phones and laptops. A short walk beforehand without any earphones is again useful.

But what do you want to think about? What you've written down, what you feel resonates the most with you, and all whilst holding the questions from the next section in your mind to give your subconcious some space to work.

This should take around 15-20 minutes.

The gold standard would be to include 5 minutes of mindfulness in this, but let's be honest you're probably not going to do that.

Plan forward

Now that you're thoroughly uncomfortable with yourself, use this to springboard to make better decisions.

I do this again by asking myself questions

• At the end of the next year, what do I want to be able to have achieved?
• What, in my routine, will I do less of or more of, in order to accomplish this?
• What knowledge and support can I use to maximise my chances of success?
• Who & what do I want to actively invest my time in?

These questions do not need to be answered consecutively, but instead it's probably better to start with the top, and then go between them as you start to flesh out your ideas.

The output should be then a list of goals, tasks, education, people, etc which you can use to get towards your desired outcome.

You may as a further step list out some concrete actions to get you started on the journey.

Honesty is key

It is vital that the answers to the questions strongly resonate with you as a person. You don't need to share or show these to anyone, so go with what feels right, rather than what you think you "should" put down. It's great to be aspirational, but ensure that your goals exist for the right reason.

Go through each of your goals, say them to yourself, and try to imagine how you'll feel if you can say you've accomplished them. A good yardstick here, is if you accomplish the target, but no one else knows you've hit it, do you still feel like the outcome was worthwhile? If not, do reconsider what your motivations are.

And then what?

Put the immediate actionable items, especially around personal routines and habbits, into affect, and then honestly, file the rest away somewhere.

Do check back in, every month or quarter, and see how you are doing against it. When you do, do take the time to reassess if the goals are still meaningful to you at each point that you do.

Good luck!