Make your Annual Review easier

Following a previous issue of this newsletter, some people have asked me how I organize it. It's not about "what content" but how to physically structure it, what tools, how to store it, how to fill it in. Because there are a million articles related to the annual review, but they all tell you what to do... but no one tells you how.

So this year I created a form. As simple as this. In that form I have the following questions / entries:

• What would I consider a success from last week?
• What would I consider a success this week?
• Goal 1 (and notes)
• Goal 2 (and notes)

... And so on up to 4 goals, with an obligation to fill in the first two.

• Project 1 (and notes)
• Project 2 (and notes)

... And so on up to 4 projects, with obligation to fill in the first two.

And some final notes. All the notes are short, to the point, without dwelling on many details. It can even be a link.

All this is stored in a spreadsheet. And I have a To-Do task that alerts me, on Monday morning, to fill in the form, but in your case it could be every 2 weeks, or once a month. Tooks me 3 minutes to fill in.

The point is to have all the information collected, along with the mails and their corresponding category in order to have all the information available when building the Annual Review.