Your Year Ahead

Wow, what a super interesting year! Right?!

If you're like a lot of the engineering and construction industry right now you're still madly running around trying to get things finished and wrapped up before the Christmas break.

Things work wise are likely to be quite intense and busy right up until Christmas this year and then you'll be jumping right into family get togethers, parties and the holidays which also can be quite full on.

Today I'd like to remind you that it's incredibly important for you to create some space in all of the craziness and intensity of work and life to really reflect and evaluate the year you've just had.

Before you can look to 2021 and the year ahead, it is so important to evaluate the year that’s just gone - including its successes, failures, lessons and themes - before you think about next year and your goals and how you want things to be different.

You really want to understand what happened this year, why it happened and how to improve for next year.

I'm now going to outline a really simple questioning process for reflecting on 2020 and then using this to build an incredible 2021 - but before I do this - I really want to encourage you to make the time to do this exercise. Reflection on the past is such a powerful technique for building a better future, but no-one really makes the time for it.

If you do one thing over the next 2 weeks, its making 30mins to reflect on the year that’s just gone and writing down your answers to these simple questions:

1) Overall, how did your year go? Think back to the start and then follow your year through. How did it go?

2) What were your wins? What were the things that you're really proud of doing or achieving?

3) What were your disappointments or regrets? What do you wish you did or didn't do?

4) What were 2 or 3 specific themes that kept occurring for you over the course of the year? It might have been a focus on family, or your health, or business. You might have experienced regular frustrations or you might have felt regularly supported by those around you. What were your themes?

5) What were the major life lessons for you this year?

6) List 10 things you're really grateful for this year.

OK great! Now that you've taken the time to answer these questions - you've got 2 more:

7) What lessons, experiences, learnings do you want to take into 2021 with you?

8) What are you most excited about for 2021?

Again, this activity is such a great thing to do at the end of the year as you get set up for next year.

Reflection on the past gives you such clarity for the future.

I'd love to hear from you about how you went with this - please shoot me an email or message and let me know.

Josh 'Reflection' Stone

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