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Your Year in Review (Ep. 33)
It’s almost time that we put a wrap on 2019, toss it into the memory bin and focus on going forward. We have evolved another year, which is long or short depending on how you look at it.
At the end of a year, it’s a good pivot point to ask yourself the important questions of where you are and where you want to be on your journey. If we are lucky, we get about 80 or so of these pivot points, and considering that many of us are at least half way there, it’s important to take it seriously.
When we look back on the year, there are two buckets of questions that we should be asking. The first bucket is reflective (what did I do?) and the second bucket is forward looking (how do I build on this and go forward?).
Annual questions are big ones. They allow us to take bigger stock of what we are doing and accomplishing and separate the forest from the trees. How much have you evolved in the past year, when you think back to the person you were in January? The evolution gets bigger and bigger the more I think about it. When I started my list of things for 2019, I found I kept going back to it a week later to add more.
The reason is that we forget all that we do. And we forget the reasons why we didn’t do some of the things we set out to. It comes down to priority. And our priorities change. The person you are today is going to be making very different choices than the person you were a year ago. And that’s a good thing.
My year was incredible - I turned 40, completed an Ironman, launched Bellwether and the podcast, gave up drinking, served with the Irish Business Organization, had my best business year and had great family moments (among many other things).
I’m super proud of all of that. But behind the surface, there were a lot of things that I didn’t accomplish this year that I had wanted to. I’m now in the process of reflecting on their priority and seeing if they should be on my list for 2020. The question of why they didn’t get done leads to important decision thoughts for later. Again, priorities.
Here are just some of the questions I ask myself at the end of each year:
Was I the person I wanted to be? What did I accomplish that I set out to do? What didn’t I accomplish that I set out to do? How come?How do I build on both of these for next year?Is there any priority that comes off my list?What did I learn this year? What do I need to adjust going forward?How can I take all of this information and improve going forward?
It’s a lot of reflection. It’s a lot of work. But when you sit on the train, or commute to the office, or sit in the doctor’s office - noodle these around. You’ll be surprised with what you learned and how much you have changed in just 365 days. It’s exciting to think about.
Next week, I’ll cover how to take what you learned and use them to prepare your 2020 goals (don’t make resolutions - they don’t work). More to come in the future … so stay tuned!
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By Jim Frawley, Bellwether
4.5
1111 ratings
It’s almost time that we put a wrap on 2019, toss it into the memory bin and focus on going forward. We have evolved another year, which is long or short depending on how you look at it.
At the end of a year, it’s a good pivot point to ask yourself the important questions of where you are and where you want to be on your journey. If we are lucky, we get about 80 or so of these pivot points, and considering that many of us are at least half way there, it’s important to take it seriously.
When we look back on the year, there are two buckets of questions that we should be asking. The first bucket is reflective (what did I do?) and the second bucket is forward looking (how do I build on this and go forward?).
Annual questions are big ones. They allow us to take bigger stock of what we are doing and accomplishing and separate the forest from the trees. How much have you evolved in the past year, when you think back to the person you were in January? The evolution gets bigger and bigger the more I think about it. When I started my list of things for 2019, I found I kept going back to it a week later to add more.
The reason is that we forget all that we do. And we forget the reasons why we didn’t do some of the things we set out to. It comes down to priority. And our priorities change. The person you are today is going to be making very different choices than the person you were a year ago. And that’s a good thing.
My year was incredible - I turned 40, completed an Ironman, launched Bellwether and the podcast, gave up drinking, served with the Irish Business Organization, had my best business year and had great family moments (among many other things).
I’m super proud of all of that. But behind the surface, there were a lot of things that I didn’t accomplish this year that I had wanted to. I’m now in the process of reflecting on their priority and seeing if they should be on my list for 2020. The question of why they didn’t get done leads to important decision thoughts for later. Again, priorities.
Here are just some of the questions I ask myself at the end of each year:
Was I the person I wanted to be? What did I accomplish that I set out to do? What didn’t I accomplish that I set out to do? How come?How do I build on both of these for next year?Is there any priority that comes off my list?What did I learn this year? What do I need to adjust going forward?How can I take all of this information and improve going forward?
It’s a lot of reflection. It’s a lot of work. But when you sit on the train, or commute to the office, or sit in the doctor’s office - noodle these around. You’ll be surprised with what you learned and how much you have changed in just 365 days. It’s exciting to think about.
Next week, I’ll cover how to take what you learned and use them to prepare your 2020 goals (don’t make resolutions - they don’t work). More to come in the future … so stay tuned!