Journaling
Year in review
A year in review is a look back at your own year that you write yourself. It is not the recap a music or reading app makes for you. You go through the year one month at a time. Then you answer a few questions: what happened, what went well, what was hard, and what you want next year. It takes about an hour.
Last updated
Reviewed by Mohammed Raqeeb
Step by step
How to write a year in review
You write a year in review in 4 steps, and it takes about an hour. The usual time is the last week of December or the first week of January, but any week works.
| Step | Minutes |
|---|---|
| Gather what you haveOpen your calendar, your photos and your notes. | 10 |
| Go month by monthWrite one line for each month. | 20 |
| Answer the questionsPick one or two from each group below. | 20 |
| Choose what comes nextOne thing to keep, one to stop, one to start. | 10 |
| The whole review | 60 |
The minutes are our own estimates. The list of months comes before the questions on purpose. If you start with the questions, you will mostly write about the last few weeks, because those are the ones you remember.
Try it
Your year, one line a month
The boxes below are the second step. Write one line for each month: the thing you remember it for. If you cannot remember a month, look at your photos from it.
Months with a line
0 of 12
Start with any month you remember well. The others come back as you write.
Your year, one line a month: 0 of 12 written.
Once you type something, your lines are kept in this browser, on this device, so you can come back and finish. Nothing you type is sent anywhere. “Clear all” empties them.
The questions
End of year reflection questions
End of year reflection questions are easier to answer once your twelve lines are written. They come in five groups. Pick one or two from each group. You do not need all of them.
What happened
- What three things will I remember this year for?
- What did I do for the first time?
- Which month would I live again, and which would I skip?
What went well
- What am I proud of?
- What did I finish?
- Who helped me, and have I thanked them?
What was hard
- What did not go the way I wanted?
- What did I give up on, and was that the right choice?
- What did I worry about that never happened?
Where the time went
- What did I spend the most hours on?
- What did I say mattered, but give very little time to?
- What took a lot of time and was not worth it?
Next year
- What do I want to keep doing?
- What do I want to stop?
- What is one thing I want to start, and when in the week will I do it?
For questions about who you are, more than what you did, see the self-discovery prompts.
An example
A year in review example
A year in review example shows how short one can be. We made this one up. Ben started a new job in January. These are his twelve lines.
| Month | One line |
|---|---|
| January | Started the new job. Long days, home late. |
| February | Mostly work. Dad’s birthday dinner. |
| March | Joined the gym and went twice a week. |
| April | Five days in Lisbon with Sara. |
| May | Big project at work. Stopped going to the gym. |
| June | Finished the project. Worked late most nights. |
| July | Two weeks off at the lake. |
| August | Moved to the new apartment. |
| September | Started running on Saturday mornings. |
| October | Mom was ill. Went home for a week. |
| November | Ran my first race, ten kilometers. |
| December | A quiet month. Cooked a lot. Wrote this. |
Then he answered three questions.
- What went well?
- The new job, Lisbon, and running. I also read before bed on most nights.
- What was hard?
- May and June. I worked late and dropped everything else.
- Keep, stop, start?
- Keep running on Saturdays. Stop working after seven. Start the gym again, on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Ben also counted his reading. He read for about 20 minutes on about 300 nights. That adds up to 100 hours of reading in one year.
What studies found
Why write a year in review?
A year in review has not been tested under that name, as far as we could find. One finding comes close.
People enjoy looking back at ordinary days more than they expect.
In a set of studies, people made a record of ordinary moments and came back to it later. Looking at it again was more interesting than they had expected, most of all for ordinary days. The researchers also found that people trust their memory of everyday events too much (Zhang and colleagues, 2014).
Other names
Is a year in review the same as an annual review?
A year in review and an annual review are the same thing when they are about your own life. Three well-known versions:
- The annual review. The writer Chris Guillebeau says he has done one every December since 2005. He starts with two questions: what went well this year, and what did not.
- The past year review. The writer Tim Ferriss goes through his calendar week by week, and writes what was good and what was bad in two columns.
- A booklet. YearCompass is a free booklet of questions about the past year and the next one, around since 2012.
At work, an annual review is something else: a yearly talk with your manager about your job. A work journal helps there, because you can look up what you did.
The test
How do you know your year in review is working?
The test
You wrote a line for every month of the year
and you did not have to guess at any of them.
By December, most of a year is hard to remember. The last few weeks are clear, and you remember little of the spring.
A good way to make next year’s review easy is to write or say a little about each day as it goes, and have the hours counted from that. Most journaling apps keep your words and how the day felt. They do not show where the weeks and months went.
One app built for this is Think in Numbers, a smart journaling app with time tracking built in.
You write or say your day in your own words, as it happens or all at once. The app reads what you wrote and counts the hours that went to each part of it: work, sleep, family, your phone, and the time you never mentioned (shown as unaccounted). Then it shows those hours over days and weeks. So at the end of the year you can read any day back, and see your hours by category over weeks and months.
1. You write your day
2. It counts the hours
- Reading0m
- Work0m
- Sleep0m
- Unaccounted24h
3. It shows your week
Reading this week: 0m
On 6 of 7 days. The gap is the day without it.
An example day and week.
For iPhone and Android. Try it on your own day before you pay.
Sources
Where do the findings on this page come from?
Each source below was read for this page: the whole text, or for the study its summary. The steps, the questions and Ben’s year are our own.
- Zhang, T., Kim, T., Brooks, A. W., Gino, F. and Norton, M. I. (2014). A “present” for the future: The unexpected value of rediscovery. Psychological Science, 25(10), 1851 to 1860.
- Chris Guillebeau, The Art of Non-Conformity (chrisguillebeau.com) (read ). How to Conduct Your Own Annual Review.
- Tim Ferriss, The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss (tim.blog) (read ). Forget New Year’s Resolutions and Conduct a ‘Past Year Review’ Instead (#559).
- YearCompass (yearcompass.com) (read ). YearCompass: the booklet that helps close your year and plan the next one.
Keep reading.
- LearnAnswers about sleep, habits, study, people and work, in hours.
- Weekly reviewHalf an hour, once a week: seven steps in order, the questions to ask, and a checklist to tick.
- New Year’s resolutionsEight resolution ideas that say what to do and for how long, the most common resolutions from a YouGov poll, and four steps to keep yours.
- Reflective journalingWhat happened, what it meant, what comes next.
- Where did my week go? calculatorEnter a typical day and see your week accounted and unaccounted.
- Time journalingThe method: write or say your day in your own words, then see it as hours.
Questions
Questions people ask.
What is a year in review?
A year in review is a look back at your own year that you write yourself. You go through the year one month at a time, then answer a few questions about what went well, what was hard, and what you want next year.
How do you write a year in review?
Write a year in review in 4 steps: gather your calendar, photos and notes, write one line for each month, answer a few questions, and choose one thing to keep, one to stop and one to start. It takes about an hour.
What are good end of year reflection questions?
Good end of year reflection questions are short and about your own year. What will I remember this year for? What am I proud of? What did not go the way I wanted? What did I spend the most hours on? What do I want to keep, stop and start?
Is a year in review the same as an annual review?
Yes, when it is about your own life. At work, an annual review is a yearly talk with your manager about your job, which is a different thing.
Is there an app that helps with a year in review?
A calendar, your photos and a notebook are enough to write a year in review. If you want an app, look for one where you can read any day back and see where your time went. One app built for this is Think in Numbers, a smart journaling app with time tracking built in. Think in Numbers keeps what you write or say about each day and counts the hours by category, so the months are easier to look back on.
Try it on my day.
Write today down in your own words, and see where the hours went.
For iPhone and Android. Try it on your own day before you pay.