Annual Review

“The quality of your questions determines the quality of your life.” -Tim Ferriss

“With a tear for the dark past, turn we then to the dazzling future, and, veiling our eyes, press forward. The long and weary winter of the race is ended. Its summer has begun. Humanity has burst the chrysalis. The heavens are before it.” -Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward

The best reason to look back is to look forward.

A great practice for this is to perform an annual review. I’ve come across several different versions and strategies. Here’s one from Sahil Bloom. Another one from Tim Ferriss. Another one from Shane Parrish. And one more from James Clear.

What these all have in common is questions. Asking yourself quality and meaningful questions about how successful you were at achieving your intentions and goals. Here are some good questions I culled from the sites:

What created or drained energy from my life?

What were my greatest hits and misses?

What am I most proud of?

What did I learn? (I’d edit this to “What blew my mind or radically changed my perspective?”)

What’s working well and why? What’s not and why not? What should I keep doing? What should I eliminate?

What did I not do because I was afraid?

What habit is consistently getting in my way? How can I change it?

The answers to these questions or any others you come up with, can shed light on what you want to accomplish in 2025.

Two more tips:

(1) Instead of waiting until the end of the year to do a review, why not do one every quarter or every month? You can also do a simpler weekly or even daily review.

(2) Continuously ask yourself the focusing question. Which is, “What’s the one thing I can do such that by doing it will render everything else easier or unnecessary?

Good luck reviewing 2024 and good luck moving forward in 2025!