Hello beautiful friends. Are you the type of person who plans ahead for the next year and assesses how the last one went?
So I do. 😃 I’ve been making New Year’s resolutions for 10 years now. I started it in 2012 on a notebook, and last year I transported it to a digital format on Notion. 🤓
This year I went even further, I tracked some “Projects” with Boosted Productivity app and the results blew my mind. In 365 days, the winning project was “Reading” with 189h. This outstanding outcome was possible due to the morning routine I settled which consists of reading for at least 30 minutes a day. Then came “Anki”, reviewing words and expressions is crucial for me. After that came “Learning English”, under this umbrella lies learning by watching TV Series with Language Reactor (google extension), pronunciation, adding new words to Anki from my reading, checking my English teacher’s feedback, and so on. Followed by the “Listening” project which means that I listened to many fascinating podcasts. It also translates to how much time I spent doing household chores like cooking, doing the dishes, cleaning the bathroom, ironing, and doing the laundry. 😅
I noticed three benefits of tracking my time. First, I have a clear vision of where I place my time, energy, and attention. It enables me to better understand what should I keep, improve, and give up. Consequently, I can plan for the future aligning the plan with my values and aspirations. Finally, it boosted my focus. As I blocked out a period of time to work on Y project or perform W sets of Z reps, I avoided the temptation to jump from one task to another. 💪🏼😛
Besides that, I usually make a self-reflection answering some questions like:
- What are my accomplishments?
- Where did I fail?
- What made a major imprint in my life this year?
- What should I do differently next year?
- What did I learn?
- What should I improve?
- What did I buy that I liked the most and made me chill?
- How did I spend my time?
- Who did I spend my time with?
We can gain insight by self-reflecting and going over what we did that served us and what we could change; what we learned; what people we should keep and what we should let go; what we accomplished; what we lapsed into.
I’m curious to know about you, do you also make your New Year’s Resolutions and self-reflect about the current year? 😃
