Year-End Reflection & Planning Resources
Downloadable resources 👇
It’s the second most wonderful time of the year: reflection & dreaming season. I’m a sucker for a year-end reflection, and I’m obsessed with a reset and focus for the coming year.
Over the years, I’ve developed a few tools I use every year to reflect, reset, and plan, informed by research on motivation, values, and behavior change. I’ll share those below.
I’m also offering a workshop in January where I walk people through this process more fully and help them turn reflection into goals they can actually follow through on.
Phase one: Processing
Reflection: I do a little bit of journaling and a lot of reflecting at the close of a year. I keep this super open-ended. I’m not usually trying to form any conclusions here. I’m just letting my brain notice and reflect on what my year was like.
I do the same kind of open-ended processing when I think about the next year. I think through different categories of my life and just dream about how I want them to look and feel. Nothing concrete, just…dreaming.
I use the same questions each year and write my answers all in one doc. I’ve gathered so many over the years and edited them to work for me, but below is a pretty exhaustive list I found. I’ve saved it as a template, so you can just click use and use it. (One of my favorite things is reading the dreams I wrote last year as I’m reflecting, and admiring the surprising ways life sometimes makes sense of things you didn’t even understand when you were writing them.)
Phase two: Planning
Phase two is turning those thoughts and processes into concrete goals and plans. I do this in a few steps.
First, I come up with some succinct values. I read through my answers and processing and write out some values that I notice that I want to live into in the coming year.
Then, I translate those values into concrete goals, behaviors, and habits.
I created a workbook to help with this, which you can purchase at the link below. If you’re a paid subscriber, you can scroll to the bottom of this email and get a coupon code to get it for free!
If you find yourself unsure how to move from processing and dreaming into goals that actually fit your values and real life, or you just want company and structure for this process, I’m hosting a small, guided workshop in January where we’ll do this work together.
Designing Your Year Workshop is a live, 90-minute online space to clarify what matters, set direction for the year, and build goals that align with the life you’re actually trying to live.
Monday, January 13 | 6:30–8:00 PM CT
Live online · Recording provided
$39 · $19 for paid subscribers
Paid subscribers - get your free workbook & workshop coupon code below!
