Year End Assessment and New Year Planning

Since early adulthood, the greatest significance of the holiday season for me has revolved around the New Year.  Each of the major Autumn holidays celebrated in the U.S. - Halloween , Thanksgiving , Ramadan , Hanukkah, Christmas and Kwanzaa - serve as markers along a calendar path toward the end of the year and the beginning of the new.

The significance of the new year is embedded in its calling for self-reflection and renewal. The changing of the calendar beckons for an assessment of what has occurred during the preceding 12 months and planning for the next.

To carry out this assessment and planning, some patterns have evolved over time, through which I undertake various activities - rituals, if you will - which allow for examination of the various parts of my life.  For each item, I try to ask three questions:

1. What is the current status of this aspect of my life?  
2. To what extent am I satisfied with this aspect of life?  
3. What changes am I willing to commit to making in the coming year?

Current Status
Answering the current status question is perhaps the most time consuming. I typically carry out a sort of inventory to consider all relevant information. The items I generally consider are:

• Relationships (with family, colleagues, friends and neighbors, others)  
• Career  
• Physical Health  
• Mental Stimulation (i.e., learning)  
• Finances  
• Hobbies/Activities  
• Residence  
• Personal Items (wardrobe, grooming, etc.)
• Transportation  
• Services (ISP, lawn care, etc.)  

Some items require little more than a thought. For example, I have been living in the same house for several years and do not plan to move any time soon. However, the Residence category will still be assessed as I determine whether this is the year to plan for a new roof, painting, or other upkeep.

Many items, such as Finances, require checking paperwork. Therefore, I spend some time each Autumn "nesting" to make sure my systems are organized and that I can clearly assess the current status.

The Relationships category mostly involves a mental exercise of reflecting on each person who I hold dear, and each person with whom I interact regularly. Obviously, maintaining positive personal and social relationships requires more than a once-a-year assessment, but this Year End ritual helps ensure that I focus on each person that matters.

Satisfaction Level
Calling this section "Satisfaction" is a glass-half-full approach, because it could easily be viewed as a measurement of 'dissatisfaction'. Because I have never found that focusing on the negative is effective for me, I first try to understand what is good about the current status of each aspect listed above. I typically find this section easiest to complete because it is easy to determine how I feel about various aspects of life. When the level of satisfaction is high, I commit to continuing my past behaviors.  When the level of satisfaction is low, I begin examining the need for change.

Commitments for Change
This section is both the most difficult and the most rewarding. For a few decisions, the satisfaction level makes various decisions clear. For example, if my satisfaction level is, say, 90% with my current transportation but only 65% with my relationship with my brother, then I will likely want to plan to spend more time with my brother than kicking tires or reading Consumer Reports for a new vehicle.

Other decisions are more difficult, especially when values and reality conflict. For example, I value going to professional soccer games with my son more than I value gardening.  I also value blogging more than shopping for new clothes.  However, if I spend all of my free time going to soccer games and blogging, I will have a lousy garden and worn clothes.  This sort of situation is what makes doing the inventory so meaningful, because it points out that I will need a plan to improve my satisfaction level with both my garden and wardrobe.

In the end, I try to chart a course of action that will guide my activities in each aspect of life for the coming year. I tend to be a realist when it comes to goal setting, arriving at pragmatic options that avoid absolutes. Unlike New Year's resolutions, which I have found to be too sporadic and rigid for usefulness, I find that this kind of deliberate approach allows me to make good progress in the direction set forth in the Year End Assessment and New Year Planning.

Comments

[Rosa Say]

Ah Blaine, what you describe is our Hawaiian value of hope and promise, Ka lā hiki ola (the dawning of a new day). Like you, I absolutely love the ending of one year and the beginning of the next; so much so that it was my first choice for my annual sabbatical once I went into business for myself and could set my own schedule. This year will be my third Ho‘omaha (hiatus), and I have found that my anticipation for it has grown sweeter and stronger well into October!

The self-reflection you speak of is such a liberating and creative ritual, and I like the list you’ve put together for yourself. I started out with one very similar, and have added to it substantially in the GTD/David Allen Annual Review train of thought. Once I freshen the detail in it, I return to the simplicity of my MWA North Star (my ho‘ohana) and the abundance of an inventory with the MWA four-fold capacity (the intellectual, emotional, physical, and spiritual), asking myself how I will continue to fill them in the coming year. The half-full approach is the only way to go!

Through-out, one of my favorite GOETHE quotes is usually the scrolling marquee on my screensaver, for you are so right that we MUST get to commitment: “Are you earnest? Seize this very minute! What you can do, or dream you can — begin it! Courage has genius, power and magic in it. Only engage, and the mind grows heated. Begin it, and the work will be completed.”

Another small Ho‘omaha ritual for me; This is printed on an index card tucked as a bookmark into whatever I may be reading:

Asked which of his works he would select as his masterpiece, architect FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT at the age of 83 replied, “My next one.”

[Blaine Collins]

Rosa, your annual ritual sounds quite advanced. What a way to start the new year!

The MWA four-fold capacity reminds me of a book I was given while a senior in high school. It's tuck away in a box somewhere, so I can't recall the name. It suggested four parts that make up a "whole" person: mental, physical, spiritual and social. Other than religious teachings, I think this book was the first I ever read that talked about how to take deliberate steps to develop all parts of ones self.

Thank you for sharing about ka lā hiki ola.
I just love that the Hawaiian language is so poetic. "The dawning of a new day" sounds so much more appealing than assessment and planning. Whatever the name, we both seem to find it useful, and that's what matters.

[Terry Starbucker]

Blaine, this is really a "half-full" approach, in that you inject a full dose of realism into a process that is essentially forward-looking and positive (i.e looking at satisfaction instead of the opposite). Thanks for the link, and all the best.

[Blaine Collins]

Thanks Terry. I'm glad you picked up on the satisfaction angle. While it is important to identify and improve that which is not working, I find excessive focus on the negative to be pretty exhausting. It's subtle to view a situation as an "opportunity" rather than a "problem," but that works for me most of the time.