For different reasons, I was not able to block some time in the end of last/the beginning of this year to thoroughly go through all my life’s areas to know what to do with this year. Maybe the most important of those reasons was, that my girlfriend visited me (we’re in a long distance relationship, another topic…) over the new year and so other things then planning my next year were (amazingly…) more important. Now half of the first month is already gone and I still haven’t done a yearly review proper. This coming weekend should hopefully change this. I have nothing planned and nothing else to do, then to think about my upcoming year and how I want to use it.
I’m posting this here in the hopes that people will help me catch up on the one hand and also because I could see that others didn’t have time as well to do a proper yearly review so far and might want to do one, too.
I think this could be a good place to a) share resources that helped (are supposed to help) with doing a yearly review and planning ahead and b) to comment on how you did your own review/planning for the next year, etc. I’d be interested in blog posts, general ideas, tools, approaches, theories, scientific articles, etc. and also your own experiences.
Resources
- 8,760 Hours: How to get the most out of next year - saw it in the forums here, read it, liked it.
- Getting Things Done - The system itself. GTD tries to get you in the habit of weekly reviews, but also suggests higher altitude reviews at certain times. It’s totally worth it to check out the specific parts about those aspects of GTD from the Book, even if you (like me) don’t practice it to the letter anymore.
- Beeminder - Obviously(?). When working through the last year and planning the next year it makes sense to track your goals and intentions (not all of them) and give them some teeth, so procrastination doesn’t get in the way.
- Complice - It’s awesome to keep yourself moving forward and the right tool for projects (as opposed to habits, which can be tracked better by beeminder. There is some connection between habits and projects and so there is between complice and beeminder).
- Google Calendar and Gmail Inbox - I use the recurring tasks and the snooze features a lot. It makes working with email a breeze and helps organize the days and weeks and months on a chronological level (as opposed to a projects based or habit based approach). There is some danger in creating overhead in using three tools, so take that into consideration.
- A journal or notes system - I have both. Day One and an ikiwiki based “Zettelkasten” (German for “slip box”, see this for a quick explaination and this for a more thorough one).
- Freeplane - An open source mind mapping app.