HUMANS 101

How to Pull Off a Personal Annual Review

A no-fuss, intuitive way to take stock and map your priorities

Photo by Cristian Escobar on Unsplash

Everyone! It’s almost the end of the year. It’s nearing that time when we arbitrarily decide we’re going to turn over a new leaf; start a new great habit. But so many of us embark on this process without once considering our baseline — where we’re starting from.

I want to introduce you to a process I’ve used the past couple of years, one I really like. It’s such a pain-free process, but it’s also a remarkably revealing look at what matters to you, and your life. Ready? Here we go.

Some background

In 2020, I joined an online community called Ness Labs. The brainchild of Anne-Laure Le Cunff, Ness Labs is a community of over 50,000 global learners, people who call themselves knowledge workers. I was a member for a year and am about to re-up my subscription.

The beauty of Ness Labs, for me, was its internationality. One tiny example: In a weekly Pomodoro meeting created by a fellow Ness Labs member, we had members from Asia, from Europe, from the United States. We learned a lot from each other, and I’ve definitely reaped the fruits of that productivity. A solid draft of my forthcoming novel was written during those…