Patrick Sauerwein | @virtual_patrick

It’s already been a while in 2023, but I’d like to use the opportunity to share some of my new year’s resolutions.

As you might know or don’t know, I do journaling with pen and paper every day, at least twice a day, as a check-in and out to reflect what happened and to plan my days to do better. It’s my daily ritual to practice gratitude, humility and get clarity daily.
I also use weekly and monthly time to reflect. Weekly and monthly reflections are the most powerful way to learn about yourself and find ways to improve. If you haven’t done reflections yet, go check out one of my previous posts about journaling where I also shared my templates.

Although I practice on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis, I struggled with benefiting from longer time reflections and plans. Especially the yearly check-in, I felt when doing it, I wasn’t really growing or learning from. Therefore, I stopped doing yearly reviews for three years now.

Back in December 2022, I was on vacation from the 15th on and used some time to do research about yearly reviews. And lucky me – Tada – found one, that I’d like to recommend: https://yearcompass.com/

Another one came in by accident from the Farnam Street: Annual Report Framework | Direct Download

So, I “just” needed to take the time to give the year review a new try. And this was harder than expected. I needed roughly three days and up to 12 hours in total to complete my YearCompass 2022/23. But my time investment shouldn’t hold you back from doing it. The main reason why it took me that long, was my huge source of weekly and monthly reflections. Instead of just reading them, I tried to re-extract the learnings of 2022, which was an incredible exercise with the outcome of four hand-written one-line pages. It didn’t fit into the schema of the YearCompass, so I created my own based on my writings. The good thing in doing this is, you’re able to make connections between your topics where you see them.

And yes, I was able to bring more order in my chaos. For me, chaos is what I’m suffering over the year, things I’m able to observe continuously, but not able to act on as well as to bring it back to my awareness – that’s why I’m journaling, writing down my nuanced observations each and every day. On the one side these are known knowns like I’d like to exercise more and eat better or less. On the other side it helps me with knowns that I don’t really accept or displace. Being aware of those and think reflect about my actions absolutely are priceless, for example “pray less” and “ask more”.

Overall, YearCompass is and was an incredible experience, that led me to write a blogpost about it too. Another one I’d like to practice more often – writing.

My word for the year ahead: growth

My view for 2023 is positive, my attitude stays the same:

“I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.”

Winston Churchchill

One final thought. Nobody needs to wait one year to start reflecting about last year or the last 365 days – you’re able to start any time – now. Even if you’d like to do it for a shorter time like the last half of the year or last quarter.

Just do it, do the work and it’ll guide you to a better place!

What are your thoughts? Comments? Happy to discuss.

Cheers,
Patrick