Ways to Reflect on 2021
Low Touch — Mood Chart (Google Sheets template here)
Next to each month, define it with rating that works for you (mood, happiness, productivity, etc). The chart on the right will automatically populate for a visual aid on the trajectory of the past year.
I realized that my peaks & troughs were largely caused by my environment (community vs loneliness, being home vs traveling, work).
Medium Touch — Reflection Board (Milanote template here)
A reflection board with some highlights & summarizes is another great way to end the year. Some ideas-
- Key Quotes
- Key Events
- Bring to 2022
- Things that made me laugh
- Theme songs of the year
Credit to Rowena Tsai’s for the following-
- I overcame/I’m grateful for/I’m proud of
- Learnings: about others, myself, life
FYI the link will take you to the template. You have to create a new board & apply the template (Double click the new board, More > Custom)
High Touch — Qualitative Journal Analysis (Miro board)
If you have made it this far, I would like to say 2 things.
1- There is a decent chance you are part of the neurosis family. Welcome.
2- I would caution against over-reflection. Slippery slope.
Exactly as it sounds, gather all your journal entries from the past year & analyze for prevalent themes. Although high-effort, this method is the most accurate way to understand your past year: the human brain ridden with biases (peak-end, confirmation) & utterly flawed memory.
I went about this by extracting important quotes onto an Excel sheet to bulk-paste into stickies on a Miro board (virtual whiteboard). After each month or so of entries, I would organize the stickies in a hierarchy of categories (Top, Highlights, Working on it, You did it!, Extra random notes).
The objective of this exercise is to view, in a holistic & evidence-based manner, what you’ve overcome/accomplished as well as extract what you see yourself continue to work through in the next year(s). I mainly used this board to feed into the Reflection Board.
If you’re really really gung-ho about this, consider a Rainbow analysis.
Thanks for stopping by.
