The end of the year is here, and you know what that means. Not only are we getting cozy, spending time with friends and family and enjoying the holidays (or stressing out like many of us students are due to upcoming exam), but it is also a time to reflect on the past year and on what you want to achieve in the upcoming year.
Whilst listening to Ali Abdaal’s podcast episode with Dr Julie Smith, there was something that Smith said that has never left me since. She mentioned that the best time to form new habits is at a new start - whether that is the first day of the week, the start of the month, or at the start of a new year. We don’t have to wait for these fresh new starts, but whenever we have a clean slate, we are often motivated to make changes to ourselves and start off fresh.
That’s why we tend to make New Year’s resolution and are committed at the start before they wear away: we are excited and have motivation to make this change, but we do not keep it up, allowing it to slip away and fail before we’ve finished the year.
This year, I don’t want that to be the case again. Instead, I decided to reflect on my year and note my hopes for 2024. I occasionally journal in Notion because that may be the closest thing I have (often because I am on my laptop and need to rant somewhere ASAP) so I decided to create a journalling template for me to do this exercise on Notion. The reason why I chose Notion in the first place is because it is going to be easier to access and find these entries, thanks to me not journalling too often on Notion and because of the tags I can use to make my search easier.
Now the question is: why am I sharing this piece of information with you all? Well, the answer is simple: I’m going to share my templates with you. There isn’t any scientific evidence to support how useful these reflections are, nor do I have any experience in trying them for the past few years (I’ve only just made them!), but I didn’t want to have to wait for a year or more to share them because - who knows - they may be helpful and any one of you wonderful readers may benefit from them more than I would!
So, without further ado, here they are:
Looking Back on the Year: https://www.notion.so/Looking-Back-on-Year-Template-0b981aa6668343e8a0beefee7265127d?pvs=4
Looking Forward on the Year: https://www.notion.so/Looking-Forward-776b8dd5e01e4f3da6ffb9b31826b032?pvs=4
When you open the page, make sure you duplicate it so that you have your own copy before reflecting on the years. This way your reflection is for you and you only and you don’t end up sharing your thoughts with everyone! (It also allows everyone to get a free clean copy!)
There’s also a run-through in grey, providing more information on each part of the reflection incase you need the extra guidance. You can read over it and then get rid of it or keep it and write underneath it. Your choice.
I really look forward to filling these reflections in myself. I plan on looking back on the year on the last day of December and looking forward in 2024 on the first day of January. Come to think of it, it might be a better idea to do it on the last day of December too. Also, stay tuned because for the past few years I’ve been writing a poem at the end of each year summarising its key events. I’ll have to get started on that because I haven’t done so yet!
That's it from me today. I'll see you in my next post. Happy Reflecting! ;)
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