A Simple Approach to Annual Reviews

Hey friends, this is Matt Ragland and welcome back to a new episode of the Connect the Dots podcast. It's the end of the year of 2021. I hope everyone is having happy holidays, Merry Christmas, a happy new year coming up. And what I wanted to do with this episode is share something with you that initially came out on the YouTube channel. So you can check the show notes. I will have a link to the YouTube video in case you missed it. And in case it sounds a little bit like a YouTube video, that's because it was originally a YouTube video. But the reason that I'm sharing this on the podcast is one, I know that a lot of you enjoy listening to the podcast. And number two, I'm about to release my personal annual review episode. And I thought I'd release this quick mini episode to give you context on how you can conduct your own annual review before I drop a 40-minute episode on you. So I hope you enjoy this one. Just, uh, check it out, share, you know, hit me up @MattRagland on Twitter or Instagram and let me know what you think and what you're doing for your annual review. Thanks so much. And now let's get to the episode.

We're getting really close to the end of the year. And one of the things that I love doing at the end of the year is to review.

The year.

I'm just going to give you a very simple framework for reviewing your year so that you can get all the good feels and lessons. And the simplest, most time-effective strategy and method that I have for an annual review or any kind of review is one that we've talked about on the channel before, and that is the RAP method. So if you think about those 4 letters in RAP, WINS. W for wins, R for results, A for alignment, and P for pivots. If you think about those, you can apply that to your annual review, just like we've been applying it to weekly reviews or quarterly reviews. In fact, if you have been consistently doing a wrap review, maybe not every week, but consistently doing a wrap review of your weeks and months, then you can just go back through those. It will help you remember what you intended to do. Go through your gaps as well. So we're going into the last weekend of the year that isn't Christmas, that isn't New Year's, and just take some time over the next few days. Go through that wrap review. Look at your notebooks. I've got 6 field notes 6 field notes and 2 bullet journals that I've been through this year. Look back through like your projects. What's in your archive? What have you completed this year? What have you worked on? What have kind of moved in and out? And then just looking through Google Calendar. So what I'm describing to you right now is a good way to go through a review is one, by asking yourself those 4 questions, those 4 prompts in the, in the RAP method. And then just protecting time to go through notebooks, go through weekly GAP plans and RAP reviews, go through your like Roam database or Notion or Evernote, look through your Google Calendar. You may be surprised about these things that you basically forget that you do. Like we spent some time at the beach in Florida earlier this year, shot a couple of videos from there. And that feels so long ago because it's 10 months ago and a lot of things have happened. Things feel really busy right now. You're wrapping stuff up with work or personal projects. Maybe you're having family come into town or you're traveling. There's extra events that come around the holidays. If you protect one day out of the working year for an annual review, you are protecting 0.4% of your year. A full day does feel like a lot right now in this stretch of time, just remember that in the big picture, you're protecting a very small amount of time for an exponential impact of how you can improve the rest of the year just through some clarity, just through reminding yourself that you did a good job this year. Now, I also don't want you to think that if you are unable to protect an entire day for an annual review that it's not worth doing a review. It still absolutely is. So going through, just researching, reviewing, it doesn't have to be— and maybe you see these things online, I know I do, they feel a little intimidating sometimes. But you see these things, they're like, here's my inner review, and I wrote this out, and I recorded a video, and I'm going to try and do all those things as well. But I just want to encourage you, one of the things that I would like to do on this channel is just remind you that even if you don't get to like the social media maximum, like, check it out, this is my review, I did all this stuff. Even if you don't get to that, it is still incredibly valuable for you to do a simple review of your year so that you can think about your wins, the things that went well. What were the results of the goals that you had at the beginning of the year? And I'll come back to that in a second. The results piece is where a lot of people get stuck. I know I can get stuck or feel kind of down on myself because I know what I intended intended to do, my goals at the beginning of the year. I did not hit all of them. Remember something that we've talked about a lot on this channel and in my courses, and if you've been on my email newsletter, that when you're looking at the results of things, remember to approach it as a reporter and not as a judge. I know that's often a reason that people don't want to do annual reviews. It's a reason that I avoided them for a number of years, and to be honest, I'm enjoying but also kind of dreading this one because I know the criticism can be a little high. By the way, if you're a self-criticizing person, a book that my therapist recommended is called Self-Compassion. I think it's by Kristin Neff or Christina Neff. Let's do some live research because I'm actually listening to it right now. Last name is definitely Neff. It's Self-Compassion by Kristin Neff. N-E-F-F. Enjoy yourself. Remember that what you're looking to do is be a reporter, to find those solid memories, those wins for the year, and then learn from what didn't go as well. What can you pivot on? What do you need to do more or less of? Really think about your alignment. It's been a crazy couple of years. I know this year has been really challenging for me for a few reasons that I don't know if I'm going to get into or not, but the biggest lesson that I'm trying to remember and keep high in my mind is the type of person that I'm actually being every day. Is that aligned with the type of person that I intend to be? Like, am I being patient? Am I being kind? Am I being courageous? Am I being definitive about what I want in the world and not just being, you know, reactive to it? Am I being very proactive in what I want to do? A lot of things swirling rolling around in my mind right now, but I wanted to give you a lot of encouragement in the video today for how you can complete an annual review. Again, just take some time, protect some time, go through your notebooks, go through your app services, whatever it is that helps you remember what you actually did this year, and then just go through that WRAP process, that WRAP method. What were the wins? What were the results? What is the alignment of you know, what I'm doing of the year, in the year, to the type of life that I want to live, the type of person that I want to be, the type of work that I want to be doing. And then based on the answers to especially results and alignment, what do I need to pivot to in the new year so that I can be more aligned with the type of person that I want to be?

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Connect the Dots podcast. I really appreciate you being patient with me for, oh, I don't know, the last 6 months of getting a new episode out. I intend to be more consistent with that. If you check out and listen to my personal annual review episode that's coming out in a couple of days, you will know more about how I'm looking to pivot and manage that going into the new year so that I can create more content with less stress and more help. Okay. Wishing all of you a happy holidays, Merry Christmas, if you're celebrating that, and especially a happy new year. Keep an eye on the YouTube channel and your podcast feed because I've got a lot more coming out for you. Thanks so much. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.