This is the perfect time to reflect on how the year went for us personally and professionally. Many of us often find ourselves in a mad rush to wrap up holiday planning and shopping, and forget to prioritize this year-end review, but…
Carving out just one hour to do a little review of the year before jumping into the holidays sets you up for an enjoyable break with your family and gives you a clean slate on which to start the new year.
It’s so easy to leave this review until after Christmas, but sometimes this means we go into the holiday with some unprocessed emotions about our business and ourselves—particularly if our year didn’t go or didn’t finish quite the way we wanted. Or it means we don’t fully celebrate ourselves if our business did go well because we’ve usually forgotten about a lot of the things we did that were worth celebrating.
I’ve run year-end review workshops before using this exact process. And I want you to treat this episode as if it were that workshop!
The best way to go about this is to make some space in your calendar, grab a coffee, sit down, download and print out the worksheet that accompanies this episode, and answer the questions as we go through them. This just might be the single best thing you do to set you up for a better next year!
In this episode, we cover:
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- Questions to answer to explore what went well in this last year of business
- An exercise to note what didn’t go as well as you hoped this year
- How to look forward to the new year and plan what’s next
- The importance of letting yourself feel the emotions vs skipping past them
- How to identify ways to support yourself as you make changes for the new year
I hope you found this useful! And if one of the things that you have written down in your plan for next year includes improvements to your time or productivity, or changes internally or externally that you don’t know how to make, or maybe you feel some level of resistance to making those changes, I’m here to help! Book a consult call or reach out on Instagram.
Links & Mentioned Resources
25 Questions to Boost Your Mood
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More about The Time & Productivity Podcast for Entrepreneurs
The podcast to help you, as an ambitious high-achieving Type-A woman, master work-life balance as a business owner.
Join Kirsty Knight each week, so she can help you create the level of success you truly desire, in a business that you love, without needing to sacrifice time for yourself, your health, your family, and your enjoyment of life outside of your business. Without hustling, without working yourself into the ground, and without burning out.
Kirsty will be sharing lessons from her own business journey, business strategies, time management and productivity hacks, and the psychology you need to understand – to help you go from overworking and overwhelmed, to mastering your time and productivity, so you can be working less, and earning more.
If you are trying to build or scale your business, but find yourself struggling with overwhelm, self-sabotage, procrastination, distractions, perfectionism, people-pleasing, hustling, overworking and always thinking “there just aren’t enough hours in the day”, this podcast is for you.
You CAN have it all. And she’s going to show you how.
The unedited podcast transcript for this episode of the The Time & Productivity Podcast for Entrepreneurs
Good morning, lovelies. How are you today? So if you are listening to this when this comes out, we are at the end of this year, and most of you probably will have some time off from your businesses over Xmas, or I certainly hope you do, and I always think now is a really great time to think about how the year went for us. And I know sometimes it can be a mad rush to close up for the xmas break, and so it doesn’t always get prioritised, but I think even just taking an hour to do a little review of the year, before xmas, sets you up for a really enjoyable break with your family AND it gives you a clean slate on which to start the New Year.
It’s very easy to leave it til after xmas, but sometimes this means we go into that holiday with some unprocessed emotions about our business and ourselves, particularly if our year didn’t go, or didn’t finish quite the way we wanted. OR it means we don’t fully celebrate ourselves if our business did go well – because we usually have forgotten about a lot of the things we did that were worth celebrating. They might have gotten bulldozed over by other challenges or things going on.
It also means that there is a risk that after the holiday, we dive straight back into the fire – without a well thought-out plan or strategy, without learning from the past year, and without being really clear on how we are going to make the next year better.
So I usually always encourage my clients to take some time before xmas to do an evaluation of their year. I usually run a workshop for them, and I have done them for others too. And so today I want you to use this episode as if it were that workshop, so I’ll go through the questions in here. So make some space in your calendar. Grab a coffee. Sit down, download and print out the worksheet in the shownotes with the questions on for this episode and then as you go through, answer them. I promise you, you will not regret it. It will be the single best thing you can do for yourself to set you up for a better year next year.
And if you are listening wayyy after this episode comes out – and it’s the middle of the year – if you haven’t done a recent review of the last 12 months, or even the last 3, do this exercise too. You will get so much value from it.
And if you do the whole workshop and you still feel a bit crappy for any reason – maybe your year didn’t go as well as you’d hoped and you can’t seem to shake the disappointment, or get out of your funk – I did an episode that came out on Xmas day last year that you should listen to – it’s 25 questions to help you feel better, so definitely go find that.
Ok let’s get into it then.
So there are three parts. We explore what went well, then what didn’t go so well, and then we look forward. And we always want to start with what went well. Because if you start with what didn’t go so well, you will never be able to pull yourself out of the black hole of despair to find what did go well. Remember our brains are wired for negativity so it’s much easier for us to climb into that hole than get back out.
So I want you to answer these questions. And don’t spin out about them. Don’t overthink them. Just take a couple of minutes per question and write down whatever first comes to mind. This isn’t a test. No-one is coming to check your answers and judge you for them. This is just for you. Your eyes only. And don’t even let your brain discount them – and it will try to. You’ll think something like – I made 25k in a launch yay. I’m proud of that. And then your brain will immediately offer you – yea but you only did it once. You don’t know how to replicate it again next time. That was a fluke. Blah blah blah. You can notice your brain offering you that – it’s always useful to know what weeds are growing in that brain of yours – so we know what to pull out later. But don’t believe it. And don’t let it stop you from writing down and feeling good about, and celebrating yourself for the win at the top of the sentence.
Ok you promise you will take your wins seriously? Let’s go.
First question, what went well this year in your business?
Next – what are you proud of yourself for?
What did you accomplish?
What did you have the courage to do? To try?
What did you do better at this year? What did you improve upon?
What growth did you have personally?
What are you in awe of yourself for?
What delighted you about this year?
What things did you enjoy in your business this year?
Why could you consider this year to be a good year?
What excellent lessons did you get from this year that will help you be more successful next year?
What results did you create?
How did you create them?
What worked?
What was worth spending your time on?
What worked when it came to your time and your productivity?
And lastly for this section, what did you learn?
And then once you’ve answered those questions, I want you to sit with the answers – and feel into your body what is coming up for you. Allow the good emotions to be there – even if there are niggling thoughts around it not being good enough. Focus on each one, and then name the emotion. Breathe into it. Imagine it expanding in your body and filling your whole body with that good feeling. Allow yourself to celebrate yourself by allowing yourself to feel good for a minute.
Then, and only then, move onto the next part.
So what didn’t go so well this year?
What were you disappointed by?
What did you try and fail at?
What didn’t you do and why?
What results didn’t you create, that you wanted to? Why didn’t you?
What did you struggle with?
What was hard this year?
What didn’t go so well with your time?
And your productivity?
And what are you making all of this mean about you?
And then again, I want you to write down the answers and then see what comes up in your body. And this time, I want you to close your eyes and focus on where in your body the emotion is. And what it feels like. Is it fast moving? Or slow? Is it light, or heavy? Where is it? What is it doing? What colour is it? What texture? If the feeling could speak to you, what would it say? If the feeling were a metaphor, what would it be? And what would need to happen to it for it to change? Can you imagine that thing happening to change the thing you pictured? Weird questions I know – but this is how we process not-so-great emotions. By allowing them to be there. By observing them. By noticing how they move. By allowing our minds to understand the state, and shift the state when they are ready.
I want you to take the time here, and as you process the feelings of disappointment, or frustration, or whatever comes up, I want you to treat yourself as you would your best friend. What would you say to your best friend about how they are feeling around the parts of the year that didn’t go so well? What would you do to make them feel loved and cared for, and like it is going to be ok? I want you to do this for yourself.
And then, the last part – is about moving forward.
What lessons have come out of the things that didn’t work?
What could you choose to make it mean about you, regarding the things that didn’t work?
What lessons have come out of the things that did work?
What have you learned about yourself?
What have you learned about your business?
What have you learned about your time?
What have you learned about your productivity?
What are you going to do differently next year?
What obstacles do you need to overcome?
What internal beliefs do you need to shift for next year?
What skill sets do you need to work on?
What things need to change for next year to be a better year?
What support do you need for next year?
What is your plan for securing that support?
What are you committing to trying next year?
What are you committing to doing differently next year?
What are you going to leave behind from this year, and not take into the next?
What are the lessons that are going to help you next year?
What do you have to remember to have a good year next year?
What do you want to have achieved by this time next year?
What do you want to improve next year?
How are you going to do that?
How are you totally ready for the challenges that next year might bring?
And lastly, what are you looking forward to next year?
And then once again, sit with your answers.
And I would actually leave it here and if all three sections feels like it’s too much for you to do in one sitting and spread it over three mornings with a cup of coffee and then leave it at that. Then go and enjoy the Christmas holidays or the weekend. Or take a week away from it if you’re listening to this in the future.
Before you consolidate the learnings and make an actual strategic plan for next year. This is purely so you don’t feel overwhelmed. Or like it’s too big commitment to do this review. Because I’d rather you did this review and didn’t make a plan for the next 12 months or quarter yet. Than rush into making a plan, carrying into it unprocessed hurt from this year and no learnings.
If you feel like you want to make a plan immediately afterwards, of course, you can do that too.
Either way, I hope that you’ll celebrate yourself regardless of the results you’ve created this year, simply because it takes a lot of courage and resilience and determination to stay the course as a business owner, particularly when things aren’t going well. And even if you haven’t created exactly what you wanted this year, you will have grown personally from trying, and that is worth celebrating, for sure.
So I hope you found this useful. And if one of the things that you have written down in your plan for next year include improvements to your time or productivity. Or changes internally or externally that you don’t quite know how to make, or you feel some level of resistance to making, I can help you. Just book on for a free consultation call with me on the link in the shownotes.
That’s it for This week. Have a wonderful break and I’ll see you next year.
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