On that Retrospective note #2017

Today the 29th.12.2017 is the last working day of 2017. Wow, how did we get here? Two weeks ago as I walked home back from work, I felt completely nostalgic at the fact that the year is coming to an end. I wondered what I had done and most importantly what I had accomplished. I decided though that I will need my notebook for this. I wanted to visualize my 2017 and find some good in it. The good that would allow me to accept 2018 with no regrets.

As I jotted down a few of the events that happened in the year, I realised that it would be wise to separate my career in 2017 and my personal life in 2017. Even though I believe that life happens as we work. I ended up with 4 pages of notes and I was like ehm, how do I make this practical and easy to remember without re-reading the four pages? To my rescue, our CTO sent out his last weekly reflections for the year 2017 which was encouraging to read and in the end, he included three links on how to conduct one’s personal retrospective. So I immediately went to all the links and did some reading and it was absolutely enlightening.

Before I share with you how I structured my own retrospective, here is why you should consider doing a personal retrospective for the year 2017, either today or this weekend before it is 2018 o clock.

Margaret J. Wheatley once said, “Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful.”

By reflecting, you will learn, you will grow and most importantly you will see a pattern in the actions that you took and the learnings from those actions. Learning by Thinking: How Reflection Aids Performance, a research conducted by two Harvard professors found out that we actually become /perform better when we take the time to reflect. That could be reflecting on our work or life. They also discovered that Reflection allows one to develop confidence in their ability to achieve a specific goal, which ultimately leads to a higher degree of performance.

Getting Practical

Of the three links our CTO shared, Helen Lisowski method stood out the most for me. As part of her strategy, she introduced various questions you could look at to formulate your own retrospective. I decided to go for these five.

What did I do well this year?

Three biggest epic fails - Tried and Learned

Three ways I have become better than I was a year ago

Two things I can’t believe I use to think

Two things that makes me an amazing  (insert your role).

What I love about these questions is the fact that they can be personalised to fit any area of your life. It is clear that this is not your 2018 plans or goals. It is, however, a substantial evidence upon which your goals for the new year should be based.

I wish you a happy ending to the year 2017 and may all your wishes for 2018 come to pass.