My gift for you: A guided Past Year Review

How did you spend your time, energy and money this year? Which people, activities and commitments served you well? And which do you need to ditch for 2025?

Dec 23, 2024

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Hello everybody,

It's a truth universally acknowledged that the last email before Christmas must contain a reminder to BUY SOMETHING! QUICK!

And while I would love for you to share the self-help magic with your friends and family by gifting them a Shelf Help Subscription at this - or any - time of year (it's the gift that really does keep giving, and Substack make it super easy to share the joy ).

Instead/also I want to use my last pre-xmas Monday message to share a gift with all of you; a guide to the Past Year Review exercise that I was introduced to a couple of years ago, and that has been a game-changer for me (and Mr Shelf Help) when it comes to setting goals and planning our years.

I’m not a big fan of resolutions. But I AM a fan of a plan, and this exercise is a super simple but also super powerful way to get intentional about designing your life for the coming year (and is there a better gift than a well-designed life?!)

Pondering my (sober) 2024 over a glass of 0% Noughty…

ABOUT THE PAST YEAR REVIEW (PYR)

This exercise is an excellent way to take a moment to appreciate everything that’s happened and how you have spent your time, money and energy in the last 12 months.

To identify what served you well and what didn’t, with a view to giving next year some intentional direction so that you can take ownership of your time, learn from your mistakes, set ‘light you up’ goals, and make decisions according to what matters and what fills you up, rather than reacting to life as it happens.

Mr Shelf Help and I do a PYR every year between Christmas and New Year, and then share our results with each other in January. It’s a great way to check in and learn more about the latest versions of each other, and also make some joint plans that get us both excited.

This exercise is not about making sweeping resolutions - although it may encourage that.

And it’s certainly not about making you feel bad about not doing, achieving or being enough.

If, after you’ve completed it, you decide that you haven’t moved the needle enough in an important area of your life then this is actually excellent information to have, and you now also have the awareness to change it. Which is why it’s always always worth taking the time to pause and ask yourself: ‘What’s important?’. And why there’s no wrong way to do this exercise.

“If you don't have a plan, you become part of somebody else's plan.”
Terence McKenna

WHAT YOU’LL NEED:

You’ll need paper and a pen, a couple of post-its, any diaries or journals from the year and your phone - or camera if you’re old school - to access to your photos.

The audio shared here is only about 6 minutes long as it’s an introduction to the exercise, and you’ll be working through your calendar in your own time. But I would suggest you give yourself at least one uninterrupted hour between Christmas and new Year (on airplane mode!) to do it properly.

HOW IT WORKS:

On your notepad create two columns, one of them headed POSITIVE and one headed NEGATIVE.

Starting with January, go though your calendar, feeds and photo albums from the last year, and write down any PEOPLE, ACTIVITIES and/or COMMITMENTS that caused a peak positive or negative emotional experience.

Write these down in the respective columns.

Work your way through each week and month, noting the peaks for each.
Worth keeping in mind as you go through: your three resources of time, money and energy and how you have spent them.
Which PEOPLE, ACTIVITIES and/or COMMITMENTS were worth spending your time, money or energy on (because they created peak positive emotions)? And which - in hindsight - weren’t worth the effort?
Some of your findings may surprise you. For instance, an occasion that you spent a long time looking forward to turned out to be a real downer. Or a duty visit to a family member turned out to give you a real lift as it was much appreciated. Some activities might have invoked positive and negative vibes. For instance, a one-night Glastonbury Festival fly-by for me last year was a complete social high because I got to spend time with my favourite friends in a field, but it was also a productivity and health low because it left me feeling wrecked for over a week afterwards.
Spend some time investigating the emotions that arose before, during and after events or activities.

Once you’ve completed the year, work out which 20% of the PEOPLE, ACTIVITIES and/or COMMITMENTS accounted for the strongest and most powerful peaks - positive and negative.

On a new page. The top 20% of your positive peaks are the things that you absolutely should start planning for ASAP. Message friends, book time out in your calendar, set up saving pots on your online banking, set up subscriptions, buy the multi-class pass, prepay and diarise as much as you can. As Tim Ferriss says: “It’s not real until it’s in the calendar.”
I also use the positive 20% to inform my goal-setting for the year, which I do in January using The Best Year Ever method and the Full Focus Planner .
The top 20% of your negative peaks are the thing you should start planning NOT to do, because you know they make you miserable or bleed your energy. Or both. So create a DO NOT DO heading on a post-it, add this 20% list and leave this somewhere you’ll see it every day for the first few weeks of 2025.

“The key is not to prioritise your schedule but to schedule your priorities.”
Steven Covey

Tim says: “It’s not enough to remove the negative. That simply creates a void. Get the positive things on the calendar asap, lest they get crowded out by the bullshit and the noise that will otherwise fill your days.”

So… Are you ready to design your best year yet?

Schedule your PYR date with yourself now. Enjoy the process.

And once it’s done, take a moment to appreciate yourself for everything you’ve been through this year, and give thanks to all the people who have helped you in any small way on this part of your journey.

(And if you’re looking for some accountability to get this done we’ll be getting together for a members online Chat to discuss the process and share our findings, and maybe some 2025 goals at 7pm on Monday 30th December).

🍿 TONIGHT: Shelfie David Mahoney is hosting a festive Watch Party for The Grinch Who Stole Christmas (access the movie yourself on Netflix/Prime/Apple/Sky and join David from 6.30pm in the Members chat ready to press play at 7pm).

TOMORROW: We have a gorgeous final advent calendar message from one of our favourite Scottish poets.

And then Shelf Help will be signing out until next Mon 30th Jan.

I hope you are able to take some time to recharge over the festive period, to connect with your Self and your favourite humans, and to read some of your favourite books (check out our podcast, The Bibliotherapists, if you need any kind of inspiration, and you can always share your favourite reads over in the Chat).

Sending much love from Norfolk to wherever you are in the world.

Happy holidays,

Toni 💛

🎯 THIS WEEK’S READING TARGET

This week we are reading to the end of Chapter 7 of Self-care for Winter. And next week to THE END (ready to announce a new BOTM on Wednesday 1st January 🥳).