Take Charge of Your Happiness with a Year-End Review
How to do a year-end review
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Spotify Wrapped suck this year? Well, that’s because they laid off the people who manage it and gave us AI slop instead.
Not everybody uses Spotify, but those who do remember how cool it was to get data and insights into our listening preferences, including our top genres, our music “auras” and more. It was appointment viewing for Spotify users — we loved learning and sharing that insight on our socials. It was free marketing for Spotify, but they’ve thrown it away.
But why did we love it? The following Instagram gallery by a psychologist (Shatarupa) says that it is because we navigate the world through the lens of the self, and therefore love learning about ourselves through anything that provides it. Check it out, she’s a great follow.
I’m not a fan of astrology or Buzzfeed quizzes, but they are successful and beloved because they promise to teach us something about ourselves. They promise reflection, and reflection is empowering and desirable.
You can do your own reflection
Thankfully, we don’t have to wait for AI slop from shitty companies. There are ways to do your own reflection, and I highly recommend doing a year-end review for yourself.
You can do it at your desk or dining table; all you need is your phone, a notebook, and a pen.
The cool thing about doing a review is that you feel more satisfied without adding new activities or big projects. You create additional meaning in your life simply by remembering what happened.
But you shouldn’t rely on your head. Memories distort over time. That's one of the shortcomings of the human brain, which is just a mass of fat and fluid.
Instead, use historical record and summarize it. You will never again feel "where did the time go?"
I’ve maintained a daily journal for over 4 years now, and simply reading back my journal entries for the day yields a huge list of significant moments, as well as a list of people with whom I’ve shared those moments.
But you don’t need a daily journal to do your reflection. You may not create logs in a notebook or app, but you create memory repositories in other places.
Your photos — Google Photos, Instagram etc.
Your messaging platforms — WhatsApp, Telegram, iMessage etc.
Your calendar (if you use one)
Your cupboard
Anywhere you create — social media, blog, artbook, etc.
You do not walk through life a ghost. You leave bits of yourself everywhere. Don’t overlook that. Review it. Find meaning in it.
It’s a simple process.
Find your memory reserves and go through them, noting down everything that stands out to you in a notebook.
Then, once you’re happy you’ve collected enough significant things, identify the top moments and running themes.
Rate or rank them, and write about them. That is your year-end review.
Want to go one step beyond? A fun side thing that emerges from this process is that you also find the people who you shared those significant memories with, so you can create a separate page with the person’s name and your shared moments.
This will give you a great amount of material to write letters to those people, and express your appreciation to them. It’s a gift you can give them to show your love for them.
You could write a plain letter, or you can use some simple templates I threw together in Canva. Feel free to copy them to your account and modify them!
Example: My 2024 year-end review
Here’s the final outcome of my own year-end review. I identified 8 main moments/themes, and then 4 additional smaller things. You don’t have to read it. Here’s a summary:
There was a shocking death in my family.
Working on a novel was incredibly scary and fulfilling.
I felt a lot of love from my siblings/cousins.
I worked harder and earned more than ever, which felt amazing while it lasted.
My health improved and I felt more secure in my masculinity.
I got 2 tattoos and went on a solo trip after a long gap.
I willingly fell head-first into hobby crafting.
Running tabletop RPGs as a professional was very satisfying.
Additionals: Cleaning became more meaningful, and I started enjoying reading again. 2 others redacted for privacy.
For each of those, I looked at the dates and moments I’d collected and wrote out my thoughts on them. Doing this was a heavy process, and I had to take breaks.
But in doing it, I felt so full of life and appreciative. Here is empirical evidence that I am alive! That I affect and am affected by the world around me. It makes me feel small and big in the best ways. It shows me who I am and how I’ve changed.
And now, I have a single document that I can revisit in the future, and understand what this year meant to me, in excruciating detail and with specific dates and examples.
If that’s not the power of reflection, then I don’t know what is.
Bonus: Step-by-step guide
As a bonus for paid subscribers, I’ve included below a step-by-step process using my personal examples. I’ll be creating this type of bonus content as part of my 2025 plan, Sundays at 10am, so thank you for considering a free or paid subscription.