Self-awareness is an important skill to build as an AF officer AND as a human being. It’s good to take some time to look back and see what went well, what didn’t go well, and what you might want to do differently (or keep doing). The end of the year presents an excellent opportunity to exercise your self-awareness muscles.
How to Do an Annual Review
Conducting an annual review is simple to plan but can be difficult to execute. I think this is because an annual review done right will make you dig deep for answers instead of just superficial BS. That said he are two sets of questions or prompts to get you started building your own annual review.
This first set is from YouTuber Ali Abdaal‘s list. He takes the time to answer the following prompts.
- Stuff I’m grateful for
- People
- Experiences
- Accomplishments
- Things
- Game Changers
- Stuff I Discovered this year
- Stuff to work on for next year
- Life
- Medicine (Ali is a doctor, so you could replace this with Officership)
- Side Hustles
- Bucket List
Note: You can watch Ali breakdown this process here.
The second set is from productivity coach Tiago Forte. He follows a checklist that consists of the following steps:
- Write gratitude list.
- Answer questions about last year.
- Answer questions about next year.
- Add new life goals and projects.
- Read last year’s personal narrative vision and write next year’s.
- Review last year’s daily routines and write next year’s.
How I Do an Annual Review
Ali’s process is more abstract and strategic while Tiago’s is more detailed and tactical. I like Tiago’s article comes with an Evernote checklist and question prompts but I won’t share them because they are part of his premium content.
As for me personally I like to combine both of their approaches since it covers both strategic and tactical approaches.
My current annual review consists of the following sections and prompts:
- Gratitude
- What went well?
- What didn’t go well?
- What will you change for next year?
- Add and adjust goals, projects, processes, and routines to ensure change happens.
- Personal narrative vision
The thing that’s been a game changer for me has been the personal narrative vision. Writing down what I want my life to look has made things seem more concrete and allows me to start projects in order to make the vision come true.
These aren’t the only ways to conduct an Annual Review. My homework for you is to google some other methods to see if they could be useful for your. No matter how you do it, the Annual Review is a great way for you to improve as an AF officer and as a human being.
CGO Coach 