Reflections and Projections

It is the jolly season to reflect and set goals. As I have mentioned, I am working on becoming a better goal-setter. Through the previous sentence, I am already trying to identify as a person who does set goals. I have noticed that this kind of thinking has a certain effect. I digress, back to the point.

First, let's talk about reflecting. I have spoken about it around me quite a bit – my brother was the first to bring it up. He and his wife have done a yearly review every year. The point is to gather the year's highs and lows from a subjective point of view. The structure of it is the following:

• Person of the Year: This year's favourite, most important person for you.
• Acquaintance of the Year: The most pleasant surprise in an acquaintance.
• Beautiful Moment of the Year: Rather self-explanatory.
• Deed of the Year: This can be indeed a good deed but it can also be something that needed to get done that You got done.
• First Time of the Year: What was a first this year?
• Cultural Experience of the Year: Theatre, movie or town visited anything flies. For me, it was a bar in Tallinn which was a culture shock!
• Pleasures of the Year: Something small or big that pleased you this year.
• Joke or Laugh of the Year: If you remember the joke write it down. If not just locating the laugh in time is enough!
• Fear of the Year: The thing you feared most this year.
• Blunder of the Year: The dumb thing you did this year.
• Bother of the Year: The person or thing that bothered you to the bone.
• Sadness of the Year: What brought you down?
• Lesson of the Year: A quote or direct experience works here.

This previous exercise is great in locating where we are at the given moment. To make it even clearer we can make a wheel of life as Ali Abdaal calls it. It separates life into three arbitrary categories: Health, work and relationships. These categories themselves are split into 3 as shown on the graph below.

Now on each of the nine pizza slices, you decide on a number between 1 and 10. It is a purely subjective perspective on all of them. The final category to add separately to the pie chart is "JOY". As in, how much joy did you feel overall this year working the way you were.

Reflection permits us to locate ourselves concerning our goals. Only when you know where you are can you decide where you could be. With the wheel of life, it is straightforward – you circle the areas where the 10-point score is not as high as you would want it to be and decide what that score should look like.

Now moving on to goal-setting. This is out of my area of expertise, thus I am heavily relying on internet personalities I have built some trust in (and Instagram Reels).

Firstly, from Ali Abdaal's video, is the 12-month celebration technique. What would you like to be celebrating with friends and family in 12 months? It can be easier to extract these goals from the previous reflection exercises. An important part of goal setting is writing the damn goal down. That is because you have to phrase it and through this, you tighten the grasp you have over it.

A similar approach, which I did come across while scrolling (yes my feed is productivity-based content) is the champagne bottle technique. This consists of writing the goal on a champagne bottle and popping it when the goal is reached. I find this to be a very straightforward system that marks the finish line.

This is all of course good and nice, reflect and set goals. That being said, you have to properly act on these goals. This will boil down to things I have talked about before – making the big objective into small achievable steps which lead the way to the golden apple (click here for tips to stick to goals).

P.S. Due to the context of this post, I have decided to post it on the last day of 2023 instead of the first day of 2024. Maybe you'll have time to think about those things a bit before things get out of hand this evening!

This Week's Suggestions:

🎶 "No Warning" by James Hiraeth featuring Nathan Smoker:

This has been in my music rotation a lot this past week. Some good drum and bass with a lovely vocal!

🎬 How to Make 2024 The Best Year of Your Life:

Two ideas from the previous text are extracted from this video. Good for context!

As we say in Estonia, have a good end of the old year!