Reviewing 2025 as a start to 2026 - is it helpful?

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I have never been the type of person that approaches life like a project. Which is ironic because I am a very structured, organized person and I've always approached my work that way. In work, projects have a planning phase, a development phase, a delivery phase and a retrospective. The retrospective is designed to review how the project went, discuss where things could be improved and identify what was good that should be brought forward into future projects.

I don't do this with my life. In fact, as I mentioned in a previous article, I don't set New Year's resolutions and I don't set goals. I see life as an ebb and flow that isn't bound by time. So if you ask me "where do you want to be in 5 years?" I can't answer because my brain thinks about the infinite possibilities present and can't predict what might change in that timeframe. It is too linear of a concept and my brain thinks in spirals and systems with an inordinate number of connections. For me, I can't remember most of what happened in any one day, yet alone across the course of a year. 

Yes, I'm a writer but I don't journal to capture "facts" or events. I journal to process emotional energy which is a result of many different facts and experiences. So for me, the idea of doing a review of an entire year feels a bit daunting. I also have a perspective that is more akin to learning, which is that taking in a lot of information over the course of a year is too much time to effectively process and reflect. So I see the practice as more of a continuous review where when I experience something major, whether that is healing or trauma, I think it's best to deal with it in the moment. I track my progress as I go and review along the way. I may journal as a way to process and integrate the experience, or I might have a conversation with someone I trust to verbally process out loud. Either way, I tend to not hang onto it after that point. I hold the main lesson like "I won't do that again" or "next time I choose this instead because it will bring a more favorable result". 

I can see where a year is a good time frame for collating a lot of experiences that are related, especially if a lesson takes time, but most people seem to track their progress like it's a list to be checked. I see it more in terms of lessons and these can't necessarily be checked off. Lessons are more fluid and I find it more effective to acknowledge my growth when I become aware of it. I've started to practice daily gratitude when I achieve something related to intentions I've set. I make a mental note of when I hold or establish a boundary, or when I follow through on a positive choice I've made that aligns with an intention like eating raw veggies as a snack versus a bag of chips because the last time I chose chips my body let me know it was not a good choice. 

So I would say, rather than looking back and asking, "what did I accomplish for the year? " I would ask something like "Where did I grow?" "Where did I notice myself allowing fear to hold me back?" or even "What isn't working for me anymore and can I let it go?" These are less tangible things you can't really check off, but can be powerful indicators for where you have given away power or allowed the external world to influence your happiness and steal your joy. That's where setting intentions can help. The review happens all the time, at the moment you notice. And the more you notice, the more you increase your awareness, which increases your chances of realizing your intentions. The more you learn along the way, the more you can refine your intentions to better align with what you truly want and with your authentic self. At the end of the year, you can do a retrospective that allows you to evaluate where you chose yourself and where you might need to still heal. You aren't checking boxes on what you did. You appreciate the growth and who you are. 

After all, we are not human doings, we are human beings.