Personal annual review: how to review your year in 5 questions

By Dan Remon · Evidence checked October 2026

At the end of 2021 I ran a training on my biggest lessons from the year. It was for the 26-week mastermind group I ran in 2021, and it covered how to use that feedback to expand and evolve in 2022.

Those lessons still hold. So does the method underneath them: look back at the year in writing, find the patterns and decide what changes.

But December comes with a full calendar, and a year reviewed from memory shrinks to the highlights, the last few weeks and the story you already tell about yourself. A review built on that will only confirm the story.

This is how to run a personal annual review from the record instead, with my 2021 lessons as the worked example.

How to do a personal annual review

A personal annual review is a written look back at the last 12 months that ends in decisions about the next 12. Block half a day away from the inbox. Gather the record first: your calendar, your notes, your numbers and any weekly reviews you kept. Then answer 5 questions in writing: who raised your standards, where you got comfortable, where you took the easy option, which results ran on a system and which were left to chance, and which patterns repeated. Pull 3 to 5 lessons from the answers. Choose 1 to 3 outcomes for next year, write an if-then plan for each and put the first actions in your calendar before you close the notebook.

Why reviewing your year works

One of the clearest tests of reflection is a field experiment that Giada Di Stefano and colleagues ran at a Wipro tech support call centre in India. From day 6 to day 16 of their training, one group of new employees spent the last 15 minutes of each day writing and reflecting on the lessons they had learned that day. On the final training test, that group scored 22.8% higher than a control group that spent the same 15 minutes working.¹

The second reason is measurement. A 2016 meta-analysis in Psychological Bulletin pooled 138 randomised studies, with 19,951 people, of interventions that got people to monitor their progress towards a goal. On average the interventions improved goal attainment (d = 0.40). The effect was larger when progress was reported to others or made public, and when it was physically recorded.²

So the review has 2 rules. Write everything down. And report the outcome to one person who will ask you about it in March.

What to gather before you start

A year has 52 weeks in it, and you won’t remember most of them. The review reads a record, and the best record is one you wrote while the year was happening.

The tool I install with clients for that is the Friday Debrief: 15 minutes at the end of each week, in writing, covering 4 things.

1. What moved. The outcomes that went forward this week, with the number where there is one.
2. What didn’t. What stalled, stated plainly, with no story attached.
3. What broke the plan. The meeting, the flight, the late night, the decision you put off.
4. The one thing that changes next week. One change, so it happens.

Keep every Debrief in one document. By December you have 52 short pages, each written before memory could edit it, and you can see which weeks broke the plan and what kept breaking it.

The Debrief feeds the Weekly Compass, 30 minutes to plan the week before it starts, whether that’s Friday afternoon, Sunday evening or Monday morning. The Monthly Audit and the quarterly intensive sit above it, and I’ve set out the monthly review in 6 reasons to assess your life.

If you didn’t keep Debriefs this year, rebuild the record from your calendar, sent email, training and sleep data, bank statements and phone notes. It takes longer and misses more, but it beats memory. Then write your first Debrief this Friday.

5 annual review questions, with my 2021 answers

Each question below started as one of my lessons from 2021. First the lesson, then how to put the same question to your own year.

1. Who raised your standards this year?

My 2021 lesson: your CIA is critical. Your Circle of Influence and Accountability is the key to growth and achievement, so choose it carefully. Find mentors and coaches, and people who are committed and accountable, to raise your standards and keep you true to your word. They inspire you with their action and their tenacity to evolve.

The 2021 group held me accountable to deliver every week, 26 weeks straight. Accountability ran both ways, and I learned more from the members than they learned from me.

For your review, list the people you spent the most time with this year, plus the mentors, coaches and peer groups you chose. Mark who raised your standards and who lowered them. Then decide who sees your numbers next year. That’s the reporting effect from the meta-analysis above, working for you.

2. Where did you get comfortable?

My 2021 lesson: don’t stay comfortable. It’s fine to disengage, regenerate your focus and energy, or enjoy the results of your efforts. Just don’t stay there too long. Keep evolving, and master the art of getting comfortable in discomfort.

For your review, find the months where nothing was hard. Some of them were rest you’d earned, and rest belongs in the plan. The others were coasting. Your Debriefs show the difference: rest has an end date and coasting doesn’t.

3. Where did you take the easy option?

My 2021 lesson: think bigger and ask powerful questions. Left alone, your brain takes the easy option, and that leads to complacency and a lack of vision and growth.

In 6 lab experiments, Wouter Kool and colleagues at Princeton let people choose freely between tasks that asked more or less of their thinking. People leaned towards the less demanding option, and the bias showed up whether or not they noticed the difference in demand.³

For your review, list the decisions you avoided and the work you kept postponing because it was hard to think about. Then build anchors to reflect, assess and decide what comes next. Start your questions with “What’s next”, “What if I” and “How can I”.

4. Which results ran on a system, and which were left to chance?

My 2021 lesson: build strategic systems. Systems are the anchors for energy, focus, clarity, motivation, mental health and ferocious action. If you haven’t built systems around energy and production, you have little direction, purpose or opportunity to create your best life. Don’t leave it to randomness.

An if-then plan is the smallest system there is. A meta-analysis by Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran pooled 94 independent tests of plans that spell out when, where and how you’ll act, in the form “if this happens, then I’ll do that”. The plans had a medium-to-large effect on reaching goals (d = 0.65).⁴

For your review, sort this year’s results into 2 columns. In the first, results that came from a rhythm, such as weekly training, a protected focus block or a fixed review. In the second, results that needed a good week to happen. The second column is where next year’s systems go. My weekly rhythm is in a productivity system that survives a bad week.

5. Which patterns repeated?

My 2021 lesson: face your truth. Your future is in your hands. Look back at the year gone by, and the years before it. Check whether you achieved what you set out to do. Look for the patterns that repeat, like projects you never finish or goals you set and never reach.

If you don’t change the way you’ve done things, you’ll get the same outcome. Decide whether that’s acceptable to you. Your values and your truth are your responsibility. Own it.

For your review, put this year’s goals next to last year’s. Anything on both lists is a pattern, so check the system around that goal before you rewrite the goal itself. Then decide where you want to be in 1, 3 and 5 years. I cover how to write that down in creating a clear vision for your life.

Turn the review into next year’s plan

A review that ends in insight and no decision is a diary. Close it in 4 steps.

1. Write 3 to 5 lessons. One sentence each, in plain words, the way I wrote mine for 2021.
2. Choose 1 to 3 outcomes. Frame each one as something to move towards. In a Swedish study of 1,066 people making New Year’s resolutions, those with goals framed that way reported more success at 1 year than those with goals framed as something to avoid: 58.9% against 47.1%.⁵
3. Write an if-then plan for each. When and where the first action happens, and what you’ll do when the usual obstacle shows up.
4. Put the first 4 weeks in the calendar. From there the Weekly Compass and the Friday Debrief carry the plan, and next year’s review has its record.

The year is the right unit because of The 1% Compound: a 1% gain held daily leaves you at 37.78 times your starting point after 365 days, and a 1% daily loss leaves you at 0.03 times it. Neither shows in a week. Both show in a review. For setting the outcomes themselves, goal setting that survives the quarter has the 90-day method.

Then write one line at the top of the plan: where you want to be 12 months from now.

Where an annual review falls short

Once a year is too slow to steer by. A leak that starts in March has 9 months to grow before December, so the annual review sits on top of the weekly and monthly rhythm and never replaces it. Its job is the patterns only 12 months can show.

The research has limits too. The reflection study is a working paper, run with trainees learning a new job, and a later revision across 10 studies found reflection helps most early in the learning curve. The monitoring and if-then results are averages across many goals and settings. None of it promises a result for any one person. The review gives you better information. The decisions are still yours.

How to start

Start with a baseline you can review against.

1. The 1% Scorecard. 8 questions, 2 minutes, free. You get your Compound Index, a score out of 100, and the one thing to install first.
2. The Quest. The performance membership: a tested system and a room of founders who run on standards. The Friday Debrief, the Monthly Audit and the rest of the Stealth OS run on a fixed cadence in 28-day cycles. Cancel anytime.

You can’t upgrade what you refuse to audit.

FAQ

Sources

1. Di Stefano, G., Gino, F., Pisano, G. P., and Staats, B. R. (2014). Making Experience Count: The Role of Reflection in Individual Learning. Harvard Business School Working Paper 14-093. Field experiment reported in Nobel, C. (2014). Reflecting on Work Improves Job Performance. Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, 5 May 2014. library.hbs.edu. Revised in 2023 as Learning by Thinking: How Reflection Can Spur Progress Along the Learning Curve. doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2414478
2. Harkin, B., Webb, T. L., Chang, B. P. I., Prestwich, A., Conner, M., Kellar, I., Benn, Y., and Sheeran, P. (2016). Does monitoring goal progress promote goal attainment? A meta-analysis of the experimental evidence. Psychological Bulletin, 142(2), 198-229. doi.org/10.1037/bul0000025
3. Kool, W., McGuire, J. T., Rosen, Z. B., and Botvinick, M. M. (2010). Decision making and the avoidance of cognitive demand. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 139(4), 665-682. doi.org/10.1037/a0020198
4. Gollwitzer, P. M., and Sheeran, P. (2006). Implementation intentions and goal achievement: A meta-analysis of effects and processes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 69-119. doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(06)38002-1
5. Oscarsson, M., Carlbring, P., Andersson, G., and Rozental, A. (2020). A large-scale experiment on New Year’s resolutions: Approach-oriented goals are more successful than avoidance-oriented goals. PLoS ONE, 15(12), e0234097. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0234097