Year in review questions to ask yourself

Most lists of year in review questions open with “What was your biggest achievement?”. That is the wrong order. Asked in December, a question like that gets answered with whatever happened in November.

It works better from the outside in: facts first, to warm up your memory, then people, then change, and the look ahead at the very end.

Part 1: What happened (the easy ones)

These have right answers. That is why they come first.

1. Which three films or shows stayed with you this year?
2. Which book did you finish, and which did you give up on?
3. Which concert, festival or show did you go to?
4. Where did you go that you had never been before? A city, a country, a place round the corner.
5. What was the longest trip of the year, and the shortest one that was worth it?
6. Which game, hobby or project took most of your time?
7. What is the first moment of the year you can remember? And the last?
8. Which month had the least in it? Do you know why?

Part 2: Who was there

9. Who did you spend the most time with this year?
10. Who did you meet who stuck around?
11. Who did you lose touch with, and was that a choice?
12. Who helped you without being properly thanked?
13. Who would you relive exactly one day of this year with?
14. Who were you there for?

Part 3: What changed

15. What do you do differently from twelve months ago?
16. What did you start, and which of those are you still doing?
17. What did you stop, and do you miss it?
18. Which opinion did you change this year?
19. What were you afraid of that turned out fine?
20. What was hard? What got you through it?
21. What are you proud of, even if nobody else noticed?
22. What are you grateful for?

Part 4: What stays (the uncomfortable ones)

23. If you had to sum up this year in one sentence, what would it be?
24. Which three words fit this year?
25. What would you tell yourself from a year ago?
26. What are you taking into next year?
27. What are you deliberately leaving in this one?
28. What do you want to do for the first time next year?
29. Where do you want to go, what do you want to see, what do you want to read?
30. What would you like to look back on a year from now?

The template

For a notebook or a notes app: four headings (What happened, Who was there, What changed, What stays), the questions underneath, two lines of space under each. That is all. A beautifully designed template does not help if the answers are missing.

Two rules make it work:

• Answer Part 1 with help. Scroll your photos month by month, check your calendar and bank statements, anything that documents the year. Memory on its own mostly delivers October to December.
• Do Part 4 the next day. The uncomfortable questions get better answers once the first three parts have settled overnight.

The habit that fixes Part 1

Part 1 is the only part you can prepare, and it makes everything after it better. If you jot down what you watched, read, played and did, and where you went, as it happens, the factual questions take five minutes in December and March does not get forgotten.

That is what we built Stadu for: films, TV, books, games, concerts, places, trips and life events in one free Android app, with no account. In the Stats tab every year has its own recap with your counts, highlights, the first and last entry and your trips. It cannot answer the questions about people and change; only you can. But you start from a complete list instead of a blank page.

If you want to turn it into something shareable, here is how to make your own Wrapped for books, movies and travel.