How Do You End the Year?
“You don't have to meet anyone's expectations you only have to exceed Your Own”
Hello everyone! I hope your Christmas was everything you needed. I hope you had a chance to spend quality time with your family and hopefully had a fulfilling gift exchange. This is the last entry of 2021. The next won't be until the new year and in completing my typical year-end business I began to think about how I typically spent the end of the year when I was younger and how much different my end of the year process is now. I’ll just say I’m glad I’ve grown over the years.
Me now watching me when I was younger
I didn't have much of a year-end process when I was younger. I was typically coming off a Christmas holiday in which I was working, many of my Christmases were spent alone for that reason. I would work through a Christmas, come home, play some video games, and the next day I'd start asking about New Year’s Eve parties and get excited to be on to a New Year of my life. That was it. The End. I felt like it worked for me at the time and I didn't need much more than that. My process now is a bit more complex. I think it evolved based on my current responsibilities and some of what I've learned about myself and others over time. I'll get to my year-end process and what it looks like and why a bit later for the moment I want to talk about what a year-end process is (as I see it) and why it has some value for most people.
When I look at very successful people or organizations they all seem to have a review process at the end of their year, whether that’s fiscal or calendar. They take stock of the year, the wins and losses, and hopefully, make plans based on that moving forward. They adjust their projections or plans for the next year or season based on what they reviewed and the conclusions they came to for the year ending. I was an ad-hoc guy that operated by the seat of my pants in that regard for a long time. I was basically moving on instinct. That will get you to a certain level if you have good instincts, but when you get into a room with people that have good instincts and a plan, you find out very quickly that instincts are usually not sufficient anymore. Year-end reviews are to help you build or improve your plan.
Athletes watch game/performance film. It doesn't matter if you play football, play tennis, box, run track, swim, whatever. If you are at a high level you watch tape, and I don't mean tape of your opponent, I mean tape of yourself. Why? Because if you don't know what you're doing you can't get better. You have to analyze what you've done previously to improve.
NFL athletes typically watch game film at some point of every single practice
The first part of my year-end process is reviewing your performance for the year. In this part of the process I like to ask myself a couple of questions to ensure that the analysis is thorough and constructive:
Did I accomplish every major goal I set out to this year? Why or why not?
What were my shortcomings this year?
Were they circumstantial or behavioral?
What can I do to ensure those shortcomings don't happen again
Where did I excel this year?
Why did I excel in those circumstances?
Can I replicate that success? If so what is the process to do so?
I try to answer these questions as honestly as possible. Often I don't like the answer I have to give because it forces me to view where and why I dropped the ball in a situation and how that affected me personally and my goals.
Another thing I like to do is give myself a holistic health report card. Is an A to an F on 3 major areas:
Emotion health
Physical Health
Mental Health
I then look at if I was improving or worsening my Health in these 3 areas and if so what ways I was doing so. It could be something like “how much did I process stress with alcohol?”, that's a detriment to emotional and physical health. It could be a question like “How consistent were you about talking to your therapist and going to the gym?” which helped me improve in all 3 areas. The year-end reviewing of my health is like examining my car after arriving at my destination to ensure that it's ready for the next journey and examining how I may have helped or hurt in the maintenance of my vehicle. After scoring myself I then review everything I gave myself a C or lower on and build a plan to get that grade up higher for next year. I was pretty much a C student in school but that’s not what I want to be in life. It is important that you are taking care of your mind and body because they are two things you can’t run away from, postpone, or subcontract when they need to be fixed and when they break they are more disruptive than anything else happening in your life.
If you got A’s across the board you’re probably lying to yourself.
The next thing every professional athlete has is a team. I've talked about the value of having a team why it's important to that a supporting cast in your life. The year-end process needs to have a detailing of what your team has done to assist you and what you have done to help them as well. There is a chance that there are people in your circle that you shouldn't bring into the next year. Maybe they were more of a liability than an asset. Maybe they are never available to help you when you need real help. Maybe you and that person are moving in different directions and it's time to let it go. It's also a time to review what you have contributed to those relationships. Are you carrying your weight? Are you contributing to the relationship in the way you want the other person to? Are you improving the lives of those in your support structure and adding value to them? These things matter and it's important that you review your connections and adjust as necessary to maintain or expel them as necessary.
This year-end process is all about self-improvement and growth. The purpose is to seek ways to be a better self holistically so that you can set and achieve higher goals for yourself. Being the same person means you continue to have the same capacity, being better means adding new capabilities, growing your current capabilities, removing behaviors that hamper your capabilities, or some combination of the three. 2021 hasn't been an "easy" year for anyone. The overarching threat and impact of COVID and its new variants, the impact on the domestic and global economy on jobs and trade, the removal of government assistance that was keeping many afloat, the military pull out of Afghanistan, the issues of human rights abuses at the southern border, instability in person vs remote learning for children, there have been many issues that have been disruptions to mental, emotional, and physical wellness.
Embrace that next year isn’t going to magically be sunshine and rainbows
I'm expecting my 2022 to be one of the best years of my life. Thats something a lot of people say but based on the groundwork I've laid in 2022. Which is something else that is important to recognize and note in your year end process. Do you have a 5, 10, 20 year plan? If so are you working that plan and making adjustments as needed? For me 2021 was a year of growth and improvement however compared to some other years it may not have been as exciting. Someone on the outside might believe that my rocket has taken off based on the year I've had. If someone knows my plan they realize this year was one to build the launch pad, 2022 is the year to launch the rocket, and 2023 will be the year to get into orbit. You may have what appears to be a "down" year compared to previous years but it could be one of your best depending on where it fits in your plans and goals. That's why it can be dangerous to compare one year to another without context. It's like comparing LeBron James statistically with the Heat to LeBron James with the Lakers. He's in a different system with a different group at a different age. You must compare in context. Even worse, I used to compare without purpose. Imagine comparing how many touchdowns Jerry Rice caught compared to Deion Sanders. Jerry Rice is the best Wide Receiver ever and Deion Sanders is probably the best cornerback ever, but they played (mostly) on different sides of the ball. If I compare them without knowing their purposes it's going to look like Deion Sanders was trash at catching the ball when he was actually one of the best defensive players ever when it came to catching. When you are looking at your year looking at it in the prism of its purpose within your plan. Was the purpose of that year achieved based on your short or long-term plan? What matters is what you did and why and how it’s affecting your future.
If you're like me, you may have some friends and associates that are doing very well for themselves. You see what they are doing online or maybe even in person compared to what you're doing and you may feel down about your life. Perhaps you are the other person and you’re the most successful person in your friend group so you feel good about your year because it was better than your friends. These are mental mistakes that I've made that I know for a fact don't do anything healthy for you psychologically. They can actually hamper you because you're comparing yourself to others in a way that isn't analytical and usually without the full picture.
This is about holistic growth not just physical growth
The final piece is in resting and recharging. This is a bit different than what I’ve discussed in previous entries. This is a full shutdown and reboot of your system. No work, no business, focusing strictly on being in the moment on whatever you do to decompress and focus on yourself. One of my mentors and his wife typically go on vacation. They spend some time with each other strengthing their relationship letting the stresses of their lifestyle fade away. This is important because its not the same as taking the proverbial water break or getting some sleep, this is more like shutting the computer down or letting it do a bunch of its hardware and software updates and not using it for a couple of days. I typically take about 3-5 days away from everything related to business, my phone is switched to an emergency mode for at least one (usually two) of those days so I’m not talking to anyone that isn’t an emergency contact, and I spend some time in isolation with some good books, a gaming console, some movies, and a journal to reflect with. You should do whatever works in your situation to help you relax and helps you reflect.
Your year-end process is your year-end process and yours alone. It's a time to be completely selfish. The path you choose to walk is for your own reasons and life is all about getting better. If you aren't doing a year-end process then hopefully you have a paradigm in place that works consistently to help you become a better person over time. I have several and they work for me, but just like most things in life they are not one size fits all. One thing I have realized though is if you don't have a self-improvement process in place then you're probably not improving much or at all during the year.