A year-in-review is one of the highest-leverage 30 minutes you'll spend each December. Done well, it surfaces patterns you'd never notice in the moment — the projects that quietly drained you, the relationships that paid off, the bets that worked. Done badly, it's a nostalgic photo scroll that changes nothing about next year.
The difference is the prompts. Vague prompts ("how was your year?") produce vague answers. Specific prompts — the ones in this template — pull out the data you can actually act on.
How the template is structured
Five sections, each with 3–5 prompts:
1. Wins — what worked, what to repeat, who helped. 2. Regrets — what you'd undo, what you avoided too long, where you lied to yourself. 3. Lessons — what you learned about your work, your energy, your relationships. 4. Themes to drop — what to stop doing in the new year (more powerful than starts). 5. Themes to repeat — what to deliberately do again, with intention this time.
The "drop" list usually delivers more value than the "do" list. Most lives get better by removing, not adding.
How to actually run it
Set 30 minutes. Phone in another room. Type or hand-write. Don't edit as you go — the first instinct on each prompt is usually the truest. When you finish, copy the answers somewhere private (Notes app, journal, a LemTask note). Re-read in March. Re-read again in September. The patterns get clearer with distance.
Pair this with the life audit worksheet for a fuller picture, or the gratitude journal template for a lighter weekly version. If you want next year's themes to actually carry into your week, the ADHD task planner is a free way to anchor them to daily action.
When to do it
Late December and again in mid-January is the strongest combo. December captures the year while it's fresh; January catches what you missed once you've had two weeks of distance.