Life moves fast. Sometimes, I stop in the middle of my day and go “Huh! How did we get here?” or “Time is going so slow for me. I’m not sure if I’m actually growing.” When those thoughts happen, I either get really happy… or really scared. The future is a great unknown and I always feel like I’m hurtling towards it at lightning speed.

When that happens, I tap the sign (read: my Bujo) and tell myself, “You’ve done this before. Maybe it’s not the exact same thing, but you’ve done change before and you had a lot of fun.”

That’s why I make myself a Year In Review. My Year In Reviews aren’t about how many things I did (though there is space for that) or what I consumed. Instead, they are spaces for what stood out to me. What do I remember as having evoked strong feelings? What are the big lessons I learned? 

There’s no strict format to this. For me, my Year In Review is just me sitting down to talk to myself and writing down what comes to mind. Here’s a walk through of it in case you might find this helpful.

The Highlights

Image from my digital Bujo. I keep photographs of key moments I remember being simply grateful for being alive, like this art exhibit.

I try to avoid anything that to me feels like a “for it’s own sake” list. So no big lists of everything I did or how much of xyz I managed to do. When I do that, I think I veer too close to making KPIs out of my experiences which is the last thing I want in something this personal.

Instead, I savor the moment and wait until the end of the year. Because so much time has passed, my emotions about then-current events have cooled, and I’m able to look back and see what still feels alive for me. Instead of trying to record and remember my highlights, I test them through time: If I don’t feel strongly about it, then it must not have touched my heart as much as I thought it did.

I flip to a clean page and write down, as fast as I can so I don’t give myself time to ‘remember’, what stood out to me this year in a bulleted list.

The Lessons

I feel that I have a hard time connecting with people sometimes and truly appreciating their perspective. Feel is the operative word because when I did this exercise, I discovered that I actually do notice and learn a lot from others. “The Lessons” section of my Year In Review is a list of lessons on how to live better that I learned from the people I had the pleasure of interacting with in a given year. I list down their names, the lesson they taught me, and an example of how they taught me this lesson.

The Things I Enjoyed

Onto the fun part. In this part of the Year In Review, I write down everything I enjoyed. Cafes I liked very much, mountain views that made me think “Wow, I can’t believe we’re here”, and even YouTube videos so well-researched I know I’ll keep coming back to them. Just like the highlights, this list is made off the cuff and entirely off the top of my head as I put it together. I think you can tell because my handwriting is a mess! A very joyous mess!

The Year In A Word

After completing The Highlights, The Lessons, and The Things I Enjoyed, I write down a few pages of my most truly personal thoughts about the year. What were my deepest fears, my most brilliant joys? What made me sad? Why? More and more, I am finding that no matter how melancholic I get during the year, I don’t remember any of the sadness when I make my reviews. The lesson here, I think, is that it can be overcome and is as temporary as a passing breeze.

Next, I read those pages and try to identify a common theme. Words like “I found out”, “realized”, “discovered”, “explored” kept coming up. To me, this meant my year was all about discovering the world and discovering more about myself (a few months difference can be surprising, and it can be scary to change this fast, but exciting too!). So, my 2024 Year In A Word is “Discovery.”

I hope this helps you think about your year in retrospect! 

About the Author

Allia Luzong does content. Whether she's working as a content manager for Bullet Journal, writing, DMing campaigns for friends to enjoy, or forming groups around a niche interest, she views all of these activities as opportunities to cultivate experiences that foster a connection between her and the person she's creating an experience for.