50 Episodes. Wow. This was my goal when I started this show nearly two years ago, and we're there. We did it. I said at 50 episodes I could re-evaluate if Bite-Sized Philosophy was a project I wanted to continue, and for the moment, it still is. I'm planning to renew the show for 24 more episodes in 2022 and then will check in again at episode 74.
This is the past-year review.
The New Year is upon us, and that means there will be all sorts of resolutions. Promises to ourselves that we don’t keep very well and don’t have a lasting impact beyond January 31st, and sometimes not even that long.
So instead of making new year’s resolutions, what about conducting a past year review?
As we talked about on Monday’s episode, there are many ways to approach the new year. Monday we talked about defining personal values to bring more clarity to hard decisions in 2022, and today is about doing a past year review of 2021 to shed some light on what actually mattered from this past year that we want to bring into 2022 and what we really want to leave in 2021.
To do this exercise, you’ll need your 2021 calendar. However you track your events and schedule, as well as maybe a journal or any other way you keep track of what happens in your life.
For me this means Google Calendar. I also have journals, but my Google Calendar has enough on it that I don’t need them.
Then you need a way to take notes on your year. I used a Google Docs form and a powerpoint this year, but the last two years, I’ve done this by hand in a journal because I set aside more time.
Either way, we’re looking at the hobbies, activities, projects, and events that happened in 2021 that we enjoyed, didn’t enjoy, or had mixed feelings about.
I try to keep this pretty simple, so I use a highlighter for it. Green is enjoy, red is not enjoy, and yellow is some of both. It doesn’t need to be too complicated, the point is to get through your whole year, so the simpler the better.
Then, I turn to January of 2021 and get started.
