Strategies for Reviewing, Reflecting, and Summarizing Your 2024: A Practical Guide

With the end of the year fast approaching, it’s now the perfect time to tune into that end of year slow down and embrace the need to retreat inwards and reflect on what has and hasn’t been serving you in the past few months.

Grab your notebook and use some of the prompts below to reflect on your 2024 – you can use this exercise for your marketing career, but it also works well for any development goals or personal goals you may have.

I use these prompts every year as well as taking time to go through my photos and diary and reflect on all of the positive (and unexpected) events that have happened to me from January through the year. January feels like such a long time ago so it’s easy to forget what we may have achieved and sometimes we need a little reminder.

Notebook prompts:

·       Connect with your inner self, your intuition and ask yourself how has 2024 been as a year? If you could sum it up in three words, what would those words be?

·       What has been serving you well?

·       Create space for new opportunities in 2025 – what is adding value to your life, what are you doing because you feel you ‘need to’. I usually draw myself a pie chart and map out where I am spending my time in order to reflect on whether it’s time well spent

·       What do you not want to take forward with you into 2025?

·       What challenges have you faced?

·       How did you overcome them?

·       How have you grown through them?

·       What is working well in your life that you want to focus more energy on?

·       What can and should you leave behind in 2024?

·       From your work-related goals, where did you experience challenges and obstacles and what growth opportunities did you embrace? What would you like to do more of in 2025?

·       If you set development goals, did you achieve these and if so what value add did they bring to your work or personal life? If these posed an obstacle, what blocked you and how can you overcome this?

·       Finally, if you set personal goals, how did you get on? Any reflections on your achievements or obstacles that got in your way? How can you remedy any issues going into 2025?

It may also be a good time to review your personal SWOT analysis, if you have one, to see areas of growth (turning weaknesses into strengths and opportunities) or where you may have mitigated any threats during the year. I love to review my SWOT annually as it gives me a good sense of where I am.

Hopefully these prompts will spark off ideas and thoughts as you think about shaping the year ahead.

Happy Journalling!