A Yearly Review Isn't About Productivity: Four Questions That Help You Know Yourself Better

The whole article in one line:

A yearly review lays out the past year's outcomes so you can check whether the goals you set were actually what you wanted. An annual plan works backwards from your long-term direction and lists the concrete things you'll act on next year. Neither is about productivity — both are about knowing yourself better. If you can only do one, do the review.

Year-end again. For me, 2023 was a year of huge change:

Work: left a startup in June, returned to academia in October
Travel: went home to Malaysia in July, honeymooned in Thailand in August
Growth: applied for a PhD program in September and got in
Personal: shot wedding photos in June, held the wedding banquet in November

Because of all that movement, I got to see a lot of friends I rarely see — which is rare for someone who's usually heads-down on work.

But if you ask me how many of this year's goals I hit, the answer is: NONE!

Why? Because 2022 was so chaotic that I never set goals for 2023 in the first place!

I've been tracking my completion rates for years. They are not pretty:

2020: 0%
2021: 50%
2022: 15%

You're probably thinking: is this guy serious? And he wants to teach people how to do a yearly review and plan?

2023 was my Gap Year — a long break to rethink what I actually want from my future.

I'm almost 39. My energy isn't what it used to be. I can't pull the same long hours I used to.

After leaving the company in June, I rested for three months, spent time with family, and read a lot of books. Some new perspectives surfaced.

So here's what I've learned during that stretch.

What is a yearly review, and why does it matter more than the annual plan?

If you can only pick one — review or plan — pick the review.

Why? Because instead of mapping out things you're not even sure you want, examining what you've already done is far more useful.

I looked at a bunch of yearly review approaches, and I think Dickie Bush and Nicolas Cole's The Yearly Review is the best one for beginners. It breaks the review into four questions:

What did you do well this year? What didn't go well? What's the room for improvement?
What did you achieve this year? What didn't get done, and why?
What lessons should you carry into next year? What should you leave behind?
Can you actually answer the questions above? Do those answers line up with what you want from life?

The fourth question is the one that matters. The first three are just stocktaking. The fourth is the real conversation.

A yearly review, to me, is about checking whether what we think we want and what we actually do line up.

If you set goals but didn't hit them — was it because you weren't actually motivated to hit them?

Which might mean you didn't really know what you wanted in the first place.

That's what the review buys you: time to sit with the original intent behind each goal, and get to know yourself a little better.

Only when we understand ourselves well enough does the future we plan actually look like the future we want.

If you're genuinely too busy to review or reflect, here's my advice: save up some money and take three months off.

Let me use my own 2023 as the example.

What didn't go well: the moment things got busy, I forgot to take care of myself, and ended up burned out and sick.
What went well: I started learning to say no to invitations. This is something I'm genuinely terrible at, and it's the area I improved on most this year.
Where I can improve: spend more time talking with myself, so I know what I actually want (including saying no to others).
What I achieved: got married! Finally got married! Hooray!
What I didn't achieve: nothing — because I didn't set goals.
Lessons for next year: learn to manage my own time and energy. Stop burning out (this was the second time).

A yearly review doesn't need to be elaborate. The point is to have a conversation with this year's version of you. A few suggestions:

Don't force-fill it: a yearly review isn't a form you fill out!
Use pen and paper: write each line out by hand. Pull out the old ones each year and compare. You'll know yourself better every time.

How do you write an annual plan? Work backwards from long-term goals to specific actions.

I think most of us have at least a few long-term goals — things we want to reach, futures we want to live in.

Take stock of what it would take to get there, and you've basically got the start of an annual plan:

Write one article (or newsletter) a week
Save NT$10,000 a month
Learn one new skill (web design, AI prompting, project management)
Build a workout habit — at least two days a week, one hour each
Sleep one hour earlier each night

Of course it doesn't all have to be that serious. You can fold in fun stuff too — hobbies, interests:

Take a solo trip to Japan
Visit 20 different coffee shops in Taipei
Catch up with friends I haven't seen in ages
Bake five different things (cake, toast, bread)

Here's a snippet of my own plan for reference:

I want to teach an extra course at National Chengchi University (NCCU) in the second semester of academic year 113. Prep is exhausting, but I genuinely enjoy teaching.
I want to publish a book in 2025, so I need to finish the manuscript draft in 2024. Right now I only have an outline (long-term goal).
I want to keep the newsletter going every week! (So you actually have something to read.)
Build the habit of working out twice a week! (This one's hard. I hate exercise. But the body needs it.)

Update (2026): I wrote this in 2023, so here's a quick three-year progress check —

Teaching: ✅ Done. I'm now teaching one course each semester at NCCU — "Design Thinking" and "Building a One-Person Company."

Book: ⚠️ Wasn't happy with the quality, rewrote it, now slipped to November 2026.

Newsletter: ⚠️ Paused in September 2025. Planning to relaunch June 2026.

Exercise: ❌ Total wipeout. After the gym I went to suddenly went out of business, I stopped working out. Body's a mess. XD

Which loops back to the article's main point: the point isn't the completion rate. It's knowing where you are now and where you're heading.

A lot of people worry that not hitting their annual plan will make the review depressing.

Honestly, it's fine. Everyone gets to know themselves a little better through the loop of planning and reviewing. Doing a review is always better than skipping one.

If you keep doing it, you'll keep getting better. If you're not getting better, then you need to look honestly at what you're doing wrong.

In 2020, my annual plan was a complete wipeout.

I adjusted in 2021 and barely scraped to 50%. Then 2022 dropped right back to 15%.

The 2022 disaster came from overestimating 2021-me. After really sitting with that in 2023, I was finally ready to write a 2024 plan that meant something.

How do you actually finish a yearly review without it being a chore? Three principles: simple, specific, and aligned with long-term goals.

A good yearly review and plan should be simple, specific, and connected to long-term goals.

The simplest way is just to bullet it out:

What I did well this year:
What I didn't do well and could improve:
Directions I want to push next year:
New things I want to try next year:

You probably noticed this whole article is full of bullet points.

Bulleted content is easier to read. It doesn't bury you under a wall of text.

For specific, attach a number or a timeframe and use definite language:

Read 3 books, work out twice a week for 1 hour each
Travel abroad in August, write 200,000 words this year
Catch up with friends A, B, C; switch jobs; get a new phone

Then look back at what you wrote and ask yourself: Will doing these things actually make me happy? Am I looking forward to next year?

That question — that's where the real yearly review and plan live.

If the answer is no, take stock of what makes you happy and what doesn't. You'll find your real preferences hiding in there.

A lot of people frame the yearly review as a productivity tool — a way to hit goals faster.

That's true. But the real value of a yearly review and plan is knowing yourself better.

Hitting goals matters. But knowing what you actually want — and not getting swept along by the current — matters more.

Especially in this information-soaked era, where it's so easy to get nudged off-course by ads and noise.

Use the yearly review and plan to come back to your own center, recalibrate, and walk into the new year on your own terms.

For 2024, I hope all of you stay healthy and happy. See you next year!

FAQ

Q: What's the difference between a yearly review and an annual plan? If I can only do one, which matters more? A: A yearly review looks back: were last year's outcomes actually what you wanted? An annual plan looks forward: what specific things will you act on next year? If you can only pick one, do the review. Examining what's already happened is more useful than mapping out things you're not even sure you want.

Q: What if I didn't hit my annual plan? Does that make me a failure? A: Not at all. My own completion rates have been brutal, and yet my direction keeps getting clearer. The point isn't the completion rate — it's understanding "why didn't I hit this?" during the review. Was it weak motivation, the wrong goal, or overestimating yourself?

Q: I'm too busy to do a yearly review. What now? A: Two suggestions: (1) Grab a piece of paper and answer the four questions (what went well, what didn't, lessons, direction for next year). Done in 15 minutes. (2) If you can't even spare 15 minutes, the thing to reflect on isn't your lack of time — it's whether you're willing to make time to reflect at all.

Q: How many items should an annual plan have? A: My own experience: 1-3 main themes, each tied to one quantifiable number (count, time, amount). More than 4, and unless you have an enormous list of things you genuinely want to achieve and the willpower to back it up, you're probably going to wipe out. I run with 4 and I'm already barely making it. Of course, not every item needs to be that strict.