10+1 Questions to shine light on your path

The new year is not always the best time to make resolutions and changes but you can find clarity

Dec 28, 2023

I’m sure at least one end-of-year review and goal-setting technique has snuck into your inbox in the last few weeks. Rather than pile on more guilt from the productivity gurus, I offer you a more organic, alternate approach.

Let’s take a step back to look at the quality of the year’s journey, not the checkbox specifics of achieving goals. It’s easier to see why the ride was bumpy when we step back far enough to see the unpaved road we’ve been traveling.

Forget pass/fail goal setting

The accomplished women in the accountability coaching group I lead are no strangers to the usual end-of-year judgment fests, which standard goal-setting reviews tend to become. Two members of the group identify as neurodiverse and have struggled with the yearly goal-setting and review process in the past.

First, because of their many interests and passions they tend to set more goals than are realistic. Second, any perfectionist tendencies see goal-setting and evaluation as an invitation to come out and run amok. All with good intention, of course, but even well-intended perfectionism is still personal sabotage.

Goals by nature are binary — you met it or you didn’t — so you either passed or failed. It can be hard to recover internally and reset your focus when you don’t meet these personal metrics because the process is so inherently self judgmental. There’s no room for “Yeah, but my life imploded” or “Yeah, but I got so many other things accomplished I didn’t realize needed to be done first.”

Saying that I'm no fan of the typical year-end reviews is an understatement.

But Marsha's review questions are different.

They get you to look at the big picture, not just the details.

They get you to look at the whole picture, not just the goals you started with.

They get you to look ahead, not just back.

That's why, despite my abhorence of even thinking of a year-end review, I honestly enjoyed myself doing it Marsha's way. ~Marjan V.

We can blame Julius Caesar

Yearly reviews and pledges to do better have a long history in ancient civilizations. But they were initially part of — surprise surprise — the growing cycle that started in mid-March. The ancient Babylonians are thought to be the first to set new year pledges some 4,000 years ago. For them the new year started in mid-March with a 12-day festival called Akitu, when crops were planted, they pledged allegiance to the reigning king or crowned a new one and promised to repay debts in the coming year.

For centuries the ancient Romans continued the pattern with starting the new year on March 15, the Ides of March, the day when new consuls took office. It was Julius Caesar who introduced the Julian calendar in 46BC and declared January 1 the start of the new year to honor the god Janus.

Despite all the current productive clucking about January 1 being a fresh start and clean slate, it’s still an artificial start time that conflicts violently with our natural biorhythms and the cycles of Nature we’re attuned to, whether we’re aware of those cycles or not.

What I like about Marsha’s year end review is how the questions lead you onto choosing your next steps. Her questions encourage you to summarise what you gained from the current year and how you can build on that gain rather than labelling yourself a success or failure in the year that is ending. I found it a helpful exercise, as it made me realise where my own limitations lie and helped me formulate ways to overcome them in the coming year. ~Rosemary B.

We’ve learned to ignore seasonal energy rhythms

I discovered just how out-of-whack are January New Year’s resolutions when I learned to actively “manage'“ significant seasonal affective disorder (SAD) more than 25 years ago in metro Detroit with its brutal winters. It was all I could do to maintain a reasonably “normal” energy level during the ugly, slushy winter months. I learned by trial-and-error that projects and resolutions I started in March had a far better change of success when the sun was visible again and the natural world — and me — was reawakening.

If you're aware of your seasonal energy flows and know instinctively that the first of the year is not the best time for you to stack up new goals, I welcome you and have a cozy space for you here. I invite you to take a look at this alternate approach that I call the 10+1 Questions.

The 10+1 Questions

Find a quiet space where you can be undisturbed for about 30 minutes. You may want to sit with your favorite note-taking or journaling tool.

I suggest you don't overthink these questions. This questions aren't designed for analysis and strategy, but to give you a gut sense of where you're at and where you could be instead. So let your intuition and gut guide you.

1. Am I satisfied with the direction I'm heading?

See if you can imagine a birds-eye view of your path this past year — personal, professional, health or what matters to you most. Chances are the important parts of your life are intertwined. What does the path look like? Easy to travel? Challenging terrain? Twists and turns? Roadblocks?

2. Would I like to stay the course or change course next year?

Maybe you’re heading in the right general direction, but your course started to drift. Remember that one degree off-course means you’ll be one mile off course 60 miles later. It’s conveniently called the 1-in-60 Rule in air navigation.

3. Am I satisfied with my pace on the path?

From your birds-eye view it should be easier to turn down the volume on the drumbeat of relentless pace and efficiency from the productivity gurus.

Your pace depends on the energy and intention you can bring day-to-day, which will vary with the demands of your life. Rather than force an arbitrary speed upon yourself, consider what's doable, what’s a stretch and see if you can mix it up. What's realistic and satisfying within your life may look very different than someone else’s life, and that's OK.

4. Are there things slowing me down that I can change?

If the things slowing you down are not natural talents you enjoy, seriously consider delegating those tasks or hiring a freelancer, whether it’s household work or professional work. If you can stay within your “zone of genius,” the skills where you naturally and effortlessly excel, you’ll naturally pick up the pace and have more fun.

5. Are there areas where I can speed up without disruption or wasting energy and time?

A word of caution here: Speed for the sake of speed can backfire. You don’t want to travel so fast that you miss, or trample, other important factors. But rather than blindly accept that things have to be done a certain way, examine what can be tweaked without much effort.

6. What were the milestones I reached, whether I planned them or not?

I believe our preoccupation with goals and efficiency has blinded most of us to the significance of what we achieve for several reasons:

Significant milestones often can't be measured using easily quantified metrics
The hidden, backend work to achieve some milestones can suck uncountable and invisible hours with tiny tasks
We all under-estimate the time and effort to achieve seemingly easy tasks

7. What was satisfying about those milestones?

Again, what's satisfying doesn't always translate to a checkbox. Some milestones will have more emotional weight than others and need to be honored.

8. What does that mean to me?

To be worth achieving, a milestone should have personal meaning for you apart from its emotional charge.

9. What can I learn from them?

If you took action despite fear or doubt, added a new skill or shifted a mindset, there may be a few layered lessons immediately hidden from view. Take some time to uncover them.

10. What are three changes I'd like to make for next year?

Now that you've looked at the big and near-view pictures, you can drop down and consider less obvious changes to your approach, mindset, processes, schedules, routines and tasks. Small, consistent shifts will make significant change over time.

11. What one milestone do I have to hit to make the year feel like a success?

Tune in and get clear about what would make you feel satisfied with your effort and that you achieved your intention, however it looks to others. This is about you, no one else.

The dark days of winter are a good time for reflection for many people and the 10+1 Questions can gently help bring a fresh perspective without burdening an overwhelmed nervous system. Get out a fresh notebook or journal and go for it!

If you need permission you hereby have it : Ignore the productivity gurus. Don't feel pressured to adopt new habits if your energy is in hibernation. Or your employer has aggressive new goals for Q1 (been there) and you don’t know how you’ll do more.

Nature shows us year after year there’s a time for everything.