I try (and have mostly succeeded for the past year) to do daily, weekly, monthly, and annual reviews with a particular structure: Wins, Misses, Learnings, and Mulling. The gist is very simple: at the beginning of each of those periods of time, I set out some goals; and at the end of each period, I evaluate it in terms of those four categories — with the caveat that I don’t always get to the Learning or Mulling categories.

Wins

What went well? Did I hit my goals? Did something unexpectedly good crop up? Often an opportunity for expressing gratitude to God, to family, to friends, to colleagues. Also an opportunity to examine for my own part how and why something went well, and whether I can use that to build further wins.

Misses

Where did I get things wrong? What goals did I not accomplish — and, most importantly, why? If I am consistently putting the same thing in this bucket, that should prompt some serious reevaluation. In some cases, the thing might actually be worth letting go by the wayside. In others (my faith, my family, etc.) it cannot be, so I need to make some other kind of change to address it!

Learning

What did I learn in this stretch — personally, professionally, relationally, spiritually, you name it? If I go a long stretch without anything here, that is a concern.

Mulling

What things are taking up mental space? That can be for good or for ill: the things I am mulling on sometimes turn into talks, but they can also be areas I need to spend less time cogitating and more time praying about. Often, but not always, related to the first three!

As noted, I integrate that with my goal-setting for those periods of time, but that’s for another noteblog entry!

I had this top of mind this evening because I spent a good chunk of the day filling up a bit over four pages of my favorite notebook¹ with my review for all of 2024 — the personal equivalent to yesterday’s public review.

I have waited to write about this until now because I have tried this kind of thing off and on before, and wanted to see how well it stuck this time. The answer is: imperfectly, as ever with such habits, but much better than any previous time — and, more than that, I could see quite directly in reviewing my year that the parts of my year I did this were also the best parts of my year in terms of working effectively and improving on what I was doing. The parts where I let it slip were also the parts where I was least effective in doing the things that matter to me.