Think back across the past 12 months: all the people you interacted with, all the pizzas you ate, all the places you visited, all the garlic bread you shared…sorry, I missed lunch today.
Think, specifically, about all the meetings you took part in. Did they lead to great things? Did they, at least, lead to something you can nod happily about?
Did you buy Litecoin before it exploded and sell it before it popped?
Did you read a book every week like you vowed to over NYE cocktails (YA fiction counts)?
Did you finally sack that miserable lifer who’s been ruining the atmosphere of the office since time immemorial?
Did you triple productivity without making your staff stress-vomit in the bathroom more than once per week on average?
A year may not be as long today as it was when you were at primary school, but there should still be a signature achievement that you can point to as making this arbitrary instalment of time worthwhile.
If work trundled along the way it always does, with no especial highs or lows, we have to ask – what are you doing there?
But okay, fine. Not every occupation has to be the salary-generating equivalent of skydiving naked.
In which case, move further afield and pick out the achievement beyond work that has made you proud.
It could be personally executing every animal you eat like Mark Zuckerberg did in 2011, or visiting every US state like he did this year…yeah, that one’s less exciting than picturing him hacking away at some upset cow, isn’t it?
So anyway, we’re not really talking about what we did in 2017 here, are we?
We’re using this reflection as a tool for ensuring we do some memorable things in the 12 months to come.
There’s nothing more depressing than being stuck on a beanbag in the summer heat, and not being able to point to any tangible way that we reshaped ourselves, an organisation or the world since the last time we were here, swearing never again would we skol slightly off eggnog from the carton.
Forget about New Year’s resolutions and come at the year from a different angle.
In December 2018, what would Future You be most happy to reflect on as a memory?
