 I try to make the end of the year the time when I'm dismantling who I was and currently am and moving it brick by brick into the next year. Deciding to leave some of the bricks behind is I don't need them anymore. And this is really a poetic way of saying that I'm reviewing my past year trying to identify patterns of behavior, understand where these are coming from and also identify their shortcomings and utility. But how does one perform an annual review? Well, I currently follow a free bullet format and it all starts inside my journal. So first, I'll start reviewing my journal entries. Second, I'm trying to identify repeatable patterns of behavior, routines, workflows that I have performed throughout the year. And the third bullet I'm trying to tackle is the one where I'm updating my systems, defining potential frameworks, also doing a framework update, lessons learned and next steps for the upcoming year. I believe that most of our mistakes are most of the time obvious and can be fixed through reflection. It would be interesting getting to a point where a spectral like entity like a guardian angel would fade in every time we are doing something inherently wrong and would somehow stop time and ask us to start thinking about what are we currently doing that is wrong. And that's sort of metacognition and thinking about thinking. And maybe this will happen at some point. But until then, let's use the tools we have available. And what I'm currently using is a combo of morning pages plus the five minute journal, all injected into a notion template. And I'll explain everything in a second. But if you are a quantified self aficionado, and you like using analog systems and analog means of capturing thoughts and behaviors, by all means use the pen and paper. Because I believe that this will add substantial benefits to one's reflection time. Now I want to go through the first point where I'm actually reviewing my journal entries. Right now, my journal is a combination of morning pages, which is a stream of consciousness type of writing done the first thing in the morning, and the five minute journal, which is a format one can use to systematize reflection, starting with a few questions for yourself in the morning and finishing up with a few more night questions that would conclude your day. Now if you go online and start looking for the morning pages journal or the five bullet journal, you will see that the format is somehow standardized. But this doesn't mean that you cannot enhance the questions enhance the prompts and make them your own. And the way I'm doing this is by using notion and no taking up that sustains my process and makes it easier for me to quantify and analyze. I'm also using a physical morning pages journal I made for myself and transferring it to notion at the end of the week or when I have some free time. And you can view this morning pages practices wiping the specks of dust from your glasses and throwing away the wipe. And I'm not quantifying my morning pages journal by any means. I'm not trying to check some boxes, but it can be quite nice and funny to start looking through your archives from time to time. So I'll first start with the morning pages effectively trashing out all of the thoughts bursting out of my mind each morning. And this type of writing doesn't need to be civilized. And if you're using pen and paper, you can also start sketching out your thoughts or simply drawing aimlessly. But moving on to the five minute journal, this one stays in notion as well as it can be a lot easier to look at your entries and your thoughts and your feelings and sort of evaluate their quantity and their quality as well. So the idea behind the five minute journal is that every morning you will have to answer a series of questions that would trigger a tiny bit of reflection time and make you think about yourself and your thinking. And I view this as a reflection tool that's essentially in your back pocket and the standardized questions that you'll find online when searching for the five minute journal are I am grateful for dot dot dot what would make today great. Some daily affirmations such as I am dot dot dot and moving on to the evening list three amazing things that happened today and how could I have made today even better. And I wasn't fully on board with the full list of questions and prompts and what I did I've actually modified them, enhanced them and made them my own made them fit my own needs. And I decided to keep the I am grateful for statement as one wants to remember a hedonic treadmill, a hedonic adaptation which is the observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or fly changes. And I found that having gratitude part of that boot up sequence when starting your day can sort of encourage a new state of being. And there are a lot of things one can be grateful for but just make sure you don't repeat yourself too often and just reflect on the nice cities you have going for you. Even though it might be something small like how your fingers feel when typing on a nice keyboard or a good cup of coffee or tea or how nice writing or drawing feels like on a piece of paper or something happening on a macro scale such as being alive in this particular time in history when all human sorrows have substantially declined. And the next enhanced set of questions I created for myself are the following. What would the ideal day look like? What is your biggest priority and why? How can you remove friction today so that you can spend more time doing something you enjoy? Do you have any leftover thoughts, feelings, emotions? And then at the end of the day I'll have a prompt that will ask me to list the cool things that happened today. And the final question, what mistakes did you make today and do you have ideas on how to fix them? And again, these are a handful of personal questions that I would ask myself, trying to better understand what my next steps would be and what stops me from executing on these next steps. This is why I'm looking at setting a goal for the day, thinking about the pieces that can add up friction and slow me down from achieving the daily goal. And these can come in as day to day mundane activities I can either subtract myself from or the emotional states that lead me to the next question, thinking about putting my leftover thoughts, feelings and emotions on paper. And the way I make sure I tackle each question is by integrating them into my journal entries. Now the second bullet, the second step, is identifying repeatable patterns of behaviors, routines, workflows throughout the year. And the way I set this up in notion is I have created a database for all of my entries. I will create a new entry for each journaling session and I will start filling up the blanks. I can then either pick and choose the things I'm grateful for from a list I have constructed since I started doing my five minute journal in notion. And I can also add new things. And when looking at your list of entries, you will then have a row you can filter out. And essentially if you look at the patterns, you will be able to see the top things you are generally grateful for. But you will also be able to see the things you are repeating. Are you repeating the things you say you are grateful for because they really matter? Or you just want to fill in the blanks. But I would then answer each question and I would give it some thought, aiming to be as specific as I can. I also found that performing this 80-20 analysis on your journal entries can be an effective tool for reflection as well. The 80-20 principle states that for many outcomes roughly 80% of the consequences come from 20% of the causes, the vital few. And one might scan the journal entries and start asking questions such as what are the 20% of activities in people who produced 80% of my good vibes? My emotional states and results? Or one can go the other way around and start asking a question such as what are the 20% that produced 80% of my negative emotional states and negative vibes? So I'm focused on identifying the small beats of activities and routines that generate a large number of positive effects, outcomes, and results. I can have an overall view of the key factors that led to a good day such as creating or finishing something small, reading, watching, absorbing, thinking, or simply, slacking. But now the final point I want to take care of is updating my systems. This can mean either defining potential frameworks for updating my current frameworks and also taking a look at the lessons learned in the next steps for the upcoming year. And this is the last step of the process. Effectively after identifying and analyzing my states, I believe it can be quite effective to start updating the tools you use to analyze those states. This can start with simply having another look over the questions. Is it still relevant to have the same set of questions? What can I keep and what can I remove? How can I make the whole process easier? And why might I come in and start asking questions such as how does one find the time to perform such a daily practice? And we all have our own systems but the thing I found that works best for me is simply a daily recurring reminder on my phone. And that's it. Every morning I get a prompt on my phone and I simply say that my desk can do it. And what I found is that through repetition, this can slowly become a default in your routine. And you can remove the mental friction of doing it by enhancing your environment, adding something like a hot beverage and drinking it while doing the actual writing and making it as easy as you can to get it done. And one must understand and remember that we humans are not strategists by default. It can be quite easy and seductive to talk about reflection in some casual conversation with some friends drinking some wine. But actually sitting at your desk and doing this by your own on your computer or using pen and paper can be a hard duty to perform. Now in a nutshell, this is what I do to standardize the process of zoning out, levitating far away from the massive input invading my mind and body on a daily basis. Making these pockets of reflection a solid default part of my routine. We are always in motion and this is why it has become harder and harder to get off the treadmill and ask ourselves the right questions. It is quite hard to make reflection a default part of your life as our brain state is to always attack the problem that's in front of us. But I believe that it can be about noticing your mistakes so that you can make less of them, so that you don't repeat yourself asking questions such as these and coming up with an improved version of the answer.