End-of-Year Effectiveness Check-In: A Tool for Personal Reflection

TL;DR: Taking an hour to reflect on how effective you were this year and how you can use this awareness to shape your behaviors for next year is likely one of the highest leverage uses of your time.

This tool is designed to give you a structured, yet personalized way to do that. It can also be used by groups for collective and individual reflection.

End-of-Year Effectiveness Check-In: A Tool for Personal Reflection

Intro

For the past 8 years, I have taken time at the end of every year to reflect on what went well, what didn’t, and how I want to shape my intentions for the coming year. I’ve done this on mini solo retreats, using Year Compass, with friends, and on planes. This year, I wanted to design something specifically for the EA community around the core ethos of bringing our resources into greater alignment with our values.

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Suggestions for using this tool individually:

Set aside 1-3 hours of deep focused time.
1. Spend ~1/3 of your time on each section, with Step 3 likely being the most important.
2. **You can print out this tool if you prefer, just scale printing to the width of the page and print each tab.
Pick the top 2-3 intentions going forward and share them with someone who can support you in prioritizing them.
Put these intentions in a place you’ll encounter them regularly. This could be recurring events on your calendar, printing them and putting them on a wall, adding them to your priority management systems, etc.

Ideas for using this in a group setting:

Here’s a run sheet for a 1.5 hr event that supports a group of people using this tool.
1. 5 mins—Intro: Overview the tool, why it’s valuable, and how the event will go.
2. 40 mins—Begin: Complete the parts of Sections 1-7 that feel most relevant individually.
3. 10 mins—Check in as a group: Hows the process going? Any questions or reflections that may support one another in using this tool well?
4. 20 mins—Final Section in Pairs: Pair up and spend
5. 15 mins—Share out & Debrief: What are 1-2 of your intentions? How can people present support you in achieving them? How did this process go?

Invitations for Feedback & Further Exploration

If you have ideas for how to improve this tool, who might benefit from using this tool, or want to collaborate on making other tools that might support the EA movement, send me a message. I feel particularly motivated to explore ways the EA community can be supporting one another in capacity building, cultivating great self-awareness, and enhancing our ability to collaborate across differences.