Key Takeaways from Last Year’s Review

Making Our 2023 Review Process Even Better

Revisit 2022

Remember the annual review we embarked on last year? I recently revisited my own reflections and was transported back in time. Last year's review read like a dynamic novel. It’s a foreign story written in a familiar tone - from exploring new cities to leading healthcare at Nest. Many seeds I planted at the time had now become a part of my life.

Family

Think about the shifts in your life this year. For me, a significant change was my stance on starting a family. Last year, I thought I was too busy, and now I am actively trying. After a year of making peace with my past, I realized that there’s more in life, and joy can be the simple, stable things in life.

Career

Reflect on your own milestones. One of the aspirations I wrote in my annual review was to “use all of me and integrate my shadow into a cohesive whole.” Building a startup was a living testament to that. I set the upper bound of how fast our company can grow and leverage new opportunities. This intention has helped me stay focused, keep experimenting, and achieve my goals more effectively.

Reward

An annual review is more than a checklist; it's a time capsule we send to our future selves. Writing down our insights allows us to remind our future selves how far we have come. Reviewing my notes, I connected dots I hadn't even realized were there. This process drives our growth, evolving identities, and our upcoming life paths.

Review 2023

Now is a good time to revisit the annual review you wrote last year and start the process of reviewing 2023. To facilitate this process, I’ve developed the Annual Review GPT, a tool designed to guide you through this introspective journey. Before I start my formal review for 2023, I used this GPT to talk through the ideas that’s top of mind, brainstorm new perspectives, and get actionable insights. I’ve covered a few other ways to use it before. To save you time, you can check out the steps in my post on LinkedIn.

While Annual Review is good practice, if you don’t have time to do one yourself, you can check out the ones written by others. I wrote an article and recommended 10 useful annual reviews you must read. LivingOS newsletter will keep focusing on work and life reflections, while this curation newsletter will share useful AI tools and new resources. Sign up for free and stay tuned! And I look forward to sharing with you in our next issue of the newsletter a sneak peek of next year's in-person LivingOS workshop at Google Experience Center.