Look back before speeding ahead: 2024 is just around the corner

Do you see it rushing past, out, through the door?

That’s 2023 gathering momentum to leave us in its dust, while we gather our own selves and get ready to step into the next year, the New Year, into 2024.

But hang on. First, let’s take a moment or two to look back on 2023 and consider the highlights, the challenges and the learnings of the past 52 weeks.

The idea comes from mental health podcaster Mel Robbins’ (hyperbolically titled) workbook “Make 2024 your BEST year” and, while the title left me cool cold, I like that her first step in looking ahead is looking back to consider those three things — highlights, challenges, and learnings. So, at Robbins’ suggestion, I took out my (old fashioned) paper calendar and flipped through it to remind myself of webinars attended, writing deadlines met, essays published, and also of personal highlights like trips to visit my mum, buying the new car, and booking the front yard refurbishment.

It was a good exercise which I completed as a collage because I didn’t want to make a simple list. I wanted to approach it as a creative activity, because it gave me more time to consider the data and it resulted in an attractive graphic in my daily logbook.

The next step is to look ahead, says Robbins. Ask yourself, What do you want and why do you want it in 2024? What will you stop doing, keep doing, and start doing in the New Year? What do you want to create in your life and how will you make it happen? (Sign up for Robbins newsletter to download her 2024 planning workbook.)

I’ve yet to begin my New Year planning, but I like how Robbins frames looking ahead. Those questions about stopping, keeping and starting doing things is how I used to frame the mid-term check-in with students. The questions are simple, yet hold the potential for deep change if we are willing to go below our surface responses. It is our choice how we approach the exercise.

To be noted is that Robbins does not ask us to make a list of “achievements”, and that's important. I recently listened to Jennifer Wallace talk about our “toxic achievement culture” and how to counter it. So, my post this week is definitely absolutely not a call to measure our worth on the basis of what we have achieved in 2023. No. It is about considering what this year has brought us; it is about observation and recording. We cannot manage what we do not measure, so our observations and recordings about 2023 can become our building blocks for 2024.   

Regardless of how you mark the end of this current year and approach the new one, I wish you well in every aspect of your life — and I thank you for being a reader of my work. Meeting you here is an ongoing highlight in my life.

Rear view mirror photo by Caleb Whiting on Unsplash

..............................................................................................................

To receive my weekly blogpost in your inbox, email fiveyearsawriter at gmail dot com. Simply put SUBSCRIBE in the subject line. 

Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.