Whether you are closing your classroom doors for the summer or simply a short break before you dive into the next season of learning, the end of any cycle is a prime time for reflection that can set the stage for future achievements.
"Goals are more meaningful when they result from your taking stock of where you actually are, which requires you to think about how your life has developed over the past year," says career coach Michael Melcher in his New York Times column "Year-End Review, With Yourself."
As a precursor to goal-setting for the coming school year or your next stage, try using Melcher's four-part activity for taking stock of the past year.
Step 1: Collect Data
On a blank piece of paper, write down the significant happenings of the past year. Use your calendar, planners, unit plans, and so on to jog your memory. Write as much as you can.
Step 2: Annotate the Data
Use a highlighter or some other means to draw attention to significant items on your paper.
Step 3: Rank the Standouts
What were your top 3, 5, or 10 activities or experiences from the previous year? Put them in order from least to most significant.
Step 4: Reflect
Now, Melcher suggests thinking about what these items meant for you this year and what they say about your goals for the coming year. He poses several reflection questions, including these:
- What's surprising about your list?
- What's predictable about your list?
- Based on this list, what's important to you?
- Based on this list, what's not really that important to you?
- In the past year, what are some ways that you've grown personally? Professionally?
- In the coming year, what are some ways you'd like to grow personally? Professionally?
Melcher says turning over the "mental soil" of the previous year helps identify your core values and prepares you to plant meaningful new goals for the coming year.
The Ta-Da! List
If you tend to wrap things up by focusing on what didn't get done or still needs to be done, you may want to try out a "Ta-Da list." The Happiness Project author Gretchen Rubin shared this listener-suggested strategy on her "Happier" podcast; it is simply a record of what you've accomplished after any amount of time.
The Ta-Da list offers a reprieve from "To-Do" lists that can make us feel trapped in an endless cycle of tasks. Looking back on what you've done after a particularly challenging day, week, or year can be gratifying and restorative. Especially with work that is ongoing, "it feels good to look back and see that there is progress, even when the final payoff isn't clear yet," writes the listener.
Most likely, you'll reach the end of the year or semester with more to do than time allows. Look back on what you have done, and the shape of what you can do will begin to appear.
