Your review of 2024 + goals for the new year

Table of contents

The year is drawing to a close – an excellent opportunity for your personal review of the year.

What went well?

What experiences inspired you?

And what could have gone better?

A review of the year is worthwhile because you can learn a lot from your experiences, both the good and the bad.

We’ll show you how to create a structured review of the year and how to use the insights you’ve gained to kick-start 2025!

Search for a quiet place

For your personal annual review, you need a place where you can be undisturbed. This could be your apartment, but also a quiet corner in your favorite café or a bench in the park – if the latter isn’t too cold for you.

Whichever place you choose, the most important thing is that you can sort out your thoughts there in peace. We also recommend that you write down your review of the year. This will consolidate your thoughts and impulses. On the other hand, you can look at your notes again and again in the new year and remind yourself of your insights and goals.

Vision boards that you can use for your goals (“affirmations”) are in vogue. To do this, cut out photos, stick them on a whiteboard or blank poster and look at this collage every day. In this way, you manifest your goals by consciously and unconsciously focusing on them.

If you prefer the classic way, use pen and paper or a note-taking app such as Evernote or Notes on your tablet or smartphone.

Research and compile

Emails, chats, reels and TikToks: almost all of us leave digital traces, especially on our own smartphone.

Photos on your cell phone have time stamps, which means you can classify memories to the exact day and hour.

When it comes to social networks, Snapchat is a good research example. Although the app is no longer used as intensively as it was a few years ago, Snapchat shows memories that you can look back on in summary form.

Calendars and notes are also valuable witnesses to your year. You can use them to create a compendium of the individual months, weeks and days.

It is very valuable to look back on successfully completed projects, such as passed exams or well-graded assignments. This also includes private projects, such as the start of a new friendship.

Compile these significant highlights and the associated communication traces and go through everything at your leisure. In this way, you will revive your memories and appreciate the precious moments in 2024.

Sort the material

Once you’ve collected your favorite memories, it’s time to sort them.

To do this, we recommend categorizing the information. However, be careful not to categorize them too narrowly, keep them general instead.

We recommend these categories for your annual review:

Health
Study/job
Family
Friends
Hobbies
Finances

Feel free to create additional categories that are important to you or change their names. If possible, don’t leave out any areas of your life, even if unpleasant things have happened, such as an illness or the loss of a part-time job.

Remember that a review of the year does not always have to be pleasant and beautiful. You can also learn a lot from difficult, challenging situations and mature personally as a result.

So be sure to write down who or what helped you in difficult times and how you managed to get out of difficult situations.

Ask yourself questions

Collecting memories for a year in review and reliving the good and bad moments is exciting.

However, the review of the year will be truly lasting if you don’t just consume these memories, but actively and consciously engage with them.

The best way to do this is by asking questions.

General questions about your annual review:

What have I done well?
What am I proud of?
When and how did I surpass myself?
What could I have done differently or better?

Make sure you write down the answers to these questions and read through them a few days later.

Does what you have written down still make sense to you? If not, delete the answers or write better ones. Add any new answers that come to mind.

Now go from the general to the detailed. Go through the individual categories and ask yourself specific questions.

Specific questions about your annual review:

Health

How healthy is my diet?
Do I do enough sport?
Have I taken care of my mental health?
What harmful things would I like to avoid in the future?

Study/job

How satisfied am I with my performance?
What new things have I learned?
What milestones have I reached?
Do I enjoy doing what I do? Or would a different path perhaps be more coherent?

Family

What moments have touched me?
Where do I wish for more harmony?
How can I enjoy quality time with my family in the new year?

Friends

Which friendships have been particularly fulfilling?
Do I feel comfortable with my circle of friends?
Would I like to make more friends? And what qualities would be desirable?

Hobbies

Which activities did I particularly enjoy?
Should I have made more time for hobbies?
What would I like to try out in the new year?

Finances

Did I make ends meet with my money?
What was my total expenditure and where can I make savings?
Have I exhausted all my potential to earn money? Or could I do more?

You are welcome to use these questions or come up with your own. As already mentioned, it is important that you write down both the questions and your answers.

Looking to the future & defining goals

Answering the questions in your annual review has two far-reaching effects:

Firstly, you consciously go through the year again, with all its highs and lows.

Secondly, you automatically create a guide for the new year without having to worry about it again.

The answers to the questions above are particularly interesting (excerpt):

How can I eat more healthily?
Where can I save money?
What do I really want to experience next year?

You should definitely structure the answers you have already written down as a kind of roadmap for the new year.

If you want to do this like a pro, derive goals based on your answers and create specific to-dos.

Examples:

In the new year, I want to go to the gym twice a week.
In future, I only want to eat meat once a week.
I want to find a part-time job that fulfills me by spring.

When setting goals, five factors are essential, which are well illustrated in the SMART model:

S for specific: goals should be crystal clear and unambiguous.

M for measurable: Choose concrete parameters (e.g. exactly how much weight you want to lose) in order to recognize the success and progress of a goal.

A for attractive: Only set goals that really interest and motivate you.

R for realistic: Keep your motivation down to earth. Many people make the mistake of setting themselves too many and too high goals, which carries the risk of frustration.

T for deadlines: Don’t give procrastination a chance by writing down exactly when you want to achieve your goals by. However, make sure you allow yourself enough time. Can you actually achieve what you set out to do within a year? Or do you need more time, which is perfectly fine.

The SMART method is primarily used in the world of work to increase corporate success. However, it can also be used to promote success in your own life.

Use time management methods

The new year will offer many exciting phases and moments – including some that you probably didn’t expect.

This makes it all the more important that you plan what you can plan. So once you have written down your goals, the topic of time management comes to the fore.

Clever time management helps you to break down both large and small goals into concrete action steps and schedule time for each action step.

Tip: Don’t cram your calendar full, but make sure you have a buffer wherever possible. This will allow you to react effectively to unexpected events without getting into a rush.

Get to know the best time management methods and tools in our article so that you can get your time management under control right from the start.