Summary: Three rounds of questions, where the meetup thinks about their past year in a few frames of reference, then discusses their insights.
Tags: Small, Medium, One-Off, Experiment
Purpose: Year in Review is something more useful than New Year's Resolutions - more like a team retrospective you might do at work, but personal. Taking a chance to take stock.
Materials: Have enough paper, pens, and tables or clipboards for everyone to have their own, and enough space for all or most to sit with their paper out of other's direct sight. Smartphones and laptops are also possible but assume they won't be around. Take time to consider the lists of questions ahead of time; you may want to vary them. Have a pomodoro timer which can track 10 minutes and 20 minutes.
A whiteboard or other big wall-hung paper where you can write the questions in everyone's view is not necessary but very helpful. A shared Google doc with the questions is a good substitute or addition.
Announcement: We'll spend some time looking at our past year and asking questions of ourselves. What did you mean your priorities to be, last year, and what did it look like they were? What did you start doing, and stop doing, and do you endorse those choices? If you were to 80/20 the year, what was the 20% and what was the 80%? Then we'll talk some about our answers and any questions they raise.
Description: Describe the format to the participants:
We're going to consider a few sets of questions, three at a time. I'll share the questions [and write them on the whiteboard]/[and the doc containing them], and then everyone will spend ten minutes considering them and noting down their thoughts. Then we'll spend twenty minutes discussing our answers and insights with each other, before moving on to the next set. Don't worry if there's nothing you have to say or are willing to share, and don't push anyone if they want to stay silent.
Check for understanding and that everyone has whatever writing tools they need, then read the first set of three questions. If you have somewhere to write these questions in common view, do that now - in my case I wrote abbreviated versions of the questions[1], since it's a reminder more than a description. Pause before starting the timer, in case anyone's confused what they mean; after any necessary clarifications, start the timer for 10m. Be fairly strict about this timer unless everyone wants more time (very unlikely).
When that goes off, open up discussion - in my experience this doesn't need to be guided much. If the conversation goes too far afield, gently prod it back on-topic, and if it's too quiet initially or before 20m have passed, you can prompt with specific questions from the three people have been contemplating. But this shouldn't be an issue in most cases.
As usual with discussions, be fairly lax about this timer[2] - if the conversation is going along animatedly and staying basically on-topic, let it ride. The one problem that may crop up is if a minority of the group is being left out, or something similar. In this case it's best to cut it short and move on.
Once the discussion is done, repeat with the next set of questions, reading, writing, and clarifying as before.
Once you have finished three sets of questions, if there's still plenty of time before the meetup should/must end, let discussion roam freely.
Questions:
Set 1:
List a few things that went very well this year. (3-5)
List a few things that went very badly this year. (3-5)
If you were to 80/20 your last year, which 20% gave the 80% you valued most?
Set 2:
If someone looked at your actions for the last year, what would they think your priorities were?
What did you intend your priorities to be?
How do you want to change your intentions for next year, based on that mix of revealed and deliberate priorities?
Set 3:
What habits did you pick up? Did they serve your intended goals, your revealed goals, both?
What did you learn last year? What lessons do you hope to learn this year?
What things are you curious about, that you expect to learn more about this year?
Variations: For some questions, it's worth suggesting that participants save their answers and store them to consider next year, to see how well their predictions or intentions played out in practice.
The questions used have not been iterated much; they worked well, but may not be ideal. Here's a previous draft of questions, in four sets rather than three, to consider if you want to switch it up. (If you do, please comment with the questions you used and how well they were received!)
Set A
List a few things that went very well this year. (3-5)
List a few things that went very badly this year. (3-5)
If you were to 80/20 your last year, which 20% gave the 80% you valued most?
Set B
If someone looked at your actions for the last year, what would they think your priorities were?
What did you *intend* your priorities to be?
Do you want to make any of the revealed priorities official intentions for next year? Do you want to drop any of the intended priorities which you ended up not following up on?
Set C
What habits did you pick up? What goals (revealed or intentional) did those habits serve?
What habits got in the way? What did you fail to get due to them?
What's the most important unfulfilled goal for the last year? How can you change for the next try?
Set D
What did you learn last year?
What lessons do you hope to learn this year?
What things are you curious about, that you expect to learn more about this year?If you have time for a longer unstructured discussion later in the meetup, consider using a final 'live question' - not taking time to write it down, but talking and thinking it over in real time out loud. I recommend the last one from that draft:
What things are you curious about, that you expect to learn more about this year?
This particular question is also a particularly good one to suggest writing down for next year.
Notes: Thanks to Roger Curley and Maia Werbos, whose Meetup Cookbook provided the seed of this idea, and Elena Churilov, whose own review process provided the 'curiosity' question and inspired the rest of 'Set D'.
e.g. "If someone looked at your actions for the last year, what would they think your priorities were?" I wrote as "Year's apparent revealed priorities?"
In fact, if you have a separate timer that's subtler than your normal one, like a quiet chime instead of a loud bell, you might want to use that one to set the 20 minutes for discussion.