My goal for 2024: to remember it
We are closing in on the end of December, the time of year when people put some great “year in review” type posts on their blogs. I am always impressed by people’s ability to recount the various achievements and happenings of the year, especially those who can go into detail. This is because I would struggle to recount what happened last week, let alone in March.
I spend life oscillating between two modes - the energiser bunny and the sloth. Lately, I’ve been putting a lot of effort into smoothing out the peaks, and I’ve had success at making the swings less extreme, but the pattern remains. I think it might just be how I operate.
Whether I’m in the mode where I’m pushing forward, smashing all the goals and getting things done, or the other where I am apathetic about most things and just want to rot on TikTok, I fail to reflect on the happenings of the day. I’m either going so fast I don’t want to slow down and reflect, or… I could not be bothered.
The result appears to be an inability to recount my own life. It’s not like I can’t remember individual moments. I have thousands of memories, especially of my boys: the times I made them shriek with laughter, the next-level meltdowns, how they smelled after daycare, school, a bath. But as for being able to remember what we did as a family when or what happened to me personally or professionally throughout 2023, I couldn’t tell you.
This bothers me, so my goal for 2024 is to change it. The tool for doing so will be my journal. I’m pretty good at keeping a journaling habit, but I tend to stick to planning. I make to-do lists, goals, and plans. I’m pretty bad at doing a “diary” entry at the end of the day. So, the “keystone habit” I will use to achieve this goal for next year will be to include a reflection entry, even if it is as simple as listing what happened without much context.
The plan is to do a daily review, which I can refer to in a weekly review, which I can refer to in a monthly review, which I can refer to in a yearly review.
If all goes to plan, I will be able to do one of those cool yearly review posts on this site a year from now 🤞🏼.
Comments
triton
December 16, 2023 at 10:39 AM
i recently though on the same topic. i've done weekly reflections in my bujo for more than a year and i often struggle with details for them so they turn out to be less valuable than i'd like. my issue has been that i've kept it too focused on tasks. thoughts, ideas, and observations i usually type to ios notes app and either delete, if they're not worthy, or transfer to obsidian where they sort of lose the original context that prompted them. i'm not into diffing my notes every sunday to see what i've thought about over the week which won't include everything anyway. since the current notebook conveniently fills up with this month, i can start a new one in january where i've decided to write more than just my todo lists.
i have this a6 notebook that i used years ago. it doesn't have any tasks, i must have used trello for tasks at the time, but it does have quotes, sketches, guitar chords, and various notes. whenever i leaf through it, i quite often still remember writing them.
Peter Rushforth
December 16, 2023 at 4:29 PM
Wishing you a smooth 2024
All the best Peter
Bruno
December 17, 2023 at 12:49 AM
I could perfectly resonate with you. For years that I feel really upset with my lack of biographical memory… I have them, but I need to make an huge effort to recount them naturally. It’s frustrating and I can’t say that maintaining a regular journal would came easy, but you put me thinking… thank you for that. :)
Dave Rupert
December 18, 2023 at 4:24 PM
Good luck! I've kept journals from time to time and it's always a fond memory, a habit I wish I could get back to and sustain. Sometimes it's hard to remember the good things or see the progress unless you write it down in a little emo journal only you will ever see.
jsrn
January 30, 2024 at 3:51 PM
I started doing this I'm really glad I did. Even if I don't keep up with writing something every day, I keep up with the weekly reviews and at the end of each year I can look back and remember all the key moments.
The thing that really keeps me on track is a recurring TODO every Sunday to fill out my review and create next week's from a template. That way I can jot stuff in that week's entry even if I don't make a note for that day.
Hope it goes well!
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