How do I reflect on the past year?
By No Rush · Updated November 3, 2026
The short answer
Look at what you did, more than at how the year felt. Open your calendar or your photos and go month by month. Note what happened, and how long it took. People tend to plan from the plan itself and forget how long things took last time. Looking back gives you those numbers for next year.
What are some good questions to reflect on at the end of the year?
Ask about things that happened. They give you more to work with than questions about who you are. When did you do something for the first time this year? Which task dragged on far longer than you expected? What did you keep at without anyone pushing you? And which plan did you let go of, and why? Write the answers down for when you plan next year.
Does writing about your year help?
A little, on average. Joanne Frattaroli brought together 146 randomized studies in which people wrote about something that was on their mind. Writing helped slightly, with big differences between studies. It tends to help more when you write about things you did. So a list of what happened each month is a better start than a page about how the year felt.
How does looking back help me plan next year?
It shows you how long things take you. In five studies, Roger Buehler, Dale Griffin and Michael Ross found that people expect their own tasks to take less time than they do. Most of the students finished their thesis later than they had predicted. They looked at their plan, and not at how long similar tasks had taken them before. Your past year tells you exactly that.
Why does the end of the year make me want to look back?
Because a date like that feels like a line between an old and a new period. Hengchen Dai, Katherine Milkman and Jason Riis found that people start on goals more often after such moments, like a new year, a new month or a birthday. If the year was heavy, keep the look back short. One line per month is enough to plan from.
In the No Rush app
When you plan a step, the app asks what you think will happen and how you'd notice you were wrong. Afterwards it asks whether your prediction came true and puts your answer next to what you wrote beforehand. There is no diary you have to keep.
No Rush app
An iPhone app for people who feel stuck. It sets out one small next step at a time and tells you why that one. It is not therapy.
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Sources
- Buehler, Griffin & Ross (1994). Exploring the "planning fallacy": why people underestimate their task completion times. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67(3), 366-381. doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.67.3.366
- Frattaroli (2006). Experimental disclosure and its moderators: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(6), 823-865. doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.6.823
- Dai, Milkman & Riis (2014). The fresh start effect: Temporal landmarks motivate aspirational behavior. Management Science, 60(10), 2563-2582. doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2014.1901
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