How To Create Your Personal Year End Review

The new year will be here in 5 minutes, so it’s time to sit down and review the previous year and the lessons we learned.

A Bullet Journal page idea that will help you with that is a year review spread.

As we’re getting ready for the holiday and starting to plan for new adventures in the new year, it’s important to ensure we are moving in the right direction.

This can be easily done by conducting your personal yearly review. By doing a yearly review, you can look back at the passing year and ensure you align with your priorities and values.

A yearly review, just like a monthly review Bullet Journal page, can help you realize where you’re going and if it’s really something you want or if you need to make some changes in your goals and resolutions.

Moreover, it’s also a great exercise for mindfulness and conscious living. It’s a way to slow down in that busy holiday season, reminisce about the great moments you had during the year, and appreciate all the people and events that shaped your year.

It also helps you to understand yourself more; you might be surprised by things that make you happy and things that don’t. A yearly review is also, in a way, a little self-discovery journey.

Make sure you review your year before you start on your yearly goals and resolution.

In this post, I gathered 30 questions you should ask yourself when creating a yearly review. Plus, a Plan With Me video for my own yearly review Bullet Journal spread, where I explain step by step how I created the spread. That way, you get an idea of how to include this into your Bullet Journal.

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What To Include In Your End Of Year Review

Just like with every spread, it’s good to know what you’ll write before you sit down to create it.

So here I got some ideas on what you might want to include in your year-end review page. You don’t have to include all or even any of these, but I hope it will inspire you to find the unique format that works for you.

General Overview

First, let’s look at the year as a whole and think of the most interesting things that happened.

• All memorable events/experiences of the year
• All pleasant moments of the year
• What happened each month
• Trips/travels
• New knowledge and skills learned this year
• How would you describe this year in one word
• Discovery of the year

Personal Development

Let’s look at how your personal growth this year. This should help you think again about who you want to be and reflect on why some things didn’t work out.

• New habits developed and which ones you couldn’t stick to (and why)
• What changed in you in one year
• 3 important questions you asked yourself
• What did you manage to get rid of this year
• What did you forget about this year

Entertainment and Recreation

Taking a break and just spending some time having fun is really important to stay at your best. So be sure to look back at these things, smile, and plan more of them for the next year!

• Best books of the year
• How did you have rest this year
• Best movies/tv shows
• New or the most impressive dish you ate
• Purchases of the year

Relationships

We are social creatures, and relationships in our lives are as important as anything else. Ask yourself a few questions about what happened with your relationships this year and how you can do better.

• New people you’ve met
• What happened and changed in your family relationships
• What is worth noting in your relationships with friends

Goals

Of course, no review can go without reflecting on your goals. Ask yourself these questions about the year to get a better idea of what the path of your goals should be for the upcoming one.

• Goals you managed to close
• Achievement of the year
• Career/professional growth
• Mistakes and disappointments of the year and what lessons they taught you

The Best Of The Year

And to sum up, go through all the best things you experienced this year.

• The funniest moment of the year
• The most precious moment of the year
• The biggest breakthrough of the year
• The strongest impression of the year
• The most important insights of the year
• The most important decisions of the year

Extra

If you want to go a little bit further, you can brainstorm a bit about what you want from the upcoming year. Here are a few questions that will help you to get in the right direction:

• What do you want to be a theme for the upcoming year
• What’s missing in your list of accomplishments for last year
• What were you unable to spend enough time on this year
• What things you’d like to discover, explore
• What skills you’d like to master
• What personal quality you’d like to improve
• What habits you’d like to develop/get rid of

I hope you’re now ready to do a complete yearly review in your Bullet Journal, so let’s just look at how you can create this spread.

Year End Recap Bullet Journal Page Ideas

There are many creative ways you can set up your yearly review page, and I gathered a few inspirations for you below.

I hope these will help you figure out what you want to do with your yearly review spread.

This yearly review is pretty simple but very effective. Barbara managed to include all the important things to remember.

Plus, the illustration definitely made it look super cute and creative.

This is such an interesting idea for a yearly review to make it month by month.

I like it because it helps you to find something fun that happened every month.

This spread is very right to business, but I like it. Less distraction, and it’s very clear what happened during the year.

A whole year on one page and still space for some fun doodles. Amazing page!

Jess always has such fun and creative Bullet Journal pages.

I like this format because you can set it up in advance and fill it out each month. That would definitely make it easier to make the final year review page; we all know how busy it gets as the year ends.

Such a cute spread! I love that there are so many different categories, and she played around so much with different fonts and headers.

If you want to create something similar but are not sure how – check my post on Creative And Simple Fonts that will definitely add some fun to your year-end review spread.

Here is great proof that year-end reviews don’t have to be complicated.

If you don’t have the time to create something artistic – just choose your categories and make a list. This spread looks great, and I love the match of red and green.

The goal for this page is to have a view of your year, not to create a highly decorative page unless you want to, of course.

One more spread where you have to add something that happened every month.

I like this format and how easy it is to set up and understand it all from just one glance.

This is such a beautiful and colorful spread. Just looking at it makes me smile and imagine what an amazing year it was for the creator.

This one is also divided by months rather than categories.

How To Create My Yearly Review Page

Finally, here is my take on the yearly review. 

Since it’s a very important page for future goals, as well as generally a nice spread to look back at, I thought I’d also make a Plan With Me video.

Now you should be completely ready to tackle your next year’s goals!

Meanwhile, let us know in the comments what the best memory you had from the last year was.

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And always remember! Keep Bullet Journaling, and don’t be a Blob!