Reflection Frameworks

The week between Christmas and New Year’s Day is typically a change of pace for most people – even if they don’t go on vacation – and a socially acceptable time to reflect and make large changes in your life. I am intentional about goal-setting and have found that having a framework – a simple set of questions – to guide the reflections helps.

Here are a few ways to help you reflect on 2016 and plan for the new year.

Reflection Frameworks

#1 Todd Henry’s “Questions for 2017″

• What do I want to experience?
• Where do I want to go?
• What do I want to learn?
• How do I want to change?

#2 Agile Development Process Improvement Questions

• What should we start doing?
• What’s something new we should add?
• What should we stop doing?
• What’s something we’re doing that we don’t need to do anymore?
• What should we continue doing?
• What are we already doing that’s going well?

#3 “If I took it seriously” exercise

This is one I made up and use in my yearly retreats; for each role in your life (father, husband, employee, etc.) ask yourself:

What would it look like if I took this completely seriously?

This provides a good list of actions you can take to get a little better at each role, and it helps you focus and prioritize certain roles over others.

#5 Morning Journal Questions, but for the entire year.

Ask yourself the daily questions, but apply them to the entire year:

• I am grateful for ____ [3 things].
• What would make 2017 great? [3 things]
• Three Amazing Things that happened in 2016. [3 things]
• How could I have made 2016 better?

Finally, some extra inspiration and some humor about resolutions. Good luck!