Generally I’m not a person who checks in with goals more than once a month for my media backlogs. But for some reason (thanks algorithm!) I came across a video from struthless on Youtube last month about a mid-year review and thought, “yeah, I should add this into my mix too!”
Of course, when he posted that video June had barely begun, and so I sat on the idea until, you guessed it, this week. But now there is actually 6 months of backlog in 2021 to go through, plus the bonus of seeing how July is going and having two weeks to get that back on track because… maybe some things haven’t lived up to what the me of June 30th was trying to achieve.
When it comes to Yearly Reviews, the last two years I’ve been a fan of YearCompass. Last year I came across Suzanne Conway’s Unravel Your Year before the year ended and did that as well. So I brought out the pdfs of those (I use my Galaxy tablet for writing on pdfs so I don’t have tons of paper waste with these reviews, but if you have a bullet journal or grid journal you’re working with, that also works. Or if you’re a iPad Pro person!), and looked them over before going into the tips in struthless’ video, followed by the tips in blissbean’s recent mid-year review video. Both struthless and blissbean have worksheets to follow along with, if that’s of interest to you. But I went off of whatever they mentioned in the video. I did have an error getting the struthless worksheet, but successfully downloaded blissbean’s for use next year.
It turns out a lot of what I wrote down as hoped for in 2020’s YearCompass and Unravel Your Year didn’t turn out, since my mindset in July is drastically different than it was in December. That’s in terms of where I expected to see myself. Yet looking back at how determined and hopeful I sound in my writing gave me the confidence to turn this year around in the latter half. And that is not to say that this year went terribly – looking over all the things I’ve done and even the concrete goals that I set out for this year that did get accomplished is a sizable pile that is commendable considering the seasonal low points I’ve been having. But I think it also shows how struthless’ point of creating your systems for the lowest energy version of yourself is really helpful since even when I was not in the mood to check things off or do things or even sit for an hour or two to watch something… things still got done, somehow. Which even I’m impressed by! It’s not an easy way to go about it.
But now I have a retooled idea of what I want to achieve for the rest of the year. Now I can double down on goals that should have been started by now and refine other goals that might not be possible or realistic now. That wouldn’t have been possible if I stuck to my monthly check-ins, because the scope is so much smaller, and looking over what I was going for in February is so completely different than even May. I’m glad I didn’t wait until December to see how far away from me my year became.
Something I learned from the years I was using the Panda Planner system (which I still highly recommend for people looking into paper planner systems. I am not sponsored by at all by them, it’s just my preferred paper planner!) is that looking back on concrete failures is not helpful. Instead, you should focus on what insights you can spot to avoid those failures in the future. You learn from mistakes, not successes. If you want to be overtly positive/big brain about it, you should look to fail more often, if only to be an expert! But seriously, looking at the goals I didn’t hit only exposes how those areas of my life were not in focus and haven’t been for a while. And I just need to readjust my priorities so I can win in those areas as well. Or decide that truthfully that’s never going to be a priority and stop focusing on that area of my life for the time being, but honestly my whole being goes against that because I think you should always be doing some sort of advancement in every area of your life. You can’t focus on all the plates all the time, but they should at least be spinning!
So here’s some highlights from the last half of 2021:
• Got through most of my movie queues on streaming services
• Almost finished steam backlog (partly due to Mac OS issues with Catalina, partly due to some games I bought just not being for me, Twitch has worked out well in this respect)
• Finally read Good Omens, first recced to me in 2010!
• Bought a new mattress!
• Started exercising 3 times a week, now up to 6 times a week
• Resolved my back pain issues (partly the mattress, exercise, and also coccyx pillows)
• Lost 15 pounds, have not been this light since 2018
• Finished second round of oral surgery
• Bought a car!
And things I need to focus more on:
• Projects around the house (restuffing the sofa back, throw pillows, updating my desk setup)
• Starting and sticking to a writing routine
• Learning basic mechanics for my new car (this was a goal from last year…)
• Career development before I end up paying another year for a service I don’t need for more than one
• I am behind by 5 TV shows and 9 games on my media goals, which isn’t the end of the world, but usually I ignore books and games the most, so I guess Twitch is working, and reading is on an uptick
Additionally, I want to keep up with my monthly goals so I will be back in two weeks to see how July ended and how to start August on a high note. See you then!
