As the year ends for us all, it’s a natural time to look back an reflect on what has (or hasn’t) transpired. We often do this both personally and professionally even if not all companies are on a calendar review cycle. Because we are forced to go through these cycles annually in our professional lives, many people use a same construct to evaluate themselves personally: comparing their goals/expectations versus what they actually accomplished. Makes perfect sense, right? Right???
I would tell you that if you ONLY boil your year down to the old “planned versus accomplished” paradigm, you are doing yourself a disservice in how you reflect on your year/time/life. With so many folks dealing with career uncertainty, economic tumult, health challenges, and personal transitions, it is very easy to focus on the exact spot you stand instead of looking back over a year with a broader lens. That’s the intent of this narrative…to help you step back and see a broader view of your year and yourself. The next few paragraphs will probably feel like a “duh” for you as a reader…but if you are honest with yourself, I bet you can think of many more instances where you didn’t approach evaluation of yourself in this fashion. I am going to offer two key things to focus on as you reflect.
First, Id encourage you to think of your year as a journey – you started somewhere, but your “accomplishments” can be measured by where you are now, not your predetermined plan of where you wanted to go. On any journey, we are going to run into delays, construction, detours, police officers, traffic, stops – expected or not, and so on. If your only measure is binary (I must go from A to B in X time), then you will completely miss the progress you made both on your primary path, but also the myriad things you saw and learned along the way that may not have been on the original plan, but were nonetheless worthwhile. Think of all the skills (big and small) you acquired out of necessity throughout the year. Should they be discounted simply because they weren’t on some goal list at the beginning of the year? I say heck no! Some of those “detours” could be a foundation for your future without you having any intention of that being the case. Celebrate that growth instead of only focusing on the binary achievements that you expected of yourself in advance.
Beyond that basic point, I would expand in one key way. Even if you don’t reach the end of your ideal journey in a year AND you don’t gain one new skill (incredibly unlikely, but possible), you should still reflect on your progress in a positive way. Being 50% of the way to goal is a hell of a lot better than being 0% of the way there. You may be somewhat disappointed you didn’t get to 100%, and that is completely natural and fine, but don’t let that thinking disallow you from celebrating the clear progress you did make.
Second, Id encourage you to evaluate yourself with a lens of “what got me here won’t get me there”. The point: can you identify places where you changed tactics/strategy to change your trajectory on a thing in your life? To put this into the journey analogy, think of a trip to a rural area in Europe – it’s going to require a flight, a train, a boat, a car, your feet, and maybe 1-3 other forms of transportation. At any point in the process, what got you to one place likely won’t get you to the next; you have to switch transportation types to progress on the journey. That is life – often, what got you here won’t get you there. The beauty in our individual journeys is that we get to decide when what worked for us up to point is no longer how we want to go forward. We figuratively can switch from the train (inflexible in both route and timing) to a car (completely up to us with flexibility based on the terrain/roads and timing). Or vice versa!
So beyond telling sharing an idea on how you can evaluate yourself differently, it seems only fair that I share my thoughts. Reflecting on my year, am I where I thought Id be 12 months ago? No. There is a pretty wide variation in plan versus outcome. Am I upset about this or feel like I failed because I didn’t hit my desired endpoint. Also, a resounding no.
Career wise, I started the year on a health related sabbatical and hoped to get back into work that aligned with my skills, values, and outlook. I was fortunate to land a role that checked some of the boxes. That being said, it doesn’t check them all – which very few roles will. Did I absolutely nail it and complete my annual journey as designed? No. But definite progress was made from this time last year – progress I am pleased with and feel good about. In that role, Ive pivoted from where I had been focusing from a strategist and high level leader to more of subject matter expert and tactician. Additionally I went from building large human resource-development infrastructures to more intimate 1:1 mentoring for a small number of folks. What got me to the beginning of the year wasn’t going to get me to the end of the year. We’ll call this a passing grade – in school terms it’s a B- not an A, but not a failure either, but the biggest point is that I TOOK AND FINISHED THE COURSE AND KNOW MORE TODAY THAN I DID BEFORE.
Personally, I long ago abandoned having a defined “plan” for the year…I learned to let waves of life take me where they will. So while I can’t say I ended up where my plan dictated, I can say I ended up somewhere different than both where I started and where I would have expected. While some things dramatically changed for the better through the year, just as many things stayed the same or went the wrong direction. Measuring “progress” is harder on this front – but some ground was given, some ground was made so while I may not have moved linearly forward a lot, I am in a different place. We’ll think of this journey more like a random road trip as I don’t really have a destination in mind any more, but would like to get out and enjoy the trip. To that end, the biggest change for me this year was that: I did get to see the sites – several concerts, sporting events, new locations, etc. But, as the year winds down I find myself in a slightly different yet similar position in life, uncertain and unsettled, encouraging me to remember next year, what got me here won’t get me there in my personal life. We’ll call this just barely passing – in school terms it’s a C not an F, but just did enough to not repeat the course, but the biggest point is that I TOOK AND FINISHED THE COURSE AND KNOW MORE TODAY THAN I DID BEFORE.
Overall, regardless of our expectations, we are in a different place today than we were a year ago. Our actions are the measure of our progress, either large or small. Each of you gets to decide how you perceive that, but Id encourage you to give yourself some grace – look for the progress/learning/growth and positive changes you made (or learning from the negative changes), with an eye on what that could mean for your future. Sure, reading the above self reflection (a B- and C) doesn’t seem like a great year…but those grades signify that I did make progress and changes, am still learning, and trying as opposed to sitting still. If you can do the same assessment of progress on your individual path, you’ll immediately feel better about your situation and likely will start to see a different path forward for the next leg of your journey since what got you here won’t get you there.
View from the Middle 