I´m writing these lines on the last day of 2023, and by the time you read them, it will probably be 2024, Happy New Year!

This is the time of the year when we usually take stock of the year just gone, and it´s also a good moment to set goals (not resolutions) for the new year starting.

How did 2023 go for you?

And how would you like 2024 to be?

That yearly review can be done in a variety of ways; today, I´m bringing you a few of the many options for retrospectives used in the Scrummethodology, very popular in software development, where the whole team periodically takes time to pause, assess how things are going, and propose ways to keep improving.

• Start, stop, continue: this is a pretty standard one. You can write three columns with things you want to start doing (new habits, goals, etc.), things you want to stop doing (or want to get rid of because they went badly for you), and things that went well for you and want to keep doing.
• "If it was...": this one is about finding a metaphor to represent the period of time under review. If 2023 was a movie (or a book, a TV series, a game, a place, a meme...) which one would it be, and why? And which one would you like 2024 to be?
• Six thinking hats: this is one of my favourites, it´s a bit longer and more detailed than the other two. The idea here is to review what happened from six different perspectives, as if told by six different people, each wearing a different coloured hat. Some ways of thinking will come more naturally to you, and some others will be more challenging, but the beauty of it is that you´ll come out at the end with a much wider and richer view of the events. These are the six hats:
  • Blue- represents process and organization, it´s the starting point. Here, you can define the details of what you´re planning to review, what you´ll focus on, how much time you´ll spend, etc.
  • White- represents facts, data, numbers... What has happened during these last twelve months? Write it down in the most objective way possible, without adding judgement or feeling.
  • Yellow- represents the positive side. What went well during the year? What got you excited? What are you grateful for?
  • Black- represents the negative side. What didn´t go well? What did you find hard during the year? What difficulties did you encounter?
  • Red- represents emotions. How have you feeling during this time? What events have brought you joy, sadness, surprise, anger or disappointment? What agreements and disagreements have you encountered?
  • Green- represents creativity, new ideas, possibilities... What would you like to change in this year that´s now starting? And how can you approach that change?

You can modify any of these options, or make up your own; the more creative, the better. What matters is creating that space for your own reflection and planning. But in order for this to be effective, it has to be documented in writing, so I encourage you to grab pen and paper, pencils, post-it notes, coloured pens and anything else you can think of to make it fun!

By the way, new year also means new things in BinaryWords: those of you receiving my weekly article via email will have seen a fresh newsletter format, much nicer than the previous one. And if you´re not receiving it yet, what are you waiting for? You can follow this link to subscribe to the mailing list.