Complaints about YearCompass

I have just finished a mid-year YearCompass. YearCompass is a free booklet that helps you reflect on the year and plan the next one. It’s something you fill out, digitally or on paper, when your end-of-year resolution arrives.

I’ve been doing it for a while, and I started to feel frustrated whenever I return to it.

Something about how I approach the task is wrong. A subtle thing dings in my head. I’m not quite sure what it is. The task feels mechanical, unlike the annual review inspired by Tiago Forte I was also doing for some time.

The issue is that I have to be in the right mood to add something to the booklet. Which is not always true. Sometimes in the middle of a not-so-ordinary day, when something is happening in my life, I notice something good I have to put there, but the paper is not nearby, and when I’m actually near the paper, I’m not in the right mood to write honestly; I’m more annoyed by the task than drawn into it, so my thoughts never start flowing.

It’s not the problem with the booklet, but with my preparation. A booklet is only a tool designed for millions of people to use in their own way. Some people sketch in it; others put photographs in it, write songs, haikus, poems, and something I cannot even imagine.

This blog post has started as a comprehensive critique of the YearCompass approach, but as I was going through my complaints, I found that the issue is not the booklet itself, but my own approach to filling it.

I decided to put my complaints aside for now. I tracked all the places where the process feels mechanical, but instead of dumping them all out here, I will try to find my own way of using the tool.

But one thing is definite for me: instead of coming to the YearCompass empty-headed, I should prepare better and collect dates, names, numbers, and photographs beforehand, as I will when I present something to another person.

The booklet is where I assemble my “report”, not where I desperately try to remember it.

And the section called “A better tomorrow”?

I skipped it.