How to Run a Personal Annual Review for 2026

TL;DR

Reflect on the past year before setting new goals, because experience becomes useful only when its lessons are examined. Review your calendar, identify changed beliefs, energy sources, energy drains, boat anchors, fear-based avoidance, successes, and failures, then synthesize three to ten lessons that can guide your priorities and actions in 2026.

Transcript

Today's episode is why you're failing to achieve your goals and how we can fix it. I brought on my friend Sahill Bloom, New York Times bestselling author, has invested in 100 companies because 2026, the new year is coming. And most people drift into a new year without any real clarity. So, we're doing a different type of episode today. We're walkin... Read More

Key Insights

• Reflection is what converts experience into usable learning. Simply completing another year does not automatically improve future decisions, so the annual review extracts information from 2025 before goals, systems, and priorities are established for 2026.
• The first review question is what you changed your mind about. Changed beliefs indicate that new evidence, experiences, or perspectives updated how you think, behave, work, or approach relationships, making them useful markers of growth and reinvention.
• A calendar is a practical tool for reconstructing your earlier mindset. Reviewing January activities, opportunities, habits, and relationships helps you remember who you were, while moments that now feel uncomfortable can reveal beliefs and behaviors you have outgrown.
• Energy is an important indicator of where your outcomes may improve. Separately identifying activities and relationships that created energy, then those that drained it, provides evidence for deciding what deserves more or less space in the coming year.
• Boat anchors are hidden sources of drag in life or work. Naming them makes it possible to recognize the commitments, circumstances, or relationships that have been holding back progress instead of allowing that resistance to remain vague.
• Fear is capable of shaping decisions through avoided action. Asking what you did not do because of fear surfaces opportunities or changes that were never attempted, creating a clearer picture of where hesitation influenced the year.
• Greatest hits and worst misses are evidence that should be examined for causes. Looking beyond the outcomes to understand why successes worked and why failures occurred turns both positive and negative experiences into practical guidance.
• The final step is synthesizing three to ten lessons from the review. These conclusions consolidate observations from all seven questions into a manageable set of insights that can inform priorities, behavior, and planning throughout 2026.

Questions & Answers

Q: How do you conduct a personal annual review?

Conduct a personal annual review by answering seven questions on paper: what you changed your mind about, what created energy, what drained energy, what acted as a boat anchor, what fear prevented you from doing, what your greatest hits and worst misses were and why, and what you learned. Finish by synthesizing three to ten lessons for the next year.

Q: Why should you reflect before setting goals for 2026?

Reflection should come before goal setting because merely experiencing a year does not automatically produce learning. The most relevant information for planning 2026 comes from what happened during 2025. Examining that evidence helps you carry forward useful lessons, clarify priorities, and build goals and systems around observed patterns instead of drifting into the year without direction.

Q: How can a calendar help with an annual review?

A calendar can recreate the context that is difficult to recall from memory alone. Review weeks from the beginning of 2025 and examine your activities, opportunities, habits, behaviors, and the people receiving your time. Then compare that earlier version of yourself with your current perspective. What now feels uncomfortable or misguided can reveal meaningful changes in your thinking.

Q: What should you ask when reviewing changed beliefs?

Ask what you changed your mind about during the year, both professionally and personally. Consider earlier habits, assumptions, behaviors, relationships, and approaches to work. The goal is not to prove that your earlier position was foolish. It is to identify where new information or experience updated your thinking and led to genuine growth or reinvention.

Q: How do you identify what creates and drains energy?

Review the activities, opportunities, and relationships recorded throughout your year, then separate them into those that created energy and those that drained it. This comparison helps expose patterns that broad memories may conceal. Because outcomes tend to follow energy, the findings can guide which commitments deserve greater attention and which sources of depletion should receive less space.

Q: What are boat anchors in a personal annual review?

Boat anchors are the hidden sources of drag that held you back during the year. The annual review treats them as a separate category because an obstacle can constrain progress even when it is not an obvious failure. Naming these anchors makes the resistance visible and allows it to inform how you clean up priorities and structure the year ahead.

Q: How should fear be examined during an annual review?

Ask what you did not do because of fear. Focus on actions, opportunities, or changes that remained unattempted, rather than limiting the review to things that produced visible results. This question reveals how hesitation affected the year and identifies areas where fear, rather than a deliberate priority or informed conclusion, may have determined your behavior.

Q: How do you learn from greatest hits and worst misses?

List the year's greatest hits and worst misses, then examine why each result occurred. Successes show which choices, behaviors, or conditions supported a positive outcome, while misses reveal where an approach failed or fell short. Studying the reasons behind both categories creates more useful guidance than merely celebrating achievements or regretting disappointments without analyzing them.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• The personal annual review begins with reflection rather than immediate goal setting. Its purpose is to extract useful information from 2025 before planning 2026. Seven structured questions examine changed beliefs, energy patterns, hidden obstacles, fear, successes, failures, and lessons, producing a clearer foundation for future priorities and decisions.

• The calendar serves as a practical record of past behavior. Reviewing early weeks of 2025 can reveal activities, relationships, habits, and assumptions that no longer fit. Feelings of discomfort or embarrassment about an earlier version of yourself can help identify where your thinking changed and where genuine reinvention occurred.

• The final objective is a plan grounded in evidence from lived experience. By identifying what created or drained energy, naming boat anchors, examining actions avoided because of fear, and analyzing greatest hits and worst misses, you can synthesize three to ten lessons and carry them deliberately into 2026.