How to take stock of the year that was

📅 As we mentioned way back in February, the future’s coming sooner than you think.
Issue #229: the “new rules” of media + a cooking tip

In T-15 days it will be 2025. Years are artificial, human-created markers of time, but they serve a purpose — they give life shape.

I try to take some time during “dead week” (the week between Christmas and New Year’s) to figure out where I’m going and what I can do better. On Friday, I shared leadership coach Tutti Taygerly’s year-end questionnaire, which is basically a list of journaling prompts. A few: Which relationships of yours grew the most this year? Where did you build unexpected trust? Which behaviors have you let go of?

Inspired by that, I went looking for more succinct ways to take stock of your year. Rochelle Deans suggests looking back through wherever you naturally document your life (texts, sent emails, posts to your social media platform of choice, your photos app) and identifying highlights and lowlights.

Or, if you want a mnemonic, business strategist Dev Singh has a dead-simple acronym, the Four Ls:

• Loved: When did you feel most alive this year? What did you genuinely enjoy?
• Longed: What did you want this year? What didn’t materialize? What disappointed you?
• Loathed: What did you hate? What felt like a waste of time?
• Lessons: What did you learn? What do you still have to learn?

Lastly, in a Medium story from a few years back, executive coach Andrea Mignolo encouraged everyone to write a letter for yourself to read a year from now (i.e., at the end of 2025). There’s really no wrong way to write this. You can tell your future self what you’re committed to, excited about, or nervous about. Seal it up and don’t open it until this time next year.

Whatever your end-of-year ritual (or none), remember: How you end the year is how the next one begins.

— Harris Sockel

📖 2 of my open tabs

• The new rules of media: Most people are less obsessed with “news” and “newness” than journalists think. (One Thing)
• A response to last Wednesday’s issue on ChatGPT’s favorite words, which should really be a Medium post of its own: William Bennett, who taught a course on sci-fi at Tufts, articulates ChatGPT’s Achilles heel better than I could. GPT fails at subtext because subtext depends on “being aware of other selves,” or creating a “we” situation where both you and I have something unspoken at stake.

🥚 Your daily dose of practical wisdom

To boil eggs whose shells slide off elegantly, please for the love of breakfast listen to J. Kenji Lopez Alt, who’s done more tests on egg boiling than anyone. Gently nestle them into about one inch of boiling water and leave them there, lid on, for nine minutes. (This changed my life. I’d been doing it wrong for years.)

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Edited and produced by Scott Lamb & Carly Rose Gillis

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