2025 in a nutshell, and looking to 2026
Happy new year, reader!
Thank you for being on this newsletter journey with me, for inspiring me to keep writing, and for seeding different topic ideas every so often. Here’s to a great 2026!
I’m a big fan of rituals, and accordingly, the end of the year is always a time of certain patterns. I reflect on the year that’s ending, I write about it, I share it with friends, and then I set goals for the year ahead. In recent years, this has expanded in other ways—with one group of friends, we make bingo cards for ourselves with experiences we want to have in the upcoming year. With another friend, we each picked two habits we wanted to cultivate throughout the year and began to track them quantitatively.
I like my end of year ritual, not just because it’s cathartic and calming, but also because it captures a good snapshot in time. It allows me to look back across one, two, three or more years and see the trends in what’s changed versus what’s surprisingly static. Over the years, I’ve learned a lot about myself and the core values that keep coming up, year on year, no matter how much or little I prioritize them.
In looking back at 2025, I realized that my goals and priorities were quite similar to 2024. I wanted to focus on:
Simplicity in my life
Fitness
Stretching more
Stability—with a routine, eating well, keeping up with friends
Leaning on my community and asking for help
I graded myself on these, yielding 2 ❔ (didn’t really get to put to the test), 1 🟡 ( partway met) and 2 🟢 (successful). Given the success rate, I kept my goals for 2026 fairly similar, with the same themes.
I also want to share some of my other meta thoughts from reflecting:
Reflecting alone is just as valuable as reflecting in a group; the former probably leads to more clarity while the latter drives accountability. I like having a balance of both in my rituals and I really appreciate having friends who reflect with me or share their reflections.
For most working adults, it’s valuable to divide up some percentage of the reflection to focus on life outside of work and then life at work. The percentage varies a lot based on the person and can be telling. I actually reflect primarily on the role of my work in my life more broadly as part of this ritual; I feel that I reflect plenty on my work as part of my performance review process already.
As much as it feels silly to do it, referencing frameworks like SMART goals can be quite helpful in setting goals. The other thing I’ve learned from work that I always apply is setting goals where the drivers are within my control. If the drivers required to accomplish the goals are not in my hands, it’s likely a challenging goal to take on.
It’s okay to set some “easy wins” within a set of goals, so long as they balance out with a few “reach” goals.
Sometimes the highlights reel from the year features splashy moments that sound cool but didn’t actually feel as meaningful as the small, quiet moments. Having a mix of both matters—and moreover, finding the right proportion of the two.
For those of you who also reflect at the end of the year (or on birthdays perhaps?), I’d love to hear more about your rituals!