A More Effective Review of 2023

If you’ve been a reader for over a year, then you’ve seen my yearly review process; ask some questions, think, and then reply. This year it’s different. I’ve got a deeper process to get more effective and usable answers.

Let me just say from the start–I hate qualifiers like this–the systems I’ve developed and processes I follow work for me. I share them as is. I’m not sure if they’ll work for you, that’s for you decide. It’s not my responsibility to make them universal or applicable to more than just myself. I’m also not tech support for any of this, but I’m not a total a-hole about it; if you have a question about how I’m doing what I’m doing with what I’m doing it, I’ll try to answer it, but no promises on you liking the answer. Buy me a coffee and I’m more likely to help 😉

In the past

It was three questions, you can see them *here*, not repeating them.

What’s different?

Everything! Seriously!

New process involves a little effort every day for the whole year. Yes, I’ve kept up my business journal for a whole year. No, I didn’t figure out how to record some of the more useful information until December. However, I’m now doing that so will have an even more effective review of 2024!

Looking back through highlights and monthly summaries

A literal review of the year’s journal entries, glancing over my financials, and making sure that everything is fresh in my mind. Once I’m confident that I have a fairly clear picture, especially for the things that happened at the start of last year, I can begin.

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The first new thing this year is that I have a new series of questions which dig much deeper into more aspects of my life and my art practice. There are something like 45 of them. I strive to write at least one well considered, effective paragraph to answer each one. The better I apply myself to this part of the review, the more effective it will be.

First up are some personal questions. Remember, this isn’t for anyone else to see, judge, or review. This is all for me (or you if you’re doing it) so I need to be completely honest even if it stings a bit.

After that bit of gruel deep, honest work, I jump right into the real talk about how my business did vs how I planned it to go. Did I actually accomplish my BFGs (Big Fucking Goals)?

The next task is to review my Areas of Life (AOLs). I use these to plan the BFGs and the initiatives and projects which support them. My review process as well as the tracking systems have clearly expanded beyond just my art business, which is why I’m including all of it. They’re not separate things. (btw, “META” is what I call my main Obsidian vault, which I use to store, track, and manage so much of the inputs, projects, tasks, and goals in my life)

After reviewing and looking into each of the AOLs, it’s time get to the elephant in the room, and what this site focuses on: the art practice. Most of the questions in my review are for this part.

Now it’s onto the business and marketing side of things. I’m looking at income streams, exhibition stats/goals/feelings, and also doing year-to-year comparisons to see if I’m progressing in the direction I want based on my priorities. These questions help identify and hone those priorities, which really help toward the end of the review when it’s time to put all this reflection and introspection into creating the plan for the new year.

A simple, but brutally honest SWOT chart is up next. I did it this way because 1) it visually breaks up a monotonous list of questions and 2) SWOTs can be really effective at getting information about something specific.

Finally it’s time to look at reasons I might not have met all the goals, or done all the things I wanted. Negative beliefs and self-talk can be a big obstacle, so it’s important to check them, along with some related biases. It’s the only way to be confident that you’re being more objective and honest about this whole process, and where you actually are in your life vs where you think you are and where you planned to be. Difficult work like this is often avoided because it’s so brutal and eye-opening. Many people avoid it not because they don’t want to know where they actually stand, but because they fear the work this process will identify them still needing to do. This uncovered work is usually the tough stuff, the deep stuff, and all the things we were trying to avoid by doing so much surface-level stuff that allowed us to fool ourselves into thinking we were doing all the things we needed to do to get to where we want to be. Silly us.

After all of that work, all those questions, perhaps some tears, and in my case, some colorful language, it’s time to plan for the next year. Don’t be afraid to go back through and add additional stuff to the questions above as it comes to mind. This process shook a lot of stuff loose for me, and I was constantly going back like “and another thing!”

The answers to the Planning Ahead section provided me with a great sense of clarity. It allowed me to formulate the BFGs for 2024 in the various areas of my life, including my art practice.

These questions, while a lot to do, are incredible at getting me a clear wide-view picture of how I did this past year, how effective I was at it all, and what I want to accomplish in the new year as well as the lessons I learned along the way that will help get me there.

The rest of this series of articles will dive deeper into what I do with this information, and more specifically, how I use Obsidian to do it.