📅 How to Start Writing Your 2023 Annual Report Today

Ritual 01: Templates, Tools and Time Saving Tips for Documenting your Impact

Jan 18, 2023

With a new year, it feels like a magical opportunity to reset and improve processes for the future. But, this mindset doesn’t need to be limited to January. To keep that spirit going all year long, I’m starting a new series to share:

The Switchboard’s Rituals — communications intentions with the tools to support you accomplishing them.

By elevating a routine to a ritual — even if it’s only for 15 minutes — you can transform moments from ordinary to remarkable, according to research by Casper Ter Kuile in “The Power of Ritual: Turning Everyday Activities into Soulful Practices.” To learn more about this practice, take a look back at a book report I wrote on this topic.

What’s a new ritual you want to abide by this year?

Reply to this email or comment below with what’s on your wish list. Your recommendations could shape future rituals and tools that I feature.

⭐ What’s Important to Track

🎯#1 Set Goals

To reflect on your year, set goals or as the startup world calls them — objectives and key results. During this process, ask yourself what you hope to achieve and the ways you will measure success. Here are three great resources to support this process:

📊#2 Define Your Metrics to Track

When looking back at the year, what do you want to measure? Thinking of this in advance will help set you up for success all year long. There’s no magic button that can generate a report of your year. A lot of this reflection is manual — looking through your calendar, notes, meetings, social posts and more.

However, there are a few tools to make it slightly more automatic. The team at Doist, a project management tool, compiled this list of 19 (Mostly) Free Tools for Tracking Everything — it’s great for apps that can help you create charts of the time you’ve spent reading, working out and other measurable moments.

🔮#3 Set Your Questions

Think about what you want to reflect upon and list the questions now so that you can be mindful of these specific themes. There are many categories to consider — work projects, networking, wellness and learning to name a few.

Here are Annual Reviews with introspective questions:

📝 #4 Hack a Template

There are great resources that already exist. Find one that you like and customize it to work well for your needs, such as including key stats from the metrics you’re tracking. Here are several templates and playbooks for approaching the process:

⏳ How To Start this Ritual Today

✏️ #1 Start Your Documentation

Documentation has become even more important in our async and remote work. It’s an art and a discipline to keep up with this, but try to make it a habit. Jacob Bank, Founder of Relay emphasized its importance in the future of the ways we work:

“There will be an increased focus on asynchronous communication and effective documentation, if you're working across time zones or not in the physical office. It will force us to be more disciplined in how we document which could actually improve efficiency and institutional wisdom.”

📝 #2 Create Your Master “Doc”

Now that you’re writing everything down, create a central resource for all your notes. Make it a place you visit daily. Here are a few tools for creating your “Master Document:”

Notebook: If you prefer pen and paper, then write your notes down in an ordinary notebook or beautiful book.
Document: There are basic doc templates you can create with headings and a table of contents for easy navigation. But, there are many other formats to consider such as Notion or Coda.
Jeremy Caplan
of
Wonder Tools
offers great new options in his newsletter for different tools to try and reviews them for you.
Spreadsheet: Do you like sorting and filtering? Then, this format is the best option with traditional Excel, Sheets or tools like Airtable for advanced databases.
Presentation Deck: If you like color and design incorporated into your resource, consider Canva which offers many templates for the non-designer to customize.

Title your doc with a name that makes you want to open it often. Consider a “Scrapbook” which Brie Wolfson, Founder of Constellate, recommends creating and updating often:

“My favorite is definitely the scrapbook of things I’m proud of! This is exactly what it sounds like; a collection of things I’m proud of. It’s a running list and hodgepodge of formats (screenshots, emails, pings, feedback, etc.) with no real organizational structure.
Mostly because it’s such a joy to look back at. Often, I’ll end the day or the week thinking, what did I even do!? This can lead me to be a little hard on myself or try to build in more structure to optimize my time or work harder. But when I open this file, I mostly get filled with the feeling of “you’re doing alright, Brie. Keep going.” And that’s a nice feeling (especially when you’re a team of 1).”

⏰ #3 Create Meeting Buffers

After a meeting, it’s helpful to schedule time to debrief for yourself or just take a breath, get some water or use the bathroom. If you go the debrief route, take note of what were the major takeaways — what did you learn, who did you meet and what do you need to do next? Add this to your ongoing doc so that it’s easy to review.

🗓️ #4 Schedule Time on Your Calendar

Make it a ritual to review your time, meetings and learnings. Set up a cadence that works for you. Try to do it each week so you can remember more. Block off a recurring calendar invite with yourself for 30 minutes. Treat it as sacred as a meeting with a leader.

Find a day and time that works for consistency. I recommend Friday afternoons or Monday mornings to focus on this ritual. If it’s not possible to do a weekly recap, try for monthly or quarterly — this will help you at the end.

🌟Bonus

🎨 Track What Inspires You

Over the course of the year, take note of what topics, conversations, articles, books (or titles of books!), social media and more capture your curiosity. This can be done in your doc for your annual report or use a web tool for online highlighting such as Readwise Reader or follow Marie Poulin’s method. Ultimately, when you look back at what’s listed here, it will help you shape and shift your future year.

I hope these tips are helpful for you to set a ritual for writing your year-end report now. Please share any suggestions or resources that have helped you.

☎️ The Switchboard Exchange

I’m adding this new monthly footer section with a round-up of intriguing articles, podcasts, posts and more content that might interest you. Let me know what you think of what’s below and if it resonated by replying to this email.

The Smithsonian Will Restore Hundreds of the World’s Oldest Sound Recordings. These sounds bring to life the voice of Alexander Graham Bell and his researchers between 1881 and 1892. Learn More.
How to manage the homework of adulthood, from paperwork to repairs. Columbia Law School Professor Elizabeth wrote a book about how to successfully juggle administrative tasks. Learn More.
8th Grader invents new measuring cups. This proud dad posted about his son who created his own measuring cups to clarify how much of each ingredient is needed. Read More.
The 30 Best Pieces of Advice for Entrepreneurs in 2022. First Round Review highlights its most popular content that’s relevant for any career. Read More.

From the Archive: Executive Coach Mansi Goel shares why she choose wonder. Read More.

💌 Will we see you at our first workshop on Jan. 31st? Register for Define Your Values.

Thank you for reading The Switchboard. ☎️ Every edition is personally curated by me — Julia Levy. Learn more about why I write. Review the Index of past posts.

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