Cleaning Your Closet: Four Questions to Fuel Your Year in Review

Photo by Michelle Boyd

When I moved from Chicago to Portland three years ago, I was ruthless about throwing stuff out. We were reducing our living space by half. I was leaving my comfy university job and starting InkWell. And I was ready to leave the person I’d been behind and start all over.
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All except two 11x17 cardboard boxes, filled with—honestly—I don’t know what. Every time I tried to go through them, all I could see were decisions I wasn’t ready to make. So I taped up the boxes and threw them in the moving van, justifying it by telling myself I couldn’t yet think clearly about what I wanted to keep. When we arrived in Portland, right before the holidays, I stuck them in a closet and promised myself I’d sort through them in the New Year.

It’s nearly three years later, and of course, those two boxes are still tucked away in the closet. I came upon them last week during another minimizing spree, determined to create more breathing room in my storage space and my life.

This kind of reflect-and-eject thing is pretty normal for me at this time of year. When the semester winds down and the winter break approaches, I tend to wander around our apartment, giving half my attention to whatever I’m doing, while the other half ruminates on how my year went. And I’m not the only one. The Year in Review is everywhere you look this time of year, whether it’s about writing productivity, who died, or what 45 did during his first year in office. Instead of just barreling through the season, we have this rare opportunity to slow down, take our boxes out of the closet, and sift through their contents to decide what we want to keep, and what we need to get rid of.

The problem for scholars though, is that the way we do the Year in Review can be ineffective, if not downright demoralizing. That’s because the typical academic version begins and ends with a list of professional accomplishments—this many chapters completed, manuscripts submitted, defenses overseen, talks given, etc. This approach turns the Year in Review into a calculation rather than a reflection. We tote up how much we got done this year and use that to try to figure out what to put on next year’s to do list.
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But if we focus on how much we got done, our Year in Review devolves into either a pat on the back, or a proving ground. And when you’re trying to discern what’s important in life, you can’t do it if you’re trying to show someone—your competitors, your admirers, yourself—how capable and accomplished you are.

At its core, the Year in Review is a private, reflective moment. Its purpose is to help you recognize what path you’ve been walking for the last 12 months, and whether or not you need to change course. That kind of understanding cannot be revealed through unmitigated self-celebration. Nor is it fostered by an accounting of your professional productivity.

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If you’re looking for a way to make your Year in Review more helpful, consider grounding it in questions about the significance of your actions rather than the magnitude of your accomplishments. Using four short but meaty questions can help you do so.

1. What experiences from the last year stand out in your mind? Notice that this question asks you to think about what you went through, not what you got done. Of course, accomplishments are going to come to mind (see my list below) and that’s perfectly fine. More important is the way this question prompts you to think through the things that truly engaged you. An easy way to answer this question is to go through your calendar for the last year and make a short, bulleted list of the most memorable events you participated in.​
2. What did you learn as a result of these experiences? Once you’ve jogged your memory about what was important about last year, your next step is to contemplate how you have changed or grown because of what you’ve done. You can do this for each of the experiences on your list. Or you can confine yourself to the three most significant. The idea is that whatever you did, you did because you thought it would enhance your life in some way. This question prompts you to consider how true that was.
3. What did you have to sacrifice in order to have that experience, and was it worth what you had to give up? Every minute we have in this life has a cost associated with it. To get what we want, we sometimes give up money, sure. But we also give up time with our kids. Physical health. Political capital and familial goodwill. Opportunities for publication or publicity. Our understanding of the life we lived this year is deepened when we consider what tradeoffs we’ve made and whether we’d make them again.
4. What do you want to keep from that experience, and what are you ready to let go of? This is the question that takes us from one year to the next. Sure, all this stuff happened—great. Now what? Do you need to build memorials to it? Enshrine it in your daily routines so it becomes an unthinking habit? Or do you need to kill it off? To pry yourself from its grip so you can make your next move? This question helps you set your intentions for next year—specifying how the things you’ve already been through can help with what you have yet to do. Together, these four questions are a bridge you can build to take you from this year to the next.

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To illustrate the power of these questions, here’s an example from my own Year in Review. A partial list of the things that stand out in my mind when I think about 2017 would look like this:

• I led three writing retreats using a new group coaching format that was even more successful than I thought it was going to be.
• I offered a workshop on writing process at the Faculty Women of Color in the Academy conference, and got invited back to lead an all-day retreat in 2018.
• I backburnered and then reunited with my book.
• I have either traveled or had houseguests I love nearly every 3½ weeks since April.
• I took my first extended trip to visit my Chicago friends since moving to Portland.

This tells you a little bit about what kept me busy this past year. Which means it doesn’t tell you anything at all. Contrast that list to my answers, below, to questions 2-4, which are lightly edited for clarity and highly condensed (you’re welcome—no one should have to read my reflective writing mind vomit).

1. What experience from the last year stands out in your mind? I offered a workshop on writing process at the Faculty Women of Color in the Academy conference, and got invited back to lead an all-day retreat in 2018.
2. What did you learn as a result of these experiences? I actually have it in me to be courageous. Also realized that the reason I have never been able to face my public speaking fears in the past was ‘cause I didn’t care enough about another line on the CV to say yes to those requests [to give book talks]. But when I realized that InkWell might die if I didn’t get over my shit, I was able to do what I needed to get past my fear…iow, I figured out I love coaching enough be afraid and I never loved being a faculty member like that.
3. What did you have to sacrifice in order to have that experience, and was it worth what you had to give up? In order to do that I sacrificed a lot of time. A little bit of money: I read all these books, bought that stupid e-program. tried out techniques; I sacrificed a lot of comfort. For me, it was worth the price I paid because I love leading writing retreats so much that I’m willing to go way, way, way out of my comfort zone in order to make my business work.
4. What do you want to keep from that experience, and what are you ready to let go of? I want to be willing to kick my own ass to make this work. And I can’t believe I’m writing this, but I think I don’t have a public speaking phobia anymore. I can let that identity go.

​I offer this example to illustrate a few things. First, your Year-in-Review doesn’t have to be well written or exhaustive to be valuable. The questions themselves so radically change the focus of your ruminations that even one or two lines of poorly composed text can reveal a fairly significant set of insights. This exercise can help you even if you only have 15 minutes here and there to think things through.

Second, this example shows that it’s worth it to write down the answers to these questions, instead of just pondering them in your head. I knew before I started writing that I was happy with the outcomes of facing my fears. What I didn’t realize was that I was still defining myself as someone with a public speaking phobia—or that I was ready to let go of that identity, even though it still takes enormous effort for me to speak in public. This distinction—between recognizing a challenge and clinging to an identity—didn’t become clear to me until I wrote down these thoughts. You’re a writer—I don’t have to tell you how such nuggets often reveal themselves when we’re on the page instead of in our heads.

Finally, I offer my own example to illustrate the limits on what can be gleaned from our accomplishments. It’s true that they’re valuable and worth being proud of—I wouldn’t even bother trying to deny how geeked I am about what I’ve gotten done this year. But our accomplishments can only tell us so much about our worth—so they are only part of the prize. It’s the questions we ask about those accomplishments that really make a difference.

These questions are the ones the two boxes in my closet keep asking me. They’re the questions that each year asks of you. And your writing. And the life that your writing is just a part of.

There’s a power that comes from questioning. That’s something every scholar and artist and activist knows in their bones, whether you’ve put it that way or not. It’s what brought you to grad school. It’s what keeps you in the academy, despite the doubts and the demands. Take a few moments this month to ask yourself some version of these questions. Then—as my gramma used to say—hide and watch, honey. And see what power they bring you next year.
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