A year-end review doesn’t have to feel heavy or overwhelming. On the other hand, it should be a holistic ritual that helps you feel much lighter in your chest and clearer in your mind.
For me, this 5-step year-end review is a structured way to look back honestly, learn from my past year intentionally, and move forward with clarity and gratitude, using my Bullet Journal as the anchor and a few digital tools as support.
This ritual didn’t actually start as a polished system. It evolved over time, from a once-a-year reflection at the back of an old Bullet Journal into a repeatable practice that supports my year visions, monthly goals and weekly rhythms, leveraging journaling and planning habits.
Here’s an overview of how my 5-step Year-End Review Ritual works and how you can adapt it to your own Bullet Journal practice for the new upcoming year.
When I Do My Year-End Review (and Why It Works)
I usually do the full ritual during the Christmas–New Year holiday, when life naturally slows down.
However, most of these steps already repeat:
- Every 12-week season
- With a mid-year review and reset
- And are supported by monthly and weekly Bullet Journal reviews
That is to say, I do not dump every detail or rush every learning onto these last few weeks or days of the year. It is actually too overwhelming and counter-productive. The year-end version simply gives me space and depth for a final reflection, and an appreciative closure filled with gratitude (and hopefully, wisdom).
If you have not done a year-end review before, try to do so this year (with my suggested ritual below) and notice how you feel afterwards.
On December 22, 2025, after completing the first two steps of my ritual, I wrote this in my Bullet Journal:
“Amazingly clearer and lighter. Reflections show so right in [Level 10 Life] scoring.”
That feeling — lighter and clearer — is the reason I keep this ritual, not just at every year end but also at mid-year and any time I need to regain focus and anchor in my life.
Step 1: Reflect with Level 10 Life (Start with the Big Picture!)
THE WHAT: Level 10 Life is the foundation of my year-end review as well as new-year visions and goal setting. It is a practice in which you to rate your life satisfaction on 10 different areas.
👉Read more about Level 10 Life: How to Set Goals (and Actually Follow Through) When You Want to Do Everything: A 5-step framework
THE HOW: I look at 10 life categories (health, career, finance, relationships, family and friends, self-growth, etc.) and score each honestly on a scale from 1 to 10.
You can use a template (like this Level 10 Life premade template from my e-book) or make this spread in your Bullet Journal notebook (preferably to just a piece of paper!).
How I Reflect
For each category, I update the scoring onto the current period column in the template.
The scoring can be made based on your gut feelings but I recommend doing it AFTER some journal reflections, especially if you already practiced Level 10 Life and devised a Master Goal List for this year.
The journal can be done quickly in bullet points on a blank spread about:
- What’s working/What’s good:
- Which goals have I achieved per each Level 10 Life category (see more details in Step 2)
- Which habits, systems or routines that stuck throughout this period to help with my goal achievements? (see more details in Step 3)
- What’s not working/What can be learned:
- Which goals fell off and why (such as planning fallacy, unrealistic timeframes, etc.)? (see more details in Step 2)
- What are the key lessons learned (without negative self-blame)? (see more details in Step 3)
This step works best together with Step 2 and Step 3 below, where goal and habit data give concrete context and all learnings are captured and structured for future improvements.
Here is an example of my reflection on my Language Learning goal (of course!), a part of my Personal Develop category:
1️⃣I passed B2 German exam, but not yet C1 as planned (this is an outcome-based goal I aspired to achieve by the end of 2025).
2️⃣I “survived” 6 German-speaking interviews (phew!) and successfully nailed 2 job offers (yay!). Just the fact that I was brave enough to take on and then go through this challenge, it was already a big win for me, personally. (getting a new job was not a 2025 goal for me, but it was such a worthy experience for my self-growth, career development and German speaking skills improvement!)
3️⃣I shared my full How to Self-Learn German from A1 to C1: Courses, Books, Tools that helped so many of other German language learners and stayed consistenly with a 30-day language journal challenge from How To Start A Language Learning Journal? (60 Journal Prompts A1-B2 Level).
Language learning fulfills my personal growth AND blogging aspirations AND contribution desires. Wow!
Besides the good, I learned the flaws in my goal setting and planning “ambitions” as I got:
- Too many parallel goals
- Too many distractions, from personal and professional life changes
- Planning too tight for a multi-passionate lifestyle
There are always life surprises that alter the original plans. Like I had to postpone my C1 German exam to direct my focus on job search, interviews, and handover upon leaving my previous job.
I learned that the best thing to do in such life changing periods is to make the most of those life moments and learn whatever that period can teach me.
All these learnings are captured in Step 3 below, to be corrected or avoided repetition for the new year’s planning.
TIP: If you review this Level 10 Life seasonally, compare this year’s scores with that of last year or the previous season and note meaningful changes.
Step 2: Review the Visions, Goals & Habits (Get clear on Intention vs. Reality)
THE WHAT: This step refreshes your memories and learnings about how you have navigated this last year (or this last 12-Week Year period), and connects the Level 10 Life reflection outlined in Step 1 with concrete “evidence” drawn from this step.
THE HOW: Go through each Level 10 Life’s visions and goals that you devised in the last season or any goal lists you decided for this year and reflect on their completion, learnings, etc.
Review Your Level 10 Life Visions and Master Goal Lists
Using my Level 10 Life Visions and Master Goal List (a MyA5 template), I review:
- Have I achieved my Full Year and 12-Week Year goals? (or partially)
- How does achieving these goals make me feel?
- Have I come closer to my life’s long-term intentions and visions? Any changes to the ideologies or values I once believed?
Reflecting on each of the goal achievement (or improvement-needed) can give you a more guided and objective idea to evaluate your Level 10 Life from Step 1.
I was reassured that my general satisfaction of a category is reflected quite truly by reviewing my goal achievement, my habit consistency, etc.
As I separate my goals into lag goals (or outcome-based goals) and lead goals (or habit-based goals), I tend to have different tools and approaches when reviewing the goal achievements.
While lag goals can be simply a checkbox to tick off (like obtaining B2 German certificate), lead goals are tracked as a habit in Streaks app (like studing German for 45 minutes every day).
This is where my hybrid system shines:
- Bullet Journal → strategic plans and reflections
- Streaks app → (semi-automated) daily and weekly tracking
Helpful reflection questions for habit improvement:
- Did I track habits that help me achieve my Outcome-based goals and/or become the person I aspire to be?
- If a habit broke often, was the issue motivation or design?
- Which habits supported multiple life categories?
Step 3: Write a Bullet Journal Chapter Reflection (Turn Insights into Directions)
THE WHAT: This pratice is a critical component of the Bullet Journal practice to help us capture and structure any learnings and improvement ideas into 4 categories, namely, What’s Working vs. What’s Not Working in terms of process and systems, and More Of vs. Less Of in terms of purposes and beliefs.
THE HOW: In your Bullet Journal:
- Take a double-page and divide each page in half, creating a 2-by-2 grid for these 4 categories.
- Then read through the year’s notebook(s) together with the reflections from Step 1 and Step 2.
- Collect any insights that focus on how you operate and any notes on thoughts and feelings that are important to take away and categorise these insights into:
What’s Working & What’s Not (Processes / Systems)
What’s Working
- Systems that supported your energy and focus
- Habits, routines, etc. that are non-negotiables
Example:
- Level 10 Life review done bi-yearly instead of yearly → better recalibration
What’s Not Working
- Systems that looked good but failed in real life
- Overcomplicated or time-consuming setups
Example:
- Too many goals per 12-week season → diluted focus → limit to only one goal per category per 12-Week Year.
More Of & Less Of (Purposes / Beliefs)
This section is about emotional alignment, not productivity.
More Of
- Practices that energised you
- Ideas you want to nurture
Example:
- A Bullet Journal Do & Don’ts Collection for layouts and systems
Less Of
- Negative self-talk
- False assumptions repeated in your head
TIP: For easy detection and collection of these insights, highlight these notes with heart doodles, stickers, or washi tape for visibility in your Bullet Journal.
Or capture them in Weekly Review ritual as:
- “What makes me proud of”
- “What makes me happy about”
Step 4: Review Personal Finance (Leverage Digital Tools to Ease your Life!)
There’s no universal “best” way to track money — only what supports clarity and consscious decisions. I actually move my Personal Finance tracking out of analoge Bullet Journal into digital applications.
THE WHAT: My Financial Review Setup
- Money tracking app (i.e. MoneyStats) for documenting daily transactions
- Google Sheets app for:
- Monthly income, expenses, savings, investments
- Yearly financial performance
THE HOW: As I try to be diligent with daily, or at least weekly and monthly expense tracking and budgeting, I actually do not have to do a whole year’s financial review, only a few metrics and calculations.
What I Review at Year-End
- Total annual savings amount
- If you had a savings goal: did you reach it?
- Annual savings rate
- Total savings ÷ total income (including investment gains and interest)
- Did you increase or decrease your savings rate this year?
- Budgeting update for the new year
Helpful reflection questions for savings and personal finance analysis:
- Did spending align with my values and savings goals? (i.e. cut down on food ordering)
- What trends stand out across the year, in terms of expenses, savings and investment behaviors?
- What is/are the highest expense category? Are there optimisation or savings opportunities next year?
Step 5: Best of the Year (A Page for What Truly Matters)
This is my favourite part.
THE WHAT: These are probably the most important two pages of my entire one-year Bullet Journal as I could relive a whole year just by reading (or even glancing) at these pages.
Essentially, they are:
- A double-page spread in my Bullet Journal
- Filled only with the best memories, highlights, personal and professional milestones, travel trips, and learning take-aways in the forms of:
- Stickers
- Doodles
- Keywords
- Calligraphy
- A photo if space allows
THE HOW: This spread is:
- Placed as a collection at the front of my notebook. I set this up when breaking in a new year’s notebook.
- Updated monthly, following the monthly reflection ritual. Or if time allows, also right after each weekly reflection ritual.
- Read and finalised at year-end during this year-end review.
It reminds me: the year was so full and beautiful, in its own way.
Closing Reflection: How to Start
This 5-step year-end review ritual helps you simplify and categorize multiple visions and goals in your life, while shedding lights on how you approach and feel about each aspect, be it to understand or to improve yourself and your life better.
I hope after the ritual you would end the current year with clarity and gratitude (I sure did!) and enter the new year with a full life map in mind but a manageable action plan in hand.
If you are new to Bullet Journal and would like to review this current year as the first practice to Bullet Journal, start with Level 10 Life and this 5-step Goal Setting framework. It gives you:
- Clarity
- Purpose
- Hope
Start the ritual.
Practice it gently.
And start your new year with all the gratitude and hopefulness, already rooted for future you 💛, from your present you this year.
With love,
Suani
