Three Takeaways From 2022

The end of a year is simultaneously the most clichéd and most unavoidable time for reflection. It’s the yearly window when it’s time for new calendars and making resolutions you might but probably won’t keep. This season shines on literal fresh pages. It’s when you need to quantify your last ten months of professional achievement for your year-end review. And for a few weeks straight, social media gets littered with music wrap lists and top nine shares.

On paper, none of the intentions I wrote down on those fresh January pages became reality. There were a few hundred miles I never ran, and a few months worth of writing words that never came. I didn’t get better at going to bed earlier and I didn’t become a morning runner. I almost always forgot to do my pushups, and I doubt that I’ll finish the book I’ve been slowly reading for months.

If we’re simply talking goals set on day one, then on day 365 I can claim that this past year was a full-on failure. But it’s more nuanced than that. It’s more that this year simply didn’t go how I expected it to go.

It’s funny how much can change in a week. That’s the actual timeline when my focus for this past year began to shift from my expectations on day one. One week. If I had just waited to write down my goals on day eight or even day fifteen, I think I would have written down some different things. But I wrote them in pen, so that was that.

When I think about the past dozen months, I don’t feel like a failure at all. No, I didn’t get to everything that I hoped I would in 2022. That’s true pretty much every year. I tend to be overly optimistic about how many hours there are in a day. But actually, I’m closing this past year-long chapter pleasantly surprised.

So, in honor of raising a glass to another year in the books, I thought I’d boil it down to my top three takeaways from the year with that many twos.

There is so much you can discover through asking questions.

Questions are powerful. There’s that phrase about bringing solutions instead of problems or answers instead of questions. People swear by it. And panic when they can’t abide by it. But this past year, I learned that mindset is pretty short-sighted. People asked me so, so many questions. And I felt myself grow through contemplating and discovering possible answers.

I also think I asked more questions than ever. I usually had ideas I could bring to the table. But I didn’t waste time or ego deciding they had to be good or right. Instead, I thought of them as rough drafts and outlines that could get better through discussion and peer review. My choice to utilize more experiences than my own made me more confident in the uncovered solutions.

A little really can go a long way.

Earlier I listed out all the things I didn’t get to this past year. All those things are true. My fitness isn’t quite where I’d like it to be, my stack of unread books is a few inches too tall, and all of my writing feels a little rusty. I still showed up for myself often enough though that I’m content with my past year of effort. Sure, I might have done less than I wanted. But I don’t feel behind.

I still ran a lot of miles. They were simply logged later in the day and there weren’t quite as many fast-paced ones as I hoped I’d run. I still read plenty of books. The total tally is somewhere around 40, even if I don’t finish this particular one today. And when I read my own writing a few weeks after I’ve shared it, the words aren’t nearly as awkward as they felt coming out. A little will still always take you further than nothing.

Plan your future in pencil, even if you write your goals in pen.

There was very little about this past year that went how I would have predicted a year ago. You don’t have to think too hard to know that’s pretty much always how it goes though. There is so much truth in needing to expect the unexpected, and having no idea what the future will hold.

Twelve-month younger me wasn’t expecting the whirlwind of stepping into a newly-crafted position and planned to still drive a silver car. She also never would have predicted that some goals would get set aside for a while so that new ones could grow. But that didn’t stop her from allowing something different to take shape. So today, I’m grateful for her ability to see potential in the unexpected and her willingness to jump in with both feet.

That’s it. Three takeaways from twelve months of time.

Maybe this next year, I’ll set my intentions one quarter at a time. But I’m a creature of habit, so I’ll probably still write them down in pen.