Fill in the numbers first, before you start telling yourself a story about the year.
year in review template
Year in Review Template
A Markdown template for reviewing a year honestly: what you actually did with it, what lifted your days, and what you want to carry into the next one.
How to use it
Write it small, count it honestly, read it back once a year
Go month by month and write one line each — no more, so a big month cannot swallow the rest.
Finish with the three things worth repeating and the one thing worth dropping.
When is the right time to do this?
Any quiet evening between mid-December and mid-January. Doing it in one sitting matters more than doing it on the 31st — a review split over three weeks turns into three different moods rather than one year.
What makes a review useful rather than just nice?
Numbers you did not choose in advance. Starting from what you recorded, rather than from what you remember, is what stops a year-end review becoming a list of the three most recent months.
How does Almanac help with this?
Almanac already holds the year: days painted, average score, best month, the places and people that came up most, and which tags actually raised your score. The recap plays it back as a story, and the printable almanac gives you the long version, one page per day.