How was 2012 for you? Careers Coach Mike Higgins offers a useful exercise to help you undertake your personal review of the past year

As we pin the new calendar to the wall, it is customary to take a bit of time to review what we’ve done in the last twelve months and think about where is next.

2012 was such an interesting year for those of us in the UK with both the Diamond Jubilee and London 2012 reinforcing some aspects of how we see ourselves as a nation, and challenging others.

But on a more personal note, how was 2012 for you?

It’s very easy to trot out a sound bite about the year, but that probably doesn’t reflect the highs and lows as you experienced them at the time.  To get you thinking, take a piece of paper and thinking of the last 12 months, draw out a line of how you felt from month to month, labelling the highs and lows along the way.  It might look something like:-

So the points might be:-

1. Had a really dreadful February culminating in a project I was working on being cancelled.
2. Being invited to act up whilst my boss was away.
3. Getting a project completed before the Olympic Games started.
4. Having a period of conflict at work as a new team came together resulting in…
5. A real sense of achievement once the team was working properly.

If it helps to jog your memory, was there anything about:-

Once you’ve completed the line, have a go at answering the following questions.  You can do it on a piece of paper or, if you are feeling adventurous, record yourself on a video camera or Smartphone.

1. Is there anything in the line that surprised you?
2. What characterised each high?
3. What characterised each low?
4. Are there any themes that you can pull out between highs and lows?
5. Did you taken any risks last year?  Did they pay off?
6. Did you play it safe at any point last year?  How did it go?
7. At what points last year did you feel that you were in control?
8. At what points last year did you feel that others were in control?
9. Were there any significant career decisions made?  If there were, describe in as much detail as you can remember how you came to that decision.
10. What does this line tell you about your career and its direction?
11. What themes do you want to carry forward to this year?
12. What themes do you want to leave behind?
13. What does this tell you about you?
14. If you could label 2012, you would call it “the year of…” what?
15. If you could label 2013, you would call it “the year of…” what?

Hopefully, this will have got you thinking about what you did last year and given you some clues as to where you might want to go next.

And, as a parting shot, if there is one thing that you would like to achieve by the end of 2013, what would it be?

Mike Higgins is a Career Coach and author of ‘Pit Stop: A Career Workbook for Busy People’.  This article is uses an adapted exercise from the book.