Grateful for My Brain: a 2014 Year-End Review

Doing a year-end review has always been one of those things that seem like a good idea but which I never quite get around to. This past year was unique in a number of ways, and so I decided—almost on the spur of the moment—that it would be prudent and productive to spend some time evaluating what happened.

I’m a huge fan of list-making, so instead of using any of the many different tools, processes, and resources available, I conducted my review in the form of making several lists. This turned out to be so helpful that I’ve already put it on my calendar to do again at the end of 2015.

Here are my list headings:

What I accomplished

This was by far the longest of my lists. Because I have a tendency to dismiss what I have done in order to berate myself for what has yet to be done, making this list helped me stop and smell the roses a bit. It gave me greater perspective on the multiple endeavors I’ve been engaged in. It also showed me the areas where my attention was focused—and the areas where it wasn’t.

What I didn’t anticipate

There’s no question that this was the most useful of my lists. The more than two dozen things I hadn’t anticipated—roughly half positive and half negative—not only had a significant effect on my life in general and what I was able to accomplish, they also provide concrete evidence that I can’t predict the future no matter how much my brain wants me to believe I can. We can—and should—plan ahead, but it’s important to remember that getting from here to there is rarely a straight line. Randomness and luck often play a larger role in both process and outcome than we’d like to acknowledge.

What worked

It was good to recognize what I’m doing right so I can keep doing more of that.

What didn’t/doesn’t work

It was also good to recognize mistakes I’ve made, opportunities I’ve missed, or areas that need major or minor tweaking.

What I’m grateful for

In addition to many other things—and people—I’m grateful for my amazing brain (yours is equally amazing, of course) and all the fantastic tricks it can do. Read to the end to see what my brain did with the material from my year-end review.

What I learned

One thing I learned is that I have a lot more to learn! But it was illuminating to see how much more I know now than I knew at the beginning of last year. It gives me hope and also some confidence in the face of the always uncertain future. Here’s actual evidence that I figured out how to do quite a few new things, so it’s likely I’ll be able to figure out how to do more things I don’t yet know how to do.

What I’m not satisfied with or what needs more attention

This list helped me focus on where to put my attention now. It was the last 2014 list, which made it relatively easy to complete and included a couple of surprises. I’m pretty sure it would have been more difficult to hone in on these things if I had started with this category, and I might not have seen things as clearly.

I created just two lists for 2015:

What I want to have happen this year

15 things that are sort of a hodgepodge of goals, intentions, and hopes. This list and the list of what I’m not satisfied with are the foundation of my short-range (3-6 months) planning process.

4 habits I want to keep; 4 habits I want to improve or change; 4 habits I want to start

Again, it was useful to identify what I’m doing that’s working before listing what I want to change (what isn’t working so well). I limited each category to 4 to keep it manageable. A limit of 3 might be even better.

I worked on these lists in bursts of time over several days, so the content was on my mind—and in my brain—throughout that period. As the brain tends to do, mine started looking for solutions for some of the bigger problems I’d identified. And not just during the day! One very long night, I was unable to fall asleep because I couldn’t stop trying to figure everything out logically (as illogical as I knew it was to be doing that in the middle of the night—or maybe ever).

Then, in one of those sudden moments of clarity I’ve come to know and love, the solution to one of the problems just showed up (thank you, System 1!), and as soon as it did, I realized that particular solution also took care of two other problems. I hadn’t even seen the three things as being connected. At that point, I immediately fell asleep, only to be awakened by the alarm clock an hour and a half later.

In the clear light of another day, and after a decent night’s sleep, the solution that appeared in the wee hours that morning seems both obvious and elegant. But had I not laid the groundwork for it by focusing my attention on all these areas of my life, I doubt I’d even have been able to identify the problems. And even if I had identified them, I’d probably be trying to find individual solutions for each of them—using the slow, logical part of my brain.

The moral of the story (which I should have tattooed somewhere on my body, sans parenthetical expressions and asides): Use System 2—the conscious part of your brain—to lay the groundwork, and then give System 1 an opportunity to do its thing (which includes seeing patterns, making connections, and putting the pieces together) to come up with a creative solution System 2 can only stand back, figuratively speaking, and admire.