I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions because they don’t offer an opportunity for reflection. And, if I’m being honest, I don’t stick to them. For over thirty years, I have integrated “reflection rituals” in my professional work on a daily, weekly, quarterly, and annually basis. For example, I have a daily reflection ritual of walking a few miles a day to think away from screens.
Rituals can boost our personal productivity because they allow us to focus and reach our goals without distraction. Rituals can also be used by teams in the workplace to improve effectiveness. (There is a whole book devoted to the topic, “Rituals at Work.”)
My New Year’s Reflection Rituals
- Review the Year: I use a tool called the “Year Compass, a free downloadable booklet that provides a set of structured reflection questions that help you look back and ahead. Since I do this every year, I also look at what I wrote the previous year.
- Start A New Professional Journal(s): For as long as I can remember, I have kept an annual professional journal(s), using a variation of bullet journal technique. I call it my “To Do, To Done, Don’t Do, Reflection List.“ I use it for annual planning and goal setting.I also use it as a reflection as the year progresses. I have weekly and monthly look ahead rituals, but not just tasks. I reflect on my themes for the year and habits to improve.
- Update & Review My Work-Life Harmony Plan: In my workshops on personal and organizational wellbeing, I help nonprofits improve their personal resilience. This year I will continue my commitment to creative activities including “Journal as Altar,” and calligraphy with fountain pens. I will also continue my focus on my physical health, particularly my daily walking ritual with a step goal of 15K.
- Identify “My Three Themes”: I do a combination of Peter Bregman’s theme for the year, and Chris Brogan’s “My Three Words.” Chris Brogan’s technique is to select three words, but I modify it by articulating key themes. I use the themes to guide my professional work and writing. I’ve used Chris Brogan’s technique for over a decade and found it very helpful in keeping me focused.
- Write A FutureMe Email: I use a site called “FutureMe” to write an email to myself post-dated a year from now, a practice I’ve been doing for a few years now. I just received my 2023 email.
2023 Year in Review
Here’s what I learned from looking over my 2023 professional accomplishments:
Generative AI for Nonprofits: Allison Fine and I published and launched our second book together, The Smart Nonprofit: Staying Human-Centered in Age of Automation in 2022. In 2023, I continued to present keynotes, deliver practical workshops using generative AI for nonprofit productivity, and write articles. Our article, “8 Steps Nonprofits Can Take to Adopt AI Responsibly,” published in the Stanford Innovation Review was listed as the ten top most popular articles of 2023.
Training & Facilitation: I have maintained an active schedule of leading workshops, facilitating retreats, and presenting. While the majority of work was done virtually, I did venture back into in-person events. I facilitated several peer learning groups, including Teaching Tuesdays for trainers with John Kenyon for the Parents Center staff, and numerous workshops for the Resilience Initiative on leading with empathy, using generative AI for personal and team productivity, and ethical and responsible AI use.
Workplace Wellbeing: I published “The Happy Healthy Nonprofit: Strategies for Impact without Burnout,” with co-author Aliza Sherman a few years ago. The book was well received and was #1 on Amazon’s Nonprofit Books many times. Through my work with the Resilience Initiative as a coach, workshop leader and facilitator, I’ve continued to deliver capacity building to nonprofits on these topics, with a focus of how generative artificial intelligence can help improve productivity and work experience.
Remote and Hybrid Facilitation Workshops: I have continued to reach workshops on virtual and hybrid facilitation approaches, including asynchronous and flexible facilitation. I also have been training facilitators on how to incorporate the use of generative AI tools for meeting design and facilitation to support their work.
Board Service: I continue to serve on the advisory boards of Leadership Learning Community and Wake.
Giving Circle: I helped co-found and am co-leading the San Jose Business Women for Good Giving Circle. I learned a lot about Giving Circles from Philanthropy Together and am presently serving on the advisory committee for the WeGive Summit and my current work with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Greater Giving Summit team.
Writing: I’ve been writing Beth’s blog since 2004. That is twenty years! The past few years I have not published as much as I have in the early years but I continue to curate content and share ideas via my LinkedIn profile and occasionally LinkedIn Lives. I am hoping on the occasion of the 20th Anniversary of my blog, I can return to regular publishing here.
My Three Themes:
This year I’ve selected the following three words or themes to guide me into 2024:
Generative AI: I have been researching, writing, and leading workshops on nonprofits and AI since 2017, but this is the year for Generative AI and incorporating it into nonprofit work effectively and ethically. Building on the nonprofit capacity building work on AI I completed in 2023, I will continue to teach nonprofit staff and leaders the practical skills on getting started with generative AI for personal and team productivity – meetings, collaboration, and getting stuff done. In 2024, I’m also delivering workshops on the responsible and ethical use of generative AI for fundraising and marketing as well as how facilitators can integrate into their practice.
Iterative: One of the things that I have learned this past year of using generative AI tools is the need to experiment and inch your way into incorporating into your workflow. I hope to share some of these experiments in future blog posts – much in the same spirit as when I started my blog to share social media practices in the early days.
Space: I am trying to keep my life and work simple and not overthink or over complicate. I’m trying to create more space by not overscheduling and trying to do too much.
The best part of these rituals is that looking back shows you what you have accomplished and helps you begin a new year with renewed commitment to personal and professional growth.
What are you making a new or renewed commitment to do?
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