Coaching practices for Annual Review What Went Well

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Annual Review What Went Well, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• Good things happened this year and I’m grateful for them, but I genuinely couldn’t tell you what I did to make them happen
• When something goes badly I’ll pick it apart for hours, but when something actually goes great I just enjoy it and move on without a second thought
• When I look at what went wrong this year I catch myself blaming the timing, other people, the circumstances
• When I do this alone in my head it’s too easy to let myself off the hook and skate past the uncomfortable parts
• I only ever take stock of my life around New Year’s, and by then the year I’m grading is already gone

Practices that may help

1. Go deep on "what went well" — extract the recipe, not just the win
   A win recorded but not analyzed produces no transferable knowledge — identify what specifically caused it.
   The Annual Review (Tim Ferriss Method)
2. The Annual Review (Tim Ferriss Method)
   Tim Ferriss’s annual review is built on two questions — "What went well this year?" and "What did not go well this year?" — applied systematically across major life domains and answered with enough specificity to produce different decisions next year. It is a practitioner tool without clinical evidence, but its mechanisms (structured reflection, explicit failure review, behavioral specificity) are consistent with goal-review and learning research.
3. Apply the AAR to successes, not only setbacks
   Reviewing what actually caused a win produces replicable insight; reviewing only failures produces only loss-avoidance.
   After-Action Review: The US Army’s Tool for Continuous Learning
4. Spend more time on "what did not go well" than on what did
   Failure analysis contains the most actionable information in any honest review.
   The Annual Review (Tim Ferriss Method)
5. Share the review with someone who will ask honest questions
   A review held privately is easier to fudge; one shared with an honest questioner is harder to rationalize.
   The Annual Review (Tim Ferriss Method)
6. Run a quarterly life audit, not just an annual one
   Review all four quadrants of your life every 90 days while the feedback loop is still tight enough to correct.
   The Eisenhower Life Audit
7. Balance the review with a genuine positive inventory
   List three specific things you did well today — not three things that went well, but three things you did.
   The Pythagorean Evening Review
8. Gather raw material before reflecting
   Pull the data — calendar, photos, notes, emails — before you begin reflecting, so memory does not do all the work.
   The Annual Review (Tim Ferriss Method)
9. Run the four-question AAR within 24 hours of any significant event
   What was planned? What happened? Why the gap? What next? — answered while memory is fresh.
   After-Action Review: The US Army’s Tool for Continuous Learning
10. Begin with gratitude
    Start the review by recalling specific gifts and good moments of the day.
    The Daily Examen: Reviewing the Day

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