Year in review questions

How do I answer a year in review?

Do it in one sitting of thirty minutes and answer from your phone's photo roll, calendar and messages, not from memory. Memory edits the year into a story. The camera roll and the calendar keep the facts, including the weeks you would rather have forgotten.

Pick ten questions from the lists, answer each in two or three lines and stop. A short review that you finish is worth more than a long one you abandon. Then spend ten minutes on the future half, which is where a time capsule helps.

Which questions look back at the facts?

• What were the three biggest events of the year, in order?
• Where did you spend the most nights outside your home?
• Which month was the busiest, and why?
• What did you start and finish?
• What did you start and abandon?
• Which purchase was best value?
• What was the most expensive mistake?
• Which photo sums up the year?
• Which song did you play most?
• What was the best meal?

Which questions look at people?

• Who did you meet that you did not expect to?
• Who did you lose touch with?
• Who showed up when it counted?
• Who did you show up for?
• Which conversation changed your mind?
• Who made you laugh the hardest?
• Who do you owe a call or a message?
• What new tradition did your group start?
• Which family moment will you keep?
• Who do you want to see more of next year?

Which questions look at how you felt?

• What worried you the most in March, and what happened?
• What were you wrong about?
• What surprised you about yourself?
• What gave you energy?
• What drained you?
• When were you proudest?
• What did you avoid?
• What helped on hard days?
• What do you want to forgive yourself for?
• If the year had a title, what would it be?

Keep these private. Answers about feelings are the ones you will be glad nobody read.

Which questions look ahead?

Use these to bridge into next year, and write them as guesses you can mark later.

• Where will you be living a year from today?
• What will you be doing for work?
• Who will you see most?
• What new skill will you show off?
• What will the word of the year be in your group chat?
• What will be the song on repeat?
• What do you expect to be bored of?
• What will you have given up?
• What will surprise you?
• What will you ask yourself on this day next year?

What if the year was a hard one?

Then skip the scoring and keep the facts. Write what happened, who helped and what you learned, in plain words. Do not force a lesson or a bright side. Seal one honest page for the next December if you like, and let the guesses stay modest: one about a routine, one about a person, one about a place.

A hard year is the one you are most likely to misremember, and the page you wrote while in it is the one you will value in three years. If the weight is too heavy, a trusted person or a professional is a better listener than any app.

Can I run a year in review with friends or family?

Yes, and it is more fun when each person answers alone and the answers are read together. For a group, use five questions: the best moment, the biggest surprise, the best thing eaten, the most used app and one prediction for next year. Everybody writes in turn and nobody reads over a shoulder.

In Sealday you can seal the forward-looking answers in a Table with the reveal on next New Year's Eve, and the leaderboard turns the guesses into a game. Pair this with New Year predictions for friends for ready-made prompts.

How do I turn the review into a capsule?

1. Copy the three best answers from your review into a letter that starts "Dear me on {date},".
2. Choose the New Year chip, or a calendar date a year ahead.
3. Finish up to ten sentence openers as guesses. Free capsules hold up to 10.
4. Add a photo from your review: the one that sums up the year.
5. Hold the seal, then export a vault file as described in backup and restore.

What should I do next December?

Open the capsule, grade each guess as Called it, Kind of or Missed, and then write the next review. Having last year's answers next to this year's is where the value appears: you can see how your worries changed, which of them came true and which were noise. The guide to scoring predictions covers fair grading.