hlomen

Monthly life review template

Over the last couple years I have been trying to follow a routine of quarterly ‘life reviews’. I think I need to mix it up a bit.

I start the year with a theme word (2025 = ‘connection’), and a small set of goals. Then each quarter I rate how I feel for different life dimensions, pain/joy points and some actions to help me improve. I then often forget about it 😆. I have also been slipping recently. Of the 7 quarters since I started I have done 5; not a bad percentage, but it’s the recent ones I am missing.

I think I have made the process a bit too onerous for me at my life stage. With that in mind, I’ve split the quarterly into two parts:

  1. Monthly reminder and reflective
  2. 6-monthly planning

The monthly is meant to be pretty low time cost but yet:

I’ll do the 6 months in September and March. This is partially to offset from the tough Christmas period & dark winter season and partially because I love that academic year ‘back to school’ feeling in September.

I’ve done my review for October and I decided to share it below so anyone could use and adapt the template. Feel free to email me thoughts and comments! I haven’t done the 6-month one yet, so you’ll have to wait for that. Some notes on the template at the end.

The template

---
type: log
aliases:
date: 2025-10-26
---

# 2025 October review

%% This template is set up so that the review happens at the end of the month %% 

Review for 2025-M10. 
<< [Last month](../../Calendar/2025/Monthly/2025-M09.md) | [Next month](../../Calendar/2025/Monthly/2025-M11.md) >>


## Checklist

>[!Daily]- Review
>- Am I achieving what I want to achieve in life?
>- Is everything under control, or am I running in a hamster wheel and only just keeping up?
>- How much time am I spending on what really matters?
>- If I discovered I only had a year to live, how different would my use of time be? What is my current stress level?
>- Am I having enough fun or joy?

- [x] Read my week notes especially one thing and top moments
- [x] How do I feel about these areas (x/5) **B**ody, **I**nside, **O**thers, **S**pirit?
- [x] Remind myself of my [Goals](../../Goals.md) and values:
	- Yearly theme
	- 6-monthly plan
	- Last month’s action


## Month review

[body::4], [inside::2], [others::2], [spiritual::2]

- [p] Good exercise this month with DIY and holidays, but this is not long term habitual. It’s felt really good to do some work on the house.
- [c] I feel like I’ve been a bit disconnected from the family during the weeks of long hours at work, though it’s been offset a little through our trips. 
- [c] Clearly work boundaries and saying ‘no’ have been on my mind. It’s so easy to slip into bad habits.
- [c] (redacted)

## Next month

To be included in [2025-Sep](../Yearly/2025-Sep.md) but, tentatively: need to work on boundaries at work. I did print some stuff off previously: maybe my focus actions for Nov are:
- 🧠 Reread
- 🌄 Get home on time: can I be creative about that? Ritualise: aroma trigger, music, reflection time?
- Pray about it


------------------------------------------------------

tags:  #log/monthly/2025
parent:: 
related:: 
notebook:: #notebook/weekly/2025
notebook:: #notebook/work/27

Some notes on the template

<< >>

#family #techy