Looking back to look forward

And advice on clearing out clogged systems

Jan 11, 2023

Hi Friends,

Last year was hard. I had to battle with the bureaucracy of the UK Home Office, find new meaning (and income!) after leaving my Kenyan company that I had run for nine years, and find a home in one of the hottest housing markets. I toasted the start of 2023 thinking “Good Riddance!” But luckily, I didn’t move on without looking back.

I took the first week of 2023 to transition. To look back at my goals for last year, review what happened, and ease into looking forward. After diving headfirst into the creator / solopreneur space, I have needed these reviews to make sure I know what I’m aiming for, and that I’m focusing my time in the right places.

My annual review started with a long walk down memory lane, picking out a title for each month, a few key memories, and listing out the wins and challenges.

On this walk, I took the time to remember that in one year I:

Co-designed and co-taught curriculum for brand new course on investing in African healthcare.
Got married.
Moved my writing onto substack, published 34 newsletters and essays.
Moved 5 times, twice internationally.
Worked on strategy for an emerging venture capital fund for Africa, and for an impact accelerator in the UK.
Was selected as a Write of Passage Mentor, and taught my approach to finding your voice, people and sharing writing with the world to >50 students.
Built Write of Passage Global, an initiative within a fast-growing writing school to make content more accessible for people living around the world.
Visited Casablanca, Nairobi, Dubai, Ireland, Germany and Amsterdam.

There were a lot of things to smile about and be proud of in 2022. It’s not too late to pause and reflect on your year if you haven’t already! I used a mix of Susannah Conway’s templates to look back, and my own process I’ve grown through several iterations to look forward. Here are a few more things I did in my annual review that I loved, and you might too.

The Playful Summary

First, picking a movie title and writing the preview for 2022. It’s a fun way to step outside of yourself and sum it all up.

Mine was The Life of a Forced Nomad. Back on the road, our young protagonist searches for home, meaning and a fresh start.

Here’s the movie poster I made with Midjourney AI. It’s funny, because Midjourney struggles to incorporate the text you ask for into its art. I imagine this advertising my movie in Italy.

The Word

Last year, I wrote down the word Daimon at the top of my 2022 goals.

It’s an obscure word I collected a while back that has stayed in my digital notepad for years. The ancient Greek origins are rooted in individuality, and although its etymology overlaps with demonic, it is an entirely different concept. Here’s the definition that caught my eye:

People’s life activities are most congruent or meshing with deeply held values and are holistically or fully engaged.
Under such circumstances people would feel intensely alive and authentic, existing as who they really are.

It’s the test I put my projects to last year. Are they best aligned with my deeply held values? (Do I know all of my deeply held values??) Am I intensely authentic and fully engaged?

By sitting there on the goals sheet, post-it and journal, the word is a silent guide.

Apparently, everyone around me chooses a word of the year! For some inspiration, check out the words I’m surrounded with this year:

Melissa Menke @melissa_menke

Who else picked a word of the year? This year, I'm growing roots, learning from my energy and valuing myself so that I can build something of value.

The Systems

Coming towards the end of my annual review, I looked at last year’s goals. I hit some, made progress on others, and a couple were not as meaningful to me 12 months later.

The pattern I noticed that I want to share with you is about my systems. I thought hard last year about my goals, and then like a good manager, the systems I needed to get there. I had network growth goals, so I set up a personal CRM. I figured I needed to implement 0 Inbox to focus on the Big Picture Things That Mattered. At the end of the year, a lot of my systems were clogged. The backlog of people to reach out to in the personal CRM, the 5 emails that I’ve touched more than once, and are still sitting in the inbox.

One problem with clogged systems is that fixing or clearing out each system takes time and energy, and it feels like an accomplishment when I’m done! But it might not be the best use of time and energy to reach the goal it was intended to support.

I made a list of all of my clogged systems - there were five! I stopped using two, changed one, and am using this annual reset to pay attention to which systems make it easier to reach my goals, and which end up creating more work, and more guilt for not getting things done.

Happy New Year everyone! I appreciate you pausing to look back on 2022 with me this week.

I’m launching some exciting new initiatives this year to study and support vital neighborhoods. That means I’ll be writing more about my eight point framework for thinking about the vitality of a community. I’ll tell you more next time!

Melissa