I don’t know if you are like me, but often, I find I am at a loss to recall the key lessons learned from past years.  Think about it.  What were the great­est lessons you learned in busi­ness or in life in 2005?  What about 2003? 

Okay, lets make this a bit eas­ier. What did you learn in 2009?

One tac­tic that I have found use­ful is to label my years.  I do this while spend­ing a day dur­ing the Christ­mas break or right after the new year reflect­ing and plan­ning.  I review my Life Plan, Busi­ness Vision and Busi­ness Plan.  I spend time jour­nal­ing through the past year, and work to iden­tify any big lessons learned.  Then, once this is done, I use all this infor­ma­tion to give both the past and upcom­ing year a label. 

Here is what I mean by a label:  I iden­tify what my biggest focus points or new insights were dur­ing the year.  They are not usu­ally all that profound. 

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