Hi there,
Did you know that there are approximately 2,080 working hours in a year?
As of today, we’ve already worked about 96% of those hours for 2025!
That means we’ve spent 2,000 hours this year making decisions, moving quickly, failing, strategizing, achieving goals, working, working, working…
Have you ever paused to wonder, “are my choices helping me live the life I want to live?”
P.S. We’ll be off the next two weeks and back in your 2026 inbox on Thursday 1/8!
⚡ Supercharge of the Week
Remote Octopus recommends scheduling at least 60-90 minutes to conduct a self retro at the end of the year
What is a self retro? A self retro, also known as a self reflection or annual review, is when you intentionally set aside time to reflect on your professional accomplishments, challenges, and learnings in order to ensure your choices are “helping [you] live the life [you] want to live.”
Plus we all know a good retro drives continuous improvement and increased productivity
Wait a minute… this sounds a lot like my annual performance review for work. How is it different?
A performance review often focuses on hard data, key accomplishments, and areas of improvement as it relates to your current role. Depending on your company, a performance review might include components of a self retro.
A self retro typically digs deeper to explore:
Opportunities for personal process improvements.
Professional concepts or lessons learned.
Which aspects of your role you found most challenging or disliked.
How your work is aligning to your values.
And most importantly, how your choices are “helping [you] live the life [you] want to live.”
Sitting down and thinking about yourself for 60 minutes can feel overwhelming. Luckily, there are many types of reflection frameworks to guide your thinking during a self retro. Choose the one that resonates best with you.
Todoist reminds us: “There’s no single right way to do an annual review.”
🐙 Remote Octopus recommends the 4Ls framework from Atlassian:
What did you love?
What did you loathe?
What did you long for?
What did you learn?
⚡ Todoist recommends reflecting on the following categories:
Work
Productivity
Health
Finances
Relationships
Learning
🔥 James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, uses this annual framework:
What went well this year?
What didn’t go so well this year?
What did I learn?
P.S. James posted his past annual reviews on his blog if you’re looking for any further insight or inspiration into the process.
Ready to get started?
Consider where you’ll document your reflections – Google Docs & Google Sheets can work really well depending on the framework you select.
If you think 60 minutes feels too long to reflect, this one hour is likely 0.05% of your working hours this year. When you think about it that way, 60 minutes can start to feel too short!
📅 Let’s level up for 2026: Schedule your 60+ minute self retro on your calendar and identify which reflection framework will work best for you.
🐙 Remote Octopus Resources
Ready to level up operational excellence for your team? Check out our resources:
