Tim Ferriss’s Past Year Review: Insights and Reflections

I just finished Tim Ferriss’s Past Year Review:

The Exercise (1 Minute)

1. Grab a notepad and create two columns: POSITIVE and NEGATIVE.

2. Go through your calendar from the last year, looking at every week.

3. For each week, jot down on the pad any people, activities or commitments that triggered peak positive or negative emotions for that month. Put them in their respective columns.

4. Once you’ve gone through the past year, look at your notepad list and ask, “What 20% of each column produced the most reliable or powerful peaks?”

5. Based on the answers, take your “positive” leaders and schedule more of them in the new year. Get them on the calendar now! Book things with friends and prepay for activities/events/commitments that you know work. It’s not real until it’s in the calendar. That’s step one. Step two is to take your “negative” leaders, put “NOT-TO-DO LIST” at the top, and put them somewhere you can see them each morning for the first few weeks of 2026. These are the people and things you *know* make you miserable, so don’t put them on your calendar out of obligation, guilt, FOMO, or other nonsense.

What I Discovered

Top positives weren’t achievements, they were rituals.

Leaving notes for Joey. Washing the car together. Partner yoga in the living room. Family walks. Slow mornings. Coffee talk time. Little moments like these are what made 2025 really good.

Top negatives came from focusing on things I can’t control.

Judging right or wrong always makes me feel shitty. Also worrying about other people’s opinions or the stories they’re telling. Suppressing instead of expressing healthy boundaries. Nit picking instead of appreciating.

Changes in 2026

Focus On: Quad 2 activities (important, not urgent stuff):

Movement, cooking, cleaning. Date nights with zero agenda. Family walks. Reading, writing, decluttering, playing music, creating art. Being 100% in the moment with who is in front of me. Checking in on loved ones.

Remember: Focus on what I can control (first thought second thought). It’s okay to say no. Communicate (touch base, learn to articulate feelings into words, express boundaries in a healthy way)

Try This Today

Pull up your calendar from last year. Write down 10 moments that made you genuinely happy. And any that drained you.

Get real with yourself. Raw honesty. Plan to do more of the things that make you happy. Get rid of the things that bring you down.