During the Christmas season, the opportunity arises to reflect on the past year and consider: What have you actually achieved? Perhaps you can't even remember everything. An inventory helps you take stock of your progress! We will show you how a personal inventory works – and what the results have been for the blink.it team.
The year is coming to an end, and we hope for a reflective Christmas season. Instead, many are experiencing a lot of stress now: personal and professional tasks need to be completed, gifts need to be found, and final projects need to be wrapped up. Reflection often gets pushed aside.
Reflection means, according to Duden, “calm consideration” – and it is definitely worthwhile to take time to quietly reflect on the almost completed year amidst all the stress. A personal inventory will help you with this!
In a purely rational sense, we know inventories from retail: At the end of the year, goods, cash balances, assets, and debts are recorded. Then a balance is drawn to see what went well and where mistakes may have crept in during the year.
But it's not just in retail and large companies that a year-end inventory makes sense; it also applies as a service provider: What have I accomplished? What has happened – both positive and negative? What have I learned, and how have I changed?
5 Steps to a Personal Inventory
To take stock at the end of the year, the following five steps will help you conduct a personal inventory:
1. Take time: Schedule specific time for your reflection. Make this time truly calm and avoid interruptions from calls or emails. Experience shows that planning for thirty minutes to an hour is sufficient.
2. Brainstorming: Take a sheet of paper – or another writing option – and initially write down everything that comes to mind about the past year: What has happened? What has changed?
3. Month by month: Now think about what happened in each individual month. Simply note what has stuck in your mind: Important client appointments? Wonderful experiences with clients? Did you finish an important project or start a new one?
4. Add memories: Now take a calendar. Look back over the individual months and add your memories, if necessary. You might be surprised by what you had forgotten!
5. Inventory in numbers (optional for those who love numbers): Just like in a business inventory, you can supplement your annual balance with numbers and data that show how productive you have been this year. Think: What numbers reflect my productivity and success?
Tip: Choose numbers that you can quickly find out or that you have tracked throughout the year, such as “new customers,” “training days held,” or “number of emails in the ‘sent’ folder”! Such numbers also make for a great basis for an annual inventory!
Once you have completed these 4 or 5 steps, you will have a compact and structured overview of what you have accomplished, experienced, and changed this year. From this, you can derive motivation, insights, and goals for the coming year!
Inventory at blink.it’s Editorial Team
We in the editorial team at blink.it also see ourselves as a kind of service provider: we research and inform to reach even more educators with our enthusiasm for blended learning. Therefore, our editorial team conducted a personal inventory exactly following these steps last week.
Year in Review – Summary as a Best Of
January-March
Corinna joins the team as the new leading creative mind! The blog gets a fresh look. “Blended learning” becomes the new keyword for the entire editorial team – and the first version of the blended learning guide is ready for download.
April-June
After months of writing and design work, our rocket pack v2 finally launches! In addition, we are heavily focused on concrete reports from experts like Dennis Tröger.
July-September
Many events such as trade fairs and barcamps bring fresh topics for the blog and new content for the new collection “Learning materials and guides.” Furthermore, we are fully dedicated to video and release a comprehensive video guide, for example.
October-December
New reinforcements join the editorial team again. We test our own product live as blended learning for onboarding. And everyone involved has a lot of fun!
Inventory Numbers that Inspire
85 blog posts
3 new websites
10 new cards for the rocket pack v2
4 new online courses
10 new guides, instructions, and more available for download
2 new full-time employees
Also, the entire blink.it team conducted an inventory together at the Christmas party! We are proud of how the entire team has developed over the year – and what we have all accomplished:
6 new employees in the entire team
10 new articles on our support page
14 events attended
including HR Innovation Roadshow, Zukunft Personal, and #CLC21827 rocket days organized
30,000 new lines of code written for the app
19 major updates with new features released
The blink.it team: Working together and creating new things drives us! It’s great to take a moment at the end of the year to remember all personal and joint achievements.
Conclusion: An Inventory Provides New Motivation!
Whether individually or together as a team – an inventory is worthwhile not only for retail and large companies but also on a smaller scale. Some projects we had almost forgotten, and some numbers have surprised us positively. Seeing all the results and experiences of the year at a glance definitely motivates us for the coming year!
Now it’s your turn: We recommend taking half an hour to do an inventory. You will surely be surprised by what you have accomplished and experienced. This way, you start off with a boost of motivation into the year 2019!
PS: The blink.it editorial team is also taking a reflective break next week. Therefore, you will not see anything new on our blog until January 2, 2019. In this spirit: Happy holidays and a good start to the new year!
