The 5-Minute Year-End Reset

My Dad getting a taste of the backpacker lifestyle in Lombok. Bouncing for hours with my favourite 4-year-old on a trampoline. Coming around from general anaesthetic to find my husband beside me. Snorkelling with whale sharks, giant turtles and mobula rays.

These are a few of my big and small wins of the year. And honestly? If I didn’t reflect and commit them to memory, I’d probably forget half of them. Caught in the riptide of year-end busyness and festive chaos, we’re all surprisingly good at misremembering our own lives — especially the nice bits. We bulldoze straight into December tossing reflection and gratitude onto our mounting to do pile for next year.

Why bother?

When we’ve all got December to-do lists as long as our left arm, why bother taking a moment to reflect at all?

Because our brains are drama queens. Neuroscience shows we have a “negativity bias”: we remember that difficult meeting back in April far more vividly than the holiday we enjoyed shortly afterwards. Psychologist Rick Hanson explains it best: the brain is like Velcro for the bad and Teflon for the good. Meanwhile, research from UC Davis and the University of Miami found that people who regularly reflect on positive events report better sleep, reduced stress and higher life satisfaction.

So no, reflection isn’t some soft, scented-candle ritual. It’s what helps your overworked brain stop catastrophising long enough to realise you did have meaningful, joyful moments this year, even if your calendar currently resembles a battlefield.

For those less joyful moments velcro-ed to our brains, reflection can be a helpful tool to accelerate our learning. Harvard Business Review studies show that employees who spend 15 minutes a day reflecting actually improve performance faster than those who don’t. Translation: processing your experiences makes you less likely to repeat the same mistakes and more likely to double down on what works.

Why can’t it wait until the new year?

Short answer: because January You is delusional.

December You believes you’ll have time to reflect once the decorations are down. January You believes you’re the kind of person who enjoys Dry January, colour-codes your bookshelves and is capable of turning over an entirely new leaf overnight.

Reflection now, before the year screeches to a halt, means you go into the festive season anchored rather than running on fumes. It’s the real reason behind the Thanksgiving holiday: gratitude first, chaos second. Pausing before the celebrations means you’re not just celebrating for the sake of it, you’re celebrating the year that was.

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How to do it

Here’s the real hack: you don’t need an hour, a fancy journal or a meditation retreat. You just need five minutes and a willingness to be honest with yourself.

Try a few of these questions:

• What actually brought you most happiness this year? (Not what you feel should have brought you most happiness!)

• What did you worry about that never happened? (Always a humbling list.)

• When things didn’t go as planned, what did you learn? How did you grow, or pivot?

• What 3 big wins and 3 small wins will you cherish from the year?

• What did you do for the first time? Think new milestones, new countries, new foods.

• Which moments changed you? For better, worse, or weirder.

• And the kicker: where would you be without this year?

Write them, voice note them, think them through on the way to work — the medium doesn’t matter nearly as much as noticing what you loved and learned about the year.

What’s left

There are no good years or bad years. Just years we sprint through, sleepwalk through, swear through and occasionally celebrate. Years that shape us, whether or not we bother paying attention.

So this month, take five minutes to look back and claim the moments — big and small — that made this messy, lopsided, extraordinary year yours.

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