14 Creative Prompts to Add Novelty to Your Year-End Reflection

The gist: Add some fun, novelty, and whimsy to your year-end reflection with these creative and unique reflection journaling prompts!

When it comes to year-end reflection, a lot of people stick to the basics: What went well? What didn't? What do you want to change?

Basic year-end reflection prompts are great if you don't have much time and want to make sure you cover the basics before moving onto the next year.

However, there are lots of ways to make your annual reflection a bit less basic and a bit more bright. 😉

So today I'm sharing some of my favorite reflection prompts that are a bit more unique and fun.

They can be especially useful if you need more novelty than writing answers to questions, don’t like long-form journaling, or are just bored of the same prompts you’ve used the past few years.

You can use any of them in addition to basic reflection prompts as a way to look at your year from a different angles. Or if those basic prompts aren’t appealing, you can replace them with a few things from this list that align better with your personality.

Here we go!

1. Create your own, custom Wrapped playlist

I love the Spotify Wrapped playlist, with all of my favorite songs from the year in one spot.

But it doesn’t actually tell you that much about what happened in your year, just what you listened to during it.

So instead, you can curate a custom playlist with a theme song for each month that’s related to something you did or felt that month.

2. Write chapter titles for the book of your year

Another option is to imagine your life as a book series and narrow in on the story that this year’s book told. I’m talking going full-on main character energy here.

This prompt gets you thinking about how the different significant events of your year weave together into a bigger journey, how they impacted other “plotlines” in your life, and how they changed you.

(If you’re familiar with the Save the Cat method, another version of this is to plot out the “beat sheet” of your year. What were the break into 2, dark night of the soul, etc. moments of the year? What was the overall transformation you were on?)

3. Pick out a color for each month

For more visual people, another option is to pick out a color to represent each month.

You can pick them based on what mood or emotion sums up that month and what color you associate with it, based on the main colors of places you went or outfits you wore, or whatever else comes to mind.

4. Choose a scent for each month

This one is a great way to engage a sense you might not think to during a personal reflection: smell.

What kind of scent or smell could you theme to each month of the year?

You could base this on the changing seasons, things you did, food you ate, places you traveled, and more.

Or if you change up what scents you wear throughout the year, you can reflect on the meaning or significance of those changes.

5. Doodle key events or memories

If you enjoy drawing, doodling, illustrating, and the like, you can create a doodle for each month, either separately or all in one sketchnote/collage-type doodle.

Depending on what you like to draw, you can literally illustrate events that happened, create abstract patterns that represent your feelings, or whatever else you feel like visually sums up your year.

6. Create a collage or single scrapbook spread

I know that as much as I love the idea of scrapbooking, the idea of having this ongoing book to update and maintain is overwhelming enough to keep me from starting one.

However, this year I realized that I didn’t need to keep an ongoing scrapbook to…well…scrapbook.

I can just create a single “spread” on regular paper instead of in a bound book, and treat it more like a collage to hang on my wall later than a new ongoing responsibility.

7. Curate the year in memes

This is for my fellow extremely online humans. 🫠

Pick a meme for each month of the year and/or any key events or memories.

These can be popular memes from that time of the year that you were obsessed with, or memes from any time that sum up how that time of the year went for you, or something that happened during it.

8. Choose a quote of the month

You can also find a quote to represent each month or key memory from the year.

You can make them all themed around a certain type of quote—I’d love to do this with all quotes from my favorite sitcoms—or just look for well-known quotes that feel applicable to a given time period.

And these can be any kind of quote: from a real person, from a TV show, from a movie, from a video game, from a song lyric, etc.

9. Plot your own fantasy map

If you’re the kind of book nerd that loves when a book needs a map at the front, this one’s for you. 🤓 

Think about how you can “geographically” represent the themes, events, or emotions that were big for you this year, and then plot them onto your own fantasy map.

For example, maybe you spent some time in the Valley of Revenge Bedtime Procrastination before going on a journey to the Island of Self-Compassion. 🤷‍♀️

10. Pick an emoji of the month

This one’s simple and straightforward: go to your emoji keyboard and pick something that represents each month. It can be one of the faces to describe how you felt, or one of the objects to represent something that happened.

11. Write a headline of the month

There’s a few ways you can approach this one, but they all imagine you reading about the year in the news.

First, you could write headlines that represent your life, personally, each month. And they can be serious or more silly. For example, “Stubborn human refuses to learn from past mistakes!”

Alternatively, you could go back through the actual news and pick out headlines from the year that mean the most to you.

12. Create a metaphorical meteorological report

Was your year cloudy with a chance of meatballs? Probably not, but you see where I’m going with this.

Think about how each month or season went for you, and how you could represent that in terms of weather.

For example, maybe a bad health event felt like a hurricane blowing over and wiping out all your established habits and routines. Or the beginning of a new, better chapter in your life felt like fog lifting after a long period of grey.

13. Select a food or flavor of the month

For the foodies, you can pick a flavor, ingredient, food, or whole meal to represent each month of the year.

You can base it on standout meals you actually ate that month, make it more seasonal (like winter = warmth and spice), or theme it around emotions and moods and what kind of food you prefer in different situations.

14. Pick a fashion item of the month

Finally, if you’re into fashion, you can pick something like a full outfit, an accessory, or a type of fabric to represent each month. For example, maybe the colder months are cozy, thick fabrics or outfits with layers and hats and scarves and gloves, and the summer is your favorite “hang outside” outfit or flip flops.

You could also base this on actual outfits you wore that month if you’re proud of and enjoy looking back on the looks you put together. Or think about key events from the time period and how you’d ideally dress for them, regardless of how you actually did.

Or think about how you dress when you’re feeling certain emotions, and when you felt them throughout the year. Maybe you had certain high confidence months that “feel like” one kind of outfit, and more “meh” ones that feel like something else.

Build your own reflection

Hopefully, there was something here related to one of your interests or ways of thinking!

You can choose to pick one and try to complete it, or you can combine related prompts to build your own themed annual reflection.

For example:

• The Word Nerd Reflection: combine prompts 2, 8, 11, and 12
• The Bookish Reflection: combine prompts 2, 8, and 9 (along with your favorite books of the year, or of each month specifically)
• The Visual Reflection: combine prompts 3, 5, 7, 9, 10, and 6
• The Sensory Reflection: combine prompts 4, 12, 13, and 14
• The Silly Reflection: combine 7, 10, 11, 12, and 13

Or mix-and-match however you like!

And if you liked this post, you'll also love:

• 4 Steps for a Simpler Year-End Reflection (Notion Template Included)
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