We are the YearCompass team (a free booklet that helps you to close 2019 and plan 2020, available in 39 languages), ask us anything about 1) closing your year and planning your next 2) running a nonprofit with 100+ volunteers and 1.000.000+ bookle...

I like this idea. There are a lot of studies suggesting that self reflection and goal setting really helps with overall attitude. How many years have you guys been filling out these booklets? What’s the most profound thing you learned when going over past year’s books?

> How many years have you guys been filling out these booklets?

8 years for most of us, we did it every year. Some of us started to create more complex versions for themselves, because of changed life situations.

> What’s the most profound thing you learned when going over past year’s books?

For me it's that it is okay to fail goals and bring them over to your next year. I think I wrote down every year for 8 years to "finish school". I have only 4 exams left and if everything goes well I will finish it next year.

I've had lots of anxiety issues about stuff like that. YearCompass did not solve that, but for me it was part of the solution :)

If I read your title and description and still have no idea what you’re talking about there may be a branding problem. ???

I’m sorry. English is not our first language, but we’re really trying.

So in thee sentence: we made a booklet with questions. The questions help you close your year and plan your next. People seem to like it.

I've been doing the Years Compass for five years, three of which are with my husband. We love doing it together to reminisce about the hear that was, and to plan for the next year.

I don't have a question for you, I just want to say thank you for doing this. We love it!!

:) Thank you!

Can you give some examples of prompts that help people close the current year and plan for the next?

Some examples about the questions in the booklet:

What were you not able to accomplish?

What are you the most proud of?

Who are the three people you influenced the most?

Also there is a lot of not-so-questions like "Define the most important aspects of next year in the following areas (personal life and family, work / studies / profession, belongings / home / objects, relaxation / hobby / creativity, friends / community, health / fitness, intellectual, emotional / spiritual, finances, bucket list)".

Stuff like that :)

Would this be an interesting way to spend New Year's Eve? How long does it take?

If I remember it correctly /u/frkandris did this as a New Year's Eve program exercise for his friends. I'll ask him to write about it here :)

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All of us were volunteers in other organisations, we like to help people.

Would be great to make a living out of this? Sure, but not likely and we know it. We don’t even ask for an email address when you download it.

( also for the sweet reddit karma :) )

Have you made any big changes to the booklet since it was first released? If so, why?

We made several in the first two years, not too much after that. The main reason was we asked for and got feedback. Also we consulted with our psychologist friends, they gave us valuable feedback as well.

After that the feedback got out of scope for the booklet ( mainly that we should create a week planner, month planner or things like that )

Is this booklet for all ages? This made me really curious and it seems a beutiful work!

For a while most of us were volunteer time management trainers and people under 18 didn’t really see the value of setting goals. But everyone is different, I’m sure it works with people under 18 as well :)

Also we started to notice that people created custom year closing / planning booklets for couples, children, seniors...etc. We have some ideas to build on that (customizable questions and modules) if we have the time.

How exactly can closing one year and planning the next make people more "awesome", in your experience? What qualities do people improve with the practice you suggest in your booklet?

What I saw: people get a lot of closure when they start to think about their past year for a few hours. Every year we get emails about traumatic losses (ex. child loss) and how YearCompass helped them a bit.

For me it helps me remember how long a year really is how many things happened. I think I’m more patient, more calm. Planning helps me to really do what I want, because I have my goals for my year, I can make decisions easier.

It's midnight in Hungary and I need to take a break to sleep, but keep the questions coming, I'll be back in the morning and in the coming days to answer all of your questions. Thank you :)

Is this a way to plan out your New Years resolutions?

Yes.

I really don't like New Years resolutions, because I've failed with that mentality lots of times and it made me feel miserable and weak. You can't change everything from one day to another.

Of course, most of the NYRs are more than that, but they kind of reflect that mentality. Start going to the gym, eat healthy, get a promotion...etc. You can't do everything at once. At least I couldn't.

So I started to plan it out and scretch it out. Focus on one thing, build habits, move on to another. Still not a superhuman, but two weeks ago I ran my first 5k in the gym. Works for me.

I’ve done this last year after you posted on Reddit and found it amazingly helpful. Thank you so much for the time and energy you put into this project.

I wonder what your organisation does on a day-to-day basis. Where are the volunteers located and what do they do?

We are only active between september-january, and only part-time. In the autumn we prepare everything for the release, check up on the feedback, communicate with the translators (big shoutout for them), create the booklets, update the webpage, make a few things better, try new ideas. Not too much, but very much when you have a job :)

Our volunteers are around the world, they mainly help us in the translations, the pdf layout (if the language does not use the latin alphabet) and giving us feedback. Some of them also tries to promote the YearCompass in their country by creating events or writing about us.

Is there a story how your project affected someone's life you heard of? Btw: I love your work and have done it the third year in a row.

Yes. Lots :) People like to reach out in a message or in email if they really-really like it and they got something out of it. Most often we get stories about how it helped them to start new things. New job, relationships, traveling somewhere.

And then there are the tearjerkers. Stories about addiction, death, stillbirth, rape. From people who gone through a lot and we somehow helped them a bit and they shared this with us. I'm really grateful and humbled to be a small part in that process.

I LOVE year compass and have recc'ed to many friends.

What's something you would like people to know about year compass?

Also, would you ever change the questions to year compass, or would you keep them the same?

Lastly, why is the forgiveness section so large? I personally love that, but I did wonder at why the huge emphasis on it.

> What's something you would like people to know about year compass?

Three things:

1. It is a lot of work :)
2. We don't want to sell you a product, we want to share the idea. We believe in this, there is no hidden agenda or scheme.
3. It's not obvious but we are working a lot on developing the whole thing. In the past years we automated a lot of stuff and there are a lot of work-in-progress projects. For example: to recreate the home page, create a day/week/month compass and a lot of other stuff. We want to keep building on this :)

> Also, would you ever change the questions to year compass, or would you keep them the same?

For now, we want to keep the questions. We have ideas to add modules and / or to have a booklet creator based on your current life situation.

> Lastly, why is the forgiveness section so large? I personally love that, but I did wonder at why the huge emphasis on it.

If you had a rough year you could have a lot to forgive :).

After filling up the Year Compass booklet, what would you recommend to achieve the goals outlined for the year?

What method/plan/resources do you personally use to achieve your focus for the year?

> After filling up the Year Compass booklet, what would you recommend to achieve the goals outlined for the year?

That really depends. There is a lot of time-management stuff out there and you need to create your own system for that (but we have a work-in-progress project to create day / week / month compasses, to help people in that). When I was a time management trainer my favorite tool was week planning. Every sunday evening, check your todo list, your goals for the year and plan your next week. Don't forget to have relax time, or you'll burn out in a few days and everything goes to shit :)

> What method/plan/resources do you personally use to achieve your focus for the year?

Currently I use a trello board with 4 columns: To do, Selected to do, Doing / Waiting, Done and week planning. Most of the guys in the team have more complex systems for week planning with habbit trackers, rules about failed todos. Slowly create your own system, try out things and see what works for you.

What upvote bots do you use? Because I don't even understand what you are selling, but this screams AD AD AD. It's peculiar to me you have 2k upvotes at 85% with no negative top comments, while selling a confusing product.

We don’t use upvote bots and we are not selling anything. It’s completely free.

People just like it.

Sounds like some dianetics bullshit. Are you Scientology?

No and we are not affiliated to any religious or political organization.

Thanks. Just checking. The last person who offered me something useful sounding for free was a Scientology salesman.

I completely understand. Some marketing guy even called us crazy because we don’t even ask an email address before download ( just after, if you want a reminder email ). But we don’t want to, we just want to make the world a bit better :)