As any year draws to a close, there's a lingering reminder to set ourselves goals for the year ahead.

While setting goals is great to measure progress, it's just as important to reflect on the past 12 months. Reflection provides a baseline; a starting point. You'll be better equipped to measure progress, set smaller goals along the way, and keep your fire alight.

Self-reflection is a powerful tool; it gives you the chance to pause and dig into your thoughts and feelings. Some of the things you can reflect on are...

The relationship between your physical and mental health. How to strengthen this?

Your friendships and connections with others. How do these benefit or impact you?

Your career and business direction. What areas interest you most or, what areas need improvement?

What inspires you to be the best version of yourself? Is it the people surrounding you? Is it your inner monologue?

What does success look like to you? How can you make small, achievable steps along the way?

While 2020 wasn't the year we hoped, and for a lot of us, our 2020 goals went out the window; that doesn't mean you should neglect 2021 goals too.

Psychologists found that recognising clear progress boosts motivation, productivity, and happiness. Progress will keep you engaged long after the "New Year resolution hype" has faded.

But tracking your progress isn't always straightforward, especially if you find yourself consumed by deadlines, unplanned tasks and a change in priorities. Taking a moment to reflect can easily take a back seat when it comes to your work. focus booster can help!

In 2020, we rolled out our first-ever yearly round-up for focus booster users and it's available in your inbox!

Get to know your 2020 year in review with focus booster

Sessions

Whether you're using focus booster's web or desktop apps, you can work confidently knowing every minute is tracked with the pomodoro timer.

'Sessions' measure your total pomodoro count for 2020, including;

• Complete sessions: Sessions that ran for the full length of the time set in your preferences. For example, 25-minutes.
• Incomplete sessions: Sessions that were interrupted. For example, a session manually stopped before the timer had finished.

Productive time

Your productive time data equates to the total number of minutes the pomodoro timer recorded during sessions.

Again, this includes both complete and incomplete pomodoro sessions.

For example, x4 25-minute pomodoro sessions = 1 hour and 40 minutes of productive time (01:40).

If one pomodoro session was interrupted at 10-minutes (an incomplete pomodoro session), then x1 25-minute pomodoro session + x1 10-minute pomodoro session = 35 minutes of productive time (00:35).

Most productive day

The most productive day in your performance report equates to the day of the week where you commonly recorded the most pomodoro sessions.

This data provides an understanding of a peak time when you were alert, focused and excited to work on a project involving problem-solving, decision-making, and complex thoughts.

For example, suppose Thursday is your most productive day. In that case, this is a reliable indicator to schedule your most important tasks (MIT's) on Thursday's.

MIT's should focus on your long-term goals. Whether it's to start a blog in 2021, get three new paying clients each month or increase your revenue by 20% over the year. These should leave you feeling as though you've made progress; it should be meaningful. Because when progress is made in meaningful work, you feel satisfied.

If you're stumped when it comes to choosing your MIT, pick a task that makes you uncomfortable. If outreach and pitching to potential clients peak your anxiety, then that's the one!

Comparison to the average focus booster subscriber

The last section in your report is the data comparison to the average focus booster subscriber.

This section gives you a good indicator of how your year stacks up against others, productivity-wise.

Here you'll see;

• The average pomodoro sessions recorded in 2020 for a focus booster subscriber
• The productive time this equates to
• The day of the year where focus booster users were at their peak focus

Use your data as a baseline for 2021

If you’re not familiar with looking at personal data, your 2020 Year in Review is a great place to dig in and get started. Data tells a story. It shows how 2020 impacted your work and what you achieved. It also shows where to go from here.

To dig further into this data, log into focus booster, and view your dashboard reports to see some further stats like;

• Which client you spent the most time on
• Which client brought in the most revenue
• And which day of the week you commonly work across multiple clients or areas of business

(Tip: You will need to set your session data to the previous year for point 1 and 2. For point 3, as there may be a lot of data to load, this can take a bit of time. We suggest viewing point 3 by month range.)

Use your data to set achievable goals, build stronger habits, and make 2021 your most focused and accomplished year yet!

All the best for a productive year ahead!