Most of the newsletter section of my inbox this week has been filled with posts on recaps, predictions and planning for 2023. The end of the calendar year is a natural check point that we recognise culturally and serves as a good time for such reflections and thinking ahead.

The three types of posts are best done all together.

Recaps are factual. They are about reflecting on what has gone by in the past year, taking stock of how things panned out, performing a fair evaluation of how we did and what the external environment did to us. Starting with this understanding is useful before we think about what's ahead. It gives us a platform and a perspective.

Predictions are our best guesses. They are probabilistic and uncertain. Nonetheless, we need to have a view on how things will evolve, how some of our decisions will pan out and how the external environment might change. This, along with the recap, gives us a basis on which to plan what actions we intend to take in the next year.

Which brings us to planning, which is a deliberate exercise to make a commitment on how we intend to get to our goals, given what we know about how things have transpired so far and how we think they will transpire in the coming year.