Our Annual Reset: The Family Board Meeting We Never Skip
(aka strategy, alignment, dreaming… and a little bit of magic)
For the past ten years, my husband and I have ended the year the same way.
Not with resolutions.
Not with colour-coded planners or perfectly articulated goals.
But with conversation.
We call it our annual planning, but really it’s our family board meeting — part strategy session, part objective-setting workshop, part annual awards ceremony. It’s the thing that keeps us aligned, grounded, and moving forward together, even when life gets busy, messy, or unpredictable.
And every single year, it quietly changes everything.
It always starts by looking back
Somewhere around Boxing Day, usually in the car on the way to somewhere far enough away that conversation has space to wander, we start with a familiar set of questions:
What are you most proud of this year?
What are you most disappointed about?
What were the highlights?
What do you want to leave behind?
To be clear — this part is loose AF.
We can’t remember half of what actually happened. The timelines are questionable. The facts are fuzzy. And none of the answers are treated as gospel.
But that’s not the point.
The point is that it gets our heads in the game. It shows us where the other person is sitting — hopeful, flat, excited, burned out, proud, grieving, energised. It creates awareness. And awareness is always the first step to alignment.
Then we think alone (on purpose)
From there, we each go away and reflect individually on what we want for the year ahead.
This part matters because we are very different thinkers.
I’m big-picture and vibe-driven. I care about how I want the year to feel. What I want more of. What I want less of. The energy I’m craving.
My husband is structured and specific. He notices gaps. He thinks in objectives, constraints, and outcomes. He sees what’s missing and wants to define it clearly.
Neither approach is better — but doing this part separately ensures we both arrive with clarity, rather than compromise before we’ve even begun.
Strategy Day (aka the best day of the year)
Then comes the day we both look forward to most.
We choose a day around the new year and deliberately clear the decks.
Our daughter is out of the house (holiday program, epic play date — whatever works).
We organise excellent food (usually a next-level cheese platter).
We open a good bottle of wine.
We clean the whiteboard (yes, we have a big one — proudly old school).
And we set ourselves up with coffee, markers, our notes, and open minds.
The only thing we know for sure going in is this: we have no idea what our plan will look like yet.
Because the plan doesn’t exist until we have the conversations.
Sharing our individual visions
We start by talking each other through what we’ve each reflected on.
What matters.
What we’re feeling.
What feels exciting.
What feels heavy.
We listen — not to problem-solve or fix — but to understand how each person’s hopes fit into the bigger picture of us. And what support might be needed to bring them to life.
From that conversation, our key objectives usually emerge naturally.
For 2026, ours are:
Stabilising my husband’s new role at work
Growing my business into something bigger and more sustainable
Successfully transitioning our family into our new home
Nothing fancy. Just honest priorities.
Defining our focus areas
Next, we agree on the areas of focus for the year — the buckets we know we need to talk about deeply.
For 2026, they are:
Career
Us
Family
Community
Identity & Self
Body & Mind
Mental Clutter
Physical Clutter
These categories aren’t meant to make sense to anyone else. They change every year. We never decide them in advance — they emerge from the conversation.
This year was the first time Money didn’t make the list. That surprised both of us, and also confirmed we were aligned in where we wanted to invest our mental energy.
That insight alone was worth the day.
The real work: conversation, not checklists
Each individual goal we’ve identified fits into one of these areas.
So we go category by category, talking through:
What we want
Why we want it
Where we are now
What’s getting in the way (this can get raw)
What we need to move forward
What success actually looks like
Some topics take 15 minutes.
Some take over an hour.
Some are light and funny.
Some cut right to the heart of our relationship.
We don’t rush it. And we don’t move on until we feel hopeful and aligned about what we’ve landed on.
In some areas, we’ll define multiple actions. For example, in Us, that might look like:
Prioritising regular date nights
Creating better structures for honest communication
Getting a cleaner and sharing household tasks more effectively
Different actions. Same intention.
The whiteboard (and the magic)
By the end of the day, we usually have a whiteboard full of intentions, actions, and focus areas — our strategy for the year.
We leave it up for a day or two.
We look at it.
Let it sink in.
Take a photo.
And then… we put it away. Honestly? We barely look at it again.
And yet — every single year — when we review it later, we’re amazed by how much actually happened.
Because the power isn’t in the board. It’s in the alignment.
Last year, I gave us a word of the year: Build.
By the end of the year, we were building a new house. That was absolutely not on the bingo card. But the priorities we set led us there anyway.
Why we keep doing it
Yes, it’s a lot of talking. Yes, it takes time.
But at its core, it’s one intentional day a year spent with my favourite person in the world, having big conversations about the adventures we want to have together next.
And honestly? That feels like the best investment we could ever make.
If you’ve never tried something like this — I highly recommend it.
If it’s something you think you’d like support on with yourself or as a team with your partner, reach out and let’s make it happen. I love this stuff!