Measure your year by what you can do now that you couldn’t in January, not by what you bought.

Possessions record what you earned and capability records what you became, and only one of those keeps paying. Objects are easy to count, which is why they end up standing in for progress by default. A year is better judged by what moved from impossible to ordinary, since those things go with you wherever you end up.

List what you can do now that was beyond you last January. Be honest if the list is short, because that is information about how the year was spent rather than a judgment on you. Then choose one capability to add before the next one ends.