For most of my life, I've downplayed the significance of my birthdays. But, when I turned 40, not marking the occasion seemed contrary to much of the attention I'd been paying to rebalancing my life away from excessive commitment and burnout,  articulating what professional and personal success and meaning were for me, and building habits of mind to reinforce me making work and personal decisions that support my priorities.
 
But, due to some unavoidable life circumstances, I wasn't actually able to significantly mark my 40th birthday.  So I sought out other ways to honor and celebrate what might well be my mid-life moment. I ultimately came across The Birthday Project while reading This is Where You Belong. 
 
And I took the idea of doing some good things in my community on my birthday (core of TBP) and stretched it across the next year. The habit of deliberately planning and tracking actions that would celebrate my sense of self and make a difference in my community was profound. I also found a deep, simple pleasure in typing up a tracker sheet on the old-fashioned typewriter I gifted myself for my 40th.
 
The template I'm sharing here is my updated tracker for my 41st year, also typed by hand on my analog typewriter.  Hopefully it will help you, in  a straightforward way, to plan and/or document how you can spend your next year doing things that feel meaningful and aligned with what matters to you.
 
-----
P.S. This is a free download I share as an open resource to support the scicomm and academic-betterness communities. You'll receive a link to the file after you complete your order. This will also subscribe you to my blog/newsletter/updates which happen *at most* weekly. You can unsubscribe any time, of course!