Write the advice down. Four years of evidence beats any prediction, and the pattern is almost always that the slow steady things worked and the urgent things did not.

Four years is the useful interval

A one-year review is mostly about the last quarter, because that is what anybody remembers.

Four years is long enough that the noise has resolved and short enough that you were the same business throughout.

It is also the first time this exercise has been possible for anybody who started keeping records at the beginning of the period.

So the question is not what you would do differently this year, but what you would tell the version of yourself who was making decisions four years ago.

The questions to answer

The third is the most revealing. Almost everything a business starts stops within a year, so the handful of habits that survived four are the ones actually suited to how you work.

The pattern is usually the same

Which is worth naming so you can check it against your own answers.

The things that produced most were slow, unglamorous, and cumulative: photographing work consistently, answering enquiries quickly, asking for reviews, writing down what customers ask.

The things that cost most for nothing were fast, exciting, and one-off: a redesign, a campaign, a platform, a tool.

Almost nobody would predict that split in advance and almost everybody finds it in hindsight.

Which suggests the useful instruction to the earlier version of yourself is not about any specific decision but about the category to prefer.

Small and repeated beats large and occasional, over four years, reliably.

A worked example

A business wrote five sentences of advice to itself in 2020.

The first was to photograph every job from the start, since the photographs taken from 2021 onwards had become the most valuable thing on the site.

The second was to have raised prices twelve months earlier than they did.

The third was that the expensive redesign in 2021 had changed nothing measurable and the four pages written in 2022 had changed a great deal.

The fourth was that nothing they worried about in the industry had affected them.

The fifth was to have written down how they do things far sooner.

Look at what you stopped doing

Which is as informative as what you continued.

Four years produces a list of abandoned things: a newsletter, a platform, a service line, a way of quoting.

For each, ask whether it stopped because it did not work or because it was not sustainable, which are different diagnoses with different lessons.

Something that worked and was abandoned because it took too long is a candidate to restart at a lower cadence.

Something that was sustainable and produced nothing should never be restarted, whatever anybody recommends.

Most businesses find they have one of each when they look.

The restartable one is frequently the more valuable finding.

Write it as instructions, not observations

Which is what makes it usable.

Do more of the thing that worked is an observation, and photograph every completed job before leaving the site is an instruction.

The second can be followed by somebody and the first cannot.

Aim for five or six sentences that a person could act on tomorrow without interpretation.

That is the document, and it takes about half an hour once the thinking is done.

Anything longer will not get read again, including by you in four years.

Then address it to 2027

Which is the actual purpose.

The advice you would give 2020 is, with very few changes, the advice that applies now.

So rewrite those five sentences in the present tense, put a date on them, and keep them somewhere you will find them in four years.

That gives the next version of this exercise something to check against, which is the only way to know whether your judgement improved.

Almost nobody does this, which is why the same lessons get relearned every few years.

Ask somebody who was there

Which corrects for memory.

A partner, a long-serving member of staff, or a supplier who has worked with you throughout will remember a different four years from the one you remember.

Ask them what they think changed the business and what they think was wasted effort.

The disagreements are the interesting part, since they usually point at something you have been telling yourself.

Twenty minutes of that conversation is worth considerably more than an hour spent alone with the figures.

Check it against the figures

Which stops the exercise becoming a pleasant story about yourself.

Memory attaches importance to whatever was stressful at the time, and the stressful things are frequently not the ones that moved anything.

So before writing the five sentences, look at four years of enquiries or revenue by month and note where the shape actually changed.

Then check whether the decision you were about to credit lines up with the date the numbers moved, since quite often it does not.

Where memory and figures disagree, the figures are describing the business and the memory is describing your experience of running it.

The counter-case

Hindsight is unreliable.

The decisions that look obviously right now looked uncertain at the time, and a review constructs a story that is tidier than what happened.

Circumstances also change, so advice that fits the last four years may not fit the next four at all.

And a business that has changed shape entirely over the period cannot usefully advise its earlier self about anything.

In that case the exercise becomes about what the next four years should look like instead.

Answer the five questions, write the advice as instructions, look at what you stopped, and address the same document to four years from now.

The half hour

  1. Which decision produced most.
  2. Which cost most for nothing.
  3. What survived four years.
  4. What you worried about needlessly.
  5. Write five instructions.
  6. Ask somebody who was there.
  7. Address it to 2027.

Step seven is what makes this compound, since a dated document from today gives the next four-year review something to check your judgement against rather than starting again.

The annual version is at what you would do differently.

Frequently asked questions

Why four years rather than one?

A one-year review is mostly about the last quarter, because that is what anybody remembers. Four years is long enough for the noise to resolve.

What are the questions?

Which decision produced the most, which cost the most for nothing, what survived four years, what you worried about needlessly, and what you would start earlier.

What is the usual pattern?

The things that produced most were slow and cumulative; the things that cost most for nothing were fast and one-off. Almost nobody predicts that split and almost everybody finds it.

What should I do with things I stopped?

Ask whether each stopped because it did not work or because it was not sustainable. The first should never restart; the second may, at a lower cadence.

How should I write it?

As instructions rather than observations. Photograph every completed job before leaving the site can be followed; do more of what worked cannot.

What makes it worth repeating?

Addressing the same document to four years from now, dated, so the next review has something to check your judgement against.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Been trading since 2020?

Write five sentences of advice to yourself then, as instructions. Then date them for 2027.

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