RESHAPE TOOL

Personal Retrospective
A solo reflection to help you move from feeling stuck to feeling more in control.
A retro gives you pause to reflect; the structure to notice what's actually happening.
Burnout thrives on things staying vague, ongoing, and unexamined. A retrospective interrupts that. It's a regular pause to ask "what's working, what isn't, what will I do differently?". It helps you separate what's yours to change from what isn't, and take one small, real step — on your terms.
Why a retro
— and why it works
Retrospectives started as a team ritual. But the reason they've stuck around in organisations for decades isn't ritual for its own sake. It's the results.

Teams that run retrospectives well have been shown to perform meaningfully better than teams that don't. The mechanism is simple: regular, honest reflection turns experience into learning, and learning into small, deliberate adjustments — rather than letting the same frustrations repeat on a loop.

Done well, retros also do something less visible but just as important: they rebuild a sense of agency. People stop being at the mercy of their work and start actively shaping it.

That's exactly what this tool is for — except the "team" is just you.

Right now, if you're experiencing burnout, this regular pause matters more than ever.

This isn't about fixing everything. It's about reshaping your experience of work, one small, chosen action at a time.
How to Use the Retro
Set aside 15–20 minutes, ideally at the same time each week. Find a quiet spot, get a notebook or open a blank doc, and move through the six steps below in order. Don't skip the check-in — it's not a formality; it's what makes the rest of the retro honest.
Step-by-Step Retro
Check-in with your body & mood
On a scale of 1–10, how am I feeling right now — physically and emotionally?
What's one word for how this week has felt?
Am I arriving at this retro rushed, or am I actually here?
What's going well?
What moment this week did I feel most like myself?
What's one thing — however small — that went better than expected?
Where did I notice energy, ease, or even a flicker of enjoyment?
What's something I did that I'd want to repeat?
What's not going well?
What drained me most this week?
Where did I feel stuck, overloaded, or unseen?
What keeps showing up as a problem, week after week?
What am I tolerating that I probably shouldn't be?

You're not solving yet — just naming clearly and honestly.
What can I do about it?
Pick one item from the list above
Choose one that is genuinely within your control or influence
What change(s) could you make — choices, responses, boundaries, habits? Write free-flow suggestions for yourself
If you let go of trying to fix the rest (for now), what becomes possible?
Choose an action
Choose one action from what you identified.
Make it SMART:
  • Specific — exactly what will I do?
  • Measurable — how will I know it's done?
  • Achievable — is this realistic given my current capacity?
  • Relevant — does this actually address what I named above?
  • Time-bound — by when, or how often?
Example: "I will end my workday at 5:00 pm on Tuesday and Thursday this week, by setting a phone alarm and closing my laptop when it sounds" — not "I'll try to work less."
Close the loop deliberately — this turns a reflection into a practice
One sentence: what am I taking from this retro?
How do I want to feel by the time I do this again?
Set the date for your next retro — same time next week is best.
You've just done something most people never do: paused, looked honestly at your work, and chosen — deliberately — what to do next. That's not a small thing. That's how you reshape a work life, one retro at a time.
Photo by Julia Potter on Unsplash
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