Free: The 2026 Annual Review (PDF + AI Guide + Notebook)

Friends,

For longer than I can remember—certainly more than five years now—sending out my Annual Review template has been a December ritual.

It started as a simple set of questions I asked myself. Then it became a PDF I shared with a few founders. Last year, thousands of you downloaded it.

But as I sat down to design the 2026 edition, I realized the old way of reviewing our lives felt incomplete.

Usually, we treat the Annual Review as a logistics audit. We look at the "What": What did I ship? What revenue did I hit? What milestones did I cross?

We optimize for output. But looking back at 2025, I realized that the quality of my year wasn't defined by what I did, but by who I did it with.

The 2026 Edition: Who > What

This year’s guide is different. It is less about "optimizing" your life and more about anchoring it.

Together with my colleague Eli and my wife Jessica, I redesigned the questions to focus on the Four Concentric Circles of Responsibility:

1. Relationship to Self: Are you being a friend to yourself?

2. Relationship to Loved Ones: Who is the one person whose well-being is your priority?

3. Relationship to Work: Not just "what do I build," but "who do I serve?"

4. Relationship to the Whole: What contribution are you making to the wider community?

Two New Ways to Use It

Because I know the friction of staring at a blank page, I wanted to lower the barrier to deep reflection this year.

1. The AI Guide (New) — For the first time, we (Jessie did) developed an interactive AI Review Guide. You don’t have to do this alone anymore. You can treat the review as a conversation. And you can take it on a walk, which I am most excited about. The Guide will guide you through the sections, challenge your surface-level answers, and help summarize your themes for 2026.

2. The Classic PDF — For those who prefer deep work offline (which I highly recommend), the full guide is available as a beautiful, printable document.

A Gift for 20 Subscribers (🇩🇪 only)

Digital is great, but there is magic in pen and paper.

We've created a limited edition of beautifully bound notebooks for the 2026 Annual Review—designed to sit on your desk as a compass throughout the year.

I have set aside 20 copies specifically for subscribers of this newsletter.

They are free, on a first-come, first-served basis.

If you want one mailed to you:

1. Reply to this email with your shipping address.

2. I’ll confirm if you were among the first 20.

One final piece of advice: Do not rush this. The best insights don't come from a 45-minute sprint between Zoom calls. Download the guide (or open the AI Guide), read the questions, and let them simmer for a few days. It’s the reason I publish this review now, rather than after Christmas.

Here is to a 2026 defined by the people who matter most.

Warmly,

Julius