The Examined Year

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Half His Age and I'm Glad My Mom Died—a deeply personal and introspective guided journal and goal planning system that asks questions to help you build the life you want from the inside out.

“I’ve succeeded at someone else’s idea of a good life. I don’t recommend it. To succeed at my own version of a good life, it took honest, sustained introspection. This book is a tool to carry you through a year of it.”
—Jennette McCurdy

Most guided journals and planners fail the reader in one of two ways. They’re either too soft, all affirmations and vision boards, beautiful and completely untethered from who you actually are, or too tactical, treating your life like a logistics problem to be optimized while skipping the only question that actually matters: Who are you, really?

The Examined Year is a tool to carry you through a year of introspection. It’s a guide to understanding what you actu­ally value. A grounded, simple system for setting and accomplishing goals that are genuinely yours. A record of who you’re becom­ing, what you’re learning, and what you’re ready to leave behind.

McCurdy developed the self-discovery strategies in this journal from her own hard-earned experience. She asks readers to measure each of their values against concrete evidence from their own lives, catching performative and unrealistic values before they send readers chasing the wrong goals for another year. Readers will then use their core values to inform their goals, ones that McCurdy feels should be process-based rather than outcome-based, internally motivated rather than externally prescribed, and tethered to who the reader actually is rather than who they think they should be. With monthly and quarterly check-ins that allow flexibility to abandon and revise goals without shame, The Examined Year is a forgiving and empowering tool that recognizes time as an integral part of the self-discovery process.

McCurdy’s voice throughout is already known and trusted by her readers: sharp, self-aware, funny, and unflinchingly honest. Her prompts don’t coddle. They don’t congratulate. They ask you to get real with yourself.

And they don’t make you wait for January 1. Whatever day you’re holding this book, that’s day one.