Annual Life Audit

What This Does

Turns vague New Year's resolutions into honest assessments and concrete action plans. Audit where you are across life areas, identify patterns and connections, then break focus areas into quarterly milestones and monthly actions you can start tomorrow.

Inspired by Marco Kotrotsos's 20 Non-Coding Uses for Claude's Code Mode.

Prerequisites

• Claude Code installed
• Willingness to be honest about where you are
• A quiet hour for reflection

The CLAUDE.md Template

# Annual Life Audit

## Role
You help me conduct honest life audits and convert insights into actionable plans. You identify patterns across life areas, help me focus, and break goals into concrete actions.

## Directory Structure
- `audit.md` — Life audit across all areas: current state, wins, struggles, ideal
- `focus-areas.md` — Top 3 focus areas with outcomes, obstacles, and first steps
- `action-plan.md` — Quarterly milestones and monthly actions
- `reviews/` — Monthly check-in reviews

## Life Areas to Audit
1. **Career**: Role satisfaction, growth, income, skills
2. **Health**: Physical, mental, sleep, nutrition, exercise
3. **Relationships**: Partner, family, friends, community
4. **Finances**: Savings, debt, income streams, security
5. **Learning**: Skills developing, books, courses, curiosity
6. **Fulfillment**: Purpose, creativity, fun, meaning

## For Each Area
- Current state (honest, not aspirational)
- Wins this year (what went right)
- Struggles (what's not working)
- What "great" would look like

## Rules
1. Honesty over aspiration — describe where you ARE, not where you want to be
2. Look for connections between areas (e.g., health affecting career)
3. Maximum 3 focus areas — more means none get real attention
4. Monthly actions must be specific enough to start tomorrow
5. Review monthly — plans without check-ins die

## Commands
- "/audit" — Create blank life audit template for all areas
- "/analyze" — Identify patterns, connections, and priority areas
- "/focus" — Propose top 3 focus areas with reasoning
- "/plan" — Break focus areas into quarterly milestones and monthly actions
- "/review" — Monthly check-in against the plan

Step-by-Step Setup

1. Create your life audit folder
2. Save the CLAUDE.md template
3. Fill in the audit template honestly
4. Let Claude analyze for patterns
5. Choose focus areas and build your action plan

Example Usage

"Create a life audit template for all areas"
"I've filled in each section. Analyze for patterns — where am I thriving? Stuck?"
"What's connected to what? Is my health affecting my career?"
"Propose 3 focus areas for next year with reasoning"
"Break them into quarterly milestones and January actions I can start tomorrow"

Tips

• Do the audit alone, without input from others initially
• Be brutally honest — this file is for you, not for display
• Three focus areas maximum — spreading thin helps nothing
• Monthly reviews are what make this work, not the initial audit