After failing many times, I adopted a system on which I could plan ahead and improve effectiveness in many areas of my life. Last year around this time, I began to think about my life in general and how I could accomplish goals in a more linear way while understanding what worked and what didn't. An Annual Review(AR) came to the rescue. I stumbled upon Chris Guillebeau’s article on this revolutionary method of setting goals, or more precisely, creating a plan-of-action. One of my strengths I learned through StrengthFinder (a web-based assessment of normal personality from the perspective of Positive Psychology) is focus; I need to have control and the only way to feel I have a bit more control would be to come up with what Chris calls personal Annual Review (AR). To clarify, we won’t have full control of everything, nor will we get everything in our plan done exactly as it is written, but the Annual Review serves as a guide to help us get closer to where we want to be.

The idea is to create a road map for the year ahead, an outline of the things I want to accomplish in the coming year. I begin the planning in December, review it every quarter and adjust it throughout the year. To clarify, this is not a rigid task that you must strictly follow or else you will fail horribly. It’s not about the system; it’s about putting things down on paper (in this case spreadsheet); it’s about pursuing things you like and enjoy; it’s about you. If you fail in any category, don’t feel guilty, it’s okay. It’s not about perfectionism. In fact, if you do fail in any category (and you will, everyone does), you have a valuable system in place to track failures and work on them. Most successful corporations do it, but the difference is that instead of being viewed and analyzed by several people, your Annual Review is solely dependent on you. It’s truly a blessing. It’s important to note that, besides a good system, you need strategies to sharpen your cognitive abilities and develop the skills to learn how to keep your resolutions and achieve your goals.

I’m going to share with you my planning of last year, a few things that didn not go well and what I've learned since adopting this system. I'm also going to highlight a few areas to focus this year. I'm not an expert in this area of planning but I'm becoming fascinated with the massive of learning I retain throughout the year.

I'm not going to show you how to build an Annual Review. Should you feel strongly about this system upon reading this article and need to learn how build one of your own, I urge you to read Chris Guillebeau’s article.

I’m using a rating system on a scale of 1-5 to measure my success.

Financial (Rating: 3)

First and foremost, terminate my debt as much as possible was of utmost importance. I learned that it’s very important to balance debts and investments, in other words, sometimes you don’t have to get rid of or end your investments due to unexpected life events. Every situation is uniquely different but I learned that it was best to keep working toward my independence financially as well.

Although I wish I had done better, I made improvements over the year. I reduced my debt (nearly $50K) substantially with a remaining of nearly $10K. I've also built another system to monitor my spending and monthly expenses. I started using Mint at the beginning of the first quarter but eventually my desire to use it faded out toward the end of second quarter so I went back to my spreadsheet system.

The other part of this financial planning was the giving. I’m a big believer in giving spontaneously (don’t give because you feel obligated to do it), so I was tithing for the most part of year but I wasn’t consistent in doing so. I also need to work on giving.

Faith (Rating: 2)

I believe that my relationship with God (not religion) is very important so I wanted to make this a priority in my life. I wanted to devote time to read the scriptures, prioritize my relationship with God and strengthen my soul so I don’t become a powerless Christian. However, I didn’t do quite well. My initial plan was to read and learn one book of the bible per month. My results were clearly bad as far as reading. While I didn't achieve my reading goal, I became more close to God in many differents way; I attended church more often and learned more about God through the services, fellowship and listening to podcasts. Churches I attended were: Grace Church Roseville, Bethel Rock in Richfield and Church of Hope in Bloomington.

Reading, Writing and Education (Rating: 3)

I was aiming at 40 books last year. I didn’t reach the number 40 but I did well, at least in my own metrics. I read an average of 1.5 books and 37.3 articles read online per month. I’m not taking into account articles read directly through the browser as opposed to the Readability app, which is how I got to this number.

I failed in the writing category. I was planning on writing one article every week on my blog. I’m working on that this year. Hopefully, I'll get a higher number. (i'm not disclosing the number of articles I wrote. You can see for yourself 😊

One of my long term goals is to get my masters in interaction design. Miraculously, I re-enrolled in school and managed to do well in most of my classes which is the starting point to achieving my long term goal.

In addition, I took a few classes offered by my employer in finance, leadership and personal development.

Travel (Rating: 4)

While I want to travel around the world, my priority was to terminate my debt as much as possible so I made affordable plans to go Boston and Dallas to see family. I did well in this category.

Health (Rating: 4)

Experts claim that in order for us to have a well-balanced — feeling grounded, clear-headed, calm and motivated – life, we need to be working on having a long and healthy life. This is the category I am most proud of. Given the circumstances I experienced in the past few years both physically and emotionally, I believe I did well. Here are my stats:

Cycling: avg. of 142 miles a month

Swimming: 2 times of week

Workout: 3 days of week

Family (Rating: 3)

I’m very grateful to God for the family I have. I’m grateful because I have the most caring, loving, friendly, and outgoing family. My family is joined by bonds of love; we are a team, helping each other meet all our emotional and physical needs.

Despite the physical distance between me and my family, I felt the need to improve communication amongst our family members. Most importantly, I needed to be closer to my parents and sisters, express my feelings, help them with whatever they need.

And this is another category in my planning which I’m most proud of. We improved a lot of things last year, one being communication amongst other things. We underestimate how much communication is important in any institution (family) so I wanted to address it as best as we could. In the end, I felt we made meaningful improvements.

However, it doesn’t mean we need to stop improving our relationship with our family. I will continue to express how much I care and love them. Wrongly, sometimes we prioritize other things in life (feel guilty too), forgetting the most important asset we have in life, our family. I’m changing that.

Here are a few of my goals for this year:

Goals for this quarter

• Read and memorize one chapter of the bible every week
• Pay off debt
• Redesign my site
• Write one article per week on my blog
• Travel to Boston in March for my birthday
• Read 10 books

Goals for this year

• Travel to Brazil on vacation
• Travel to California for Jason’s wedding
• Pay off my debt
• Write one article per week on my blog
• Continue exploring mobile solutions
• Read a lot of data on mobile devices
• Improve my relationship with my parents
• Read 40 books this year
• Take classes in college toward a degree.