It is already mid-February, sad to say I am behind not just on a project at work but also on some personal stuff.

For the past few years, at the start of the year, aside from objective settings process that I do at work I have also applied it to my own personal life.  I make a list of all my goals and do regular review to assess where I am and where I am lagging.  At the end of the year I do a full assessment,

1. Looking at the achieved goals – Yehey! A reason to celebrate small wins. Then after the victory dance, I think about how to bring it to the next level. Making the goal stretched but also realistic.
2. Spending more time on deep diving on the goals that were not achieved focusing on the why and if it still makes sense to pursue that goal for the next year or maybe review the goal to make it more realistic.

After this process, I update my dream board for the new year using the previous year’s dream board as a baseline.  Then, I create my budget for the new year breaking it down by category and by month usually using the last quarter of the previous year as a baseline but noting down to review it once I receive the Reward Statement showing my performance rating for previous year and the merit increase, usually we receive the letter in end Feb and the merit increase is reflected in our pay in April.

Last year, I lost my notebook (no, I am not talking about a laptop but this is the traditional notebook that you need a pen and you need to write) that contains learnings from seminars, hand-written articles, random thoughts and the most valuable information – my goals and dreams.

Instead of re-writing my goals as soon as the notebook got lost because it will still be a bit fresh (versus now), I couldn’t move on from the fact that I lost the notebook and I procrastinated until it is now almost 11 months ago since I lost the notebook.

So what lesson did I learn?

Yes, I lost my notebook and yes for almost a year I got lost and wasn’t able to move on but it doesn’t mean that I also lost my goals.  I just need to find a new notebook and re-write them as far as my memory can help me but it may also be a sign and a good opportunity for me to re-think or even create new dreams and goals.  Let us keep on dreaming and dream big while we are at it. 🙂