Last week I got my copy of The Art of Non-Conformity signed by Chris Guillebeau in Toronto. I definitely recommend the book to you guys.
The timing of the book signing actually worked out perfectly since I was already in Toronto for the Engineers Without Borders National Conference, which ended the night before.
Here was my experience meeting Chris Guillebeau (click to view the full size image):
I know I really left it to the last minute, but for those interested here is how I do my upcoming year planning.
As with the last post ([intlink id=”401″ type=”post”]Reviewing the Past Year[/intlink]) I use a mindmap with my 14 categories that breakdown the various areas of my life, plus a few additions.
For each area, I create a Goals section and write out all the major things I want to accomplish throughout the year, formatting them differently for Higher, Regular, and Lower Importance. The importance is an average of the goal’s importance in terms of its value to me, and whether it needs to be done in the nearer future or not. Something that is very important, but can’t be started until October, I give a low importance for now, and will update it when we get closer to October.
It is best to set goals that are as measurable and clear as possible — something I haven’t been too good at in the past, but really tried to do well this year.
For each of the 14 areas I also list the important projects to work on, that stem directly from the goals I set. This includes any carry-over projects from the previous year that were not completed. As with the goals, I use three different formats to show visually the relative importance of the project.
Remember, these goals and projects are going to be your focus for the upcoming year. But to not loose sight of other, more long-term goals or projects, I also have a section in the mindmap (separate from everything done so far) where I list 5 year and lifetime goals for each of the 14 categories as well. This is so I have them in writing, and can update them as needed, without them clouding my overall mindmap for 2011.
One of my main goals is to keep the map as clean as possible, so that it can be glanced at to get an idea of what I should be working on (hence the different formatting to highlight was is most important to be working on).
Example: Health & Fitness
This year I set several goals for my health and fitness. The most important is to improve my climbing and get back into running.
Consistently climb 5.12+
By the end of the year I want to be able to consistently climb routes at a difficulty of at least 5.12+. Since my current climbing level is more in the 5.10- range, this could be a pretty big challenge.
A relevant project for this goal: I want to finish reading both 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes and The Self-Coached Climber, and actually do the recommended exercises.
Run a half-marathon
I’ve only done a bit of running in my life, and for a long time I’ve wanted to run a marathon. I’m not going to be too ambitious this year, though. I’ll stick with aiming for a half-marathon, and once I get one of those under my belt I’ll go for the full thing.
Habit of cooking
The past year was good for doing a lot of meal cooking, but I want to vamp it up even more this year. This is partially because I enjoy cooking and it allows me to eat much more local, unprocessed foods, but it will also help with my ‘Eating Out’ budget (some overlap with Money & Finance).
Visualizing the Year with a Compact Calendar
This year I added something new to my planning. Once I outlined my goals and the corresponding projects to complete throughout the year, I put everything onto a one-page year calendar.
The calendar I used is from David Seah over here, slightly modified to remove holidays and change some colours, and then printed in the centre of a regular sheet of paper. Then I added all the specific known dates and general times when I want to get my projects done, as well as any specific dates for important events—two weddings, and weekend music festival, NaNoWriMo in November, etc.
I intentionally avoided putting too much specific times/dates on my calendar. It’s impossible to plan everything to the day (except for very specific events), so there must be some flexibility the planning.
Overall, this gives a snapshot of my upcoming year, which I post up in my office alongside a printout of my main goals/projects mindmap.
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I try to stretch out the goal/project planning over a few days, because I always have some changes to make when I sleep on what I’ve come up with so far.
And that’s about it! Hopefully you find this info useful, and if you’ve never done any year reviewing or planning before, I highly recommend you give it a try.
Before planning for the upcoming year, it is still important to review the past year.
As mentioned in the last post, I start with cleaning up as many loose ends as possible (taking care not to burn myself out doing that). For example, empty out that email inbox! You don’t need to respond to everything, at least look at them all, delete/archive what you can, and get some to-do lists going for what you need to do.
Also, go through all the loose papers and odds-n-ends around the house. Process everything and file it all away. Get yourself into an organized state. (If this will take way too much time and effort, then I would consider skipping it for now to focus on the overall year review and next year planning.)
I do this with a mindmap with the following top-level categories. Every now and then, I wonder if I’ve gotten far too specific with them, but it always ends up working well for me. If you want to use fewer, more general categories, or do it differently in any way, by all means do.
And now, for each of these areas, answer the following two questions:
I think it’s important to be brutally honest with yourself. Don’t write anything fluffy; write down how things actually went. But don’t beat yourself up if it didn’t go well. The important thing here is to get some clarity as to what you actually did and did not accomplish over the past year.
I also like to create a very short summary of the things that I did throughout the year, calendar style, that could be useful in the future to remember what you actually did. For example: the school semesters and classes you took and when; the major projects you worked on and when; the big trips you went on or goals you accomplished; important dates, etc.
Example: Money & Finance
This past year was an amazing year for me in this area. I managed to finally get rid of all my debt to my parents (from school), get a real income, saved up a decent emergency fund, and finally started building some investments. I also kept a budget, stuck with it (for the most part) and tracked all my expenses (for the most part) for the entire year.
What not too long ago was one of the most stressful areas of my life is now one of the least. And thanks to my past year reviews, I can easily see that this is the case.
Example: Emotions
This area wasn’t as good. I’m still finding it hard to be positive about things, and far too easy to be negative. By constantly telling myself I had so much to do, it was hard to be happy with what I did. And stressing about now accomplishing what I wanted to accomplish made me stress even more, which made it even harder to accomplish anything, etc. etc.
Overall, 2010 was a really good year. Though I find it hard to realize this as life is happening, when looking back over the past year it’s hard to not reflect about how good life really is.
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Remember: the important thing isn’t to overly dwell on the past, but to use the past-year review to help plan for the next year, and make it the best year of your life!
For the last few years I’ve done a yearly review in the few weeks leading up to the new year. I thought I’d share the process that I use, in case you find it helpful for doing your own review.
But first a little meta: Why do a yearly review?
I suppose if it doesn’t interest you in the slightest then I doubt I’ll be able to change your mind about it. I like to do reviews because they help give some clarity as to what I actually did over the last year, and set my goals and objectives for the following year. The review is a great tool for personal development and for reminding yourself that you have accomplished things over the last year. The future planning is great for directing your time and actions towards goals you care about.
Lately, my review and planning looks a lot like the yearly review done by Chris Guillebeau over here. My primary goal is to perform the following three steps:
I do nearly everything with mindmaps but you can use whatever tools you like, such as basic paper and pen. (It’s important that you enjoy using the tools that you choose!)
A review of the past year helps give you an idea of what you have accomplished, what still needs to be done, what could be done better, and what was done well.
My review initially consists of cleaning up as many loose ends as possible. This includes emptying all my inboxes (email, mail, other paper), organizing all my ‘stuff’, cleaning up the house, and generally tidying things up.
It’s easy to waste too much time doing this (sometimes it’s easy to do the dishes than thinking about my overall life goals for an entire year) so you have to be careful. You may even want to skip this step, though I find it helps me ‘clear my mind’ before doing the serious future planning.
After cleaning up, I perform a review of each area of my life, always keeping these two questions in mind: “What went well in 2010,” and “What did not go well in 2010.”
I have my entire life broken down into 13 key areas that I use to do this as well as organize all of my projects, which I’ll explain in detail in my next post.
Same categories you might want to use are Work, Home Life, Finances, Health & Exercise, etc. An example of a project to review might be That Book I Wrote or Updating My Investment Portfolio or Running a Marathon.
My future planning in the past has been less useful than my past-year reviews.
I tend to spend too much time on my past-year review because it’s easier than planning, and use up all my psychological energy. Then when it comes to planning, I end up with a flimsy, bare-bones plan that mostly consists of vague goals like “be more organized”, “eat healthy food and get in shape”, and “do lots of awesome stuff”. I know these are bad goals that don’t have measureable metrics, clearly defined success, and other things that make goals useful.
It’s important to set goals in all areas of your life so that you aren’t leaving anything out. For example, if I don’t set any health goals I always find myself feeling like I’ve neglected that area of my life.
Finally, I review my current projects and plan any needed future projects, based on the review of my key life areas. For all of my current projects, I organize all the materials I have for it, clean up its to-do list, review the stuff I’ve completed, and assess the priority of anything that is not yet done.
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The currently ending year had my best goal-setting yet, but it still needs some improvement. (I’ll throw that in my 2010 review!) This year I want to take full advantage of the power of planning for the upcoming year!
Stay tuned for my next post where I get into more detail about exactly how I perform my yearly review, and how I’ll set my goals for 2011.
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