I’m setting some goals for myself. For those who wonder why I’m doing this when it’s almost the last month of the year: I don’t believe in new year resolution and I start a goal whenever I think I’m ready. Sometimes I give up, sometimes I persist through. The most important thing about goals is to track the progress and evaluate oneself accordingly. In this post, I set out to list a number of things to do by the end of the year and how I will evaluate my performance.
From now and until new year 2016, I will closely monitor my performance in the following five goals:
- Sleep better.
- Build a sustainable and manageable budget.
- Actively listen to one person a day.
- Record two current events a day, of which one must be a new event.
- Each day, find one interesting thing or fact that I didn’t know before.
The above are meant to help me work on these two areas: interpersonal communication and an understanding in what goes on around me. In order to effectively achieve this, the very first thing I must do is to get better rest. When I’m sleepy, I can’t think of anything but to get through the day and go home to sleep. A sustainable budget, at first glance, doesn’t have to do with communication or knowledge of what goes around. But it puts me at ease. I have a tendency to overspend, which often makes me really nervous and takes away precious energy that I could otherwise make good use of. Point 3 – 5 are three concrete actions I will be doing. I intend to monitor them in the following way.
- On a daily basis, track any progress I make along the way. Jot down notes or save the news I have come across that I think will be useful to come back later.
- On a daily basis, engage in meaningful conversations. Try to understand what the other person is trying to say and what his/her feelings are. The goal here is to be a good listener. Jot down notes about each meaningful encounter right afterwards.
- On a weekly basis, look back on the notes I have made in the past week. Organize and reflect upon them. Ask myself the following questions:
- What did I achieve in the past week
- Where did I fall short?
- What are the reasons that I fell short?
- What can I do to further my strong points and to work on my weaknesses? (Long-term and short-term)
- What are the immediate actionable items for next week?
Around new year 2016, I will update with a one-month review regarding to these goals.
