If you are working for someone else, which most of us are, I am sure you are forced to do an annual performance evaluation every year. It has never been effective with any of the companies I have worked with. Tiago Forte does a personal annual review to look back at the past year and to set goals for the next year. I found it interesting and I immediately give it a try. Here is my annual review 2020.
Looking Back
When I sat down to review what I did last year, It was surprising to know that I do not have much to say. It’s not that I did not do a lot of work, or go places. It’s just that, I don’t have any of those recorded anywhere. That moment I decided to develop a habit of writing journals and to take more photos. I will have more to say in this section next year.
Looking Forward
The theme I choose for this year is “Create and Connect”. Be it work, relationship or community, I want to create more and connect with people around me and hopefully be of some use for others. With that in mind, below are my goals for 2020.
Work – Redesign the core product: I work for a consulting company. My whole team spends a lot of time fixing the issues they see instead of analyzing what caused this issue. I am guilty of it too. Late last year, I did a study of how to improve the overall experience of all the stack holders involved in the product I am working on. Two main things came out of this study. One, we need a better architecture for developers to turnaround fix quicker and to deliver a quality product. Two, we need to redesign some of the screens for better usability. This will help developers, our customers, and the end-users. I will consider 2020 a successful year If I am able to get this one goal done.
Work – Sketch the idea for employee productivity tool: We have a tool we use in my company to track the specifications, use cases, and defects. Such tools should help the developers, analysts and the client to do their work faster. In reality, these tools slow the process down due to the complexity of the design. I am redesigning this tool to solve this problem. My goal is to have the sketch for this by June and develop it by end of this year.
Relationship: I want to spend more ‘present’ time with my wife and my kids. Present time means, spending time with them instead of being on the phone or thinking about something else when I am with them. I also want to spend one day a month with my wife without kids.
Community: I want to donate $200 a month to someone in need. I am also planning to do 50 hours of community service. I love programming and I love to teach. Teaching programming to a community makes it even more compelling. I have signed up to teach programming in my local library. I am very excited about this opportunity.
Learn: I want to learn to draw. I have signed up for a doodle course. I am hoping to learn this skill with my son.
Writing: I have never been a creator my whole life other than programming. I want to change this story in 2020. I want to share what I learn on my website and in the online communities like slack & twitter. I have set a goal to write an article a week about 4Ps(Parenting, Productivity, Programming, and Personal Finance). I also want to write about employee productivity, company culture and how to build better teams. I have signed up for ‘Write of Passage‘ taught by David Perell hoping it will help with my writing.
Systems: I do not have a system for notes taking and for being productive. I think it very essential for everyone to have a productivity system that frees your mind and helps you focus on one task at a time. I also believe, everyone should have a personal knowledge management(PKM) system to record their learning and decisions. The Notion is the first tool that has helped me to develop both my productivity system and personal knowledge management in one place. I am using GTD as my task management system. I have signed up for ‘Building a Second Brain‘ course taught by Tiago Forte to develop my PKM system. By the end of this year, I want to build my second brain in Notion which includes PKM, Task Manager, Time/Habit trackers, and my Journal all in one place.
Health: I want to walk more in nature. I want to go on family hikes. I have started meditating. I want to make it a routine. I want to do 60lbs kettlebell swings.
Travel: We as a family want to travel more. We want to visit either Costa Rica or Peru this year. We are planning to visit at least 5 new places in the US. First trip is already decided. We are going to Disney in Orlando for my son’s Birthday.
So what are your goals for this year? What crazy things are you planning to do?