The 2010 Review

I’m no different than most people: I like to review what I accomplished this year.

The end of the year is a natural point for a lot of us to reconsider what we did this year and what to look at for next year. This will be a two-part review; I’ll write my goals and focus for 2011 next week.

I do not have a formal review process that takes hours and hours. I seem to intuitively know what I intend to accomplish and can keep track of it without too much trouble. People like Chris Guillebeau have more formal methods for planning. I suggest working with a more formal method at first to see if it works for you. If not, make adjustments as you see fit.

The 2010 Focus: Writing and Creating

I usually find my focus through meditation. I spend a little time meditating on what I am to accomplish for the coming year. Usually the words will bubble up through a guided meditation or automatic writing process. For 2009, the words I wrote were “power” and “yoga”. For 2010, they were “write” and “create”. I was successful at both, even though I didn’t have any detailed outcomes in mind last year. The writing aspect was accomplished by restarting this blog and writing a weekly blog entry. I also signed up for 750 Words, writing a daily entry over the past two months.

The creation part is harder to define, but again I was successful at it. I accomplished the following:

• I started a Toastmasters club at work with 35 members. At this time the club is at 27 members, so it’s healthy club even nine months in.
• I went to two of Steve Pavlina’s Conscious Growth Workshops, where I forged some amazing relationships and met a lot of great people.
• I created a meditation practice by learning Primordial Sound Meditation at the Chopra Center (with a bonus talk by Deepak himself!).
• I embraced minimalism and created space for myself by liberating things I no longer needed. I participated in the $100 Wardrobe challenge and the 333 Project and have succeeded at both. Both challenges are not formally done until the end of today, but I will call it as done as it will get.

I still have a ways to go, even though I have made significant progress throughout the year. For instance, I still have more stuff than I really need. I don’t intend to go to 100 things, but I have about a bedroom closet’s worth of stuff to liberate. My meditation practice tapered off from 30 minutes twice a day to 30 minutes 5-7 times a week. However, the habits are fully integrated in my life now. It’s just a matter of following up and making any necessary adjustments.

Other Aspects

Steve Pavlina discuss in his book six key areas to focus on when evaluating your life. I’m going to give a quick overview about what happened this year to set the yardstick for me in 2011.

Career: I was promoted in November to a position where I have a little more responsibility and less involvement in the day-to-day work. It’s not exactly where I want to be, but I can accept where I am at and that I’m doing well where I am now. I may not have a major overhaul here in 2011, but I feel I can start transitioning to something different.

Finances: With the promotion came an increase in income, so I feel really good about my financial picture. I reduced my expenses as part of adopting minimalism, which helped fund some of my travels this year. I have at least 12 months of expenses in the emergency fund, so I can start concentrating on saving for other things like travel and putting more into the retirement funds. I recognize I have a conflict with the career aspect here in terms of exchanging time for money, but I accept that is where I am at right now.

Relationships: My relationships have improved just by meeting new people and maintaining contact with them; however, this is one area I would like to focus on for the coming year. As much as I like being single, I’d like to start sharing experiences with someone else.

Health: This is the one area of my life where I slipped. My yoga practice is still going strong, even though there have been times where I pushed myself too hard. I still need to eat and sleep better, especially as of late. I am much more aware of my habits in this area.

Habits: Adopting the two M’s (minimalism and meditation) have made the most impact. I keep up with them regularly. Other adjustments like green tea in the mornings instead of coffee, black or oolong teas have worked out well. The one-week digital sabbatical showed me where I can make changes for 2011, so I have somewhere to focus in this area for next year.

Spirituality: I might have slipped a bit in this area over the year, but I still feel great about where I am. Meditation helped immensely in this department, but there are some practices I set aside that I would like to return to. I sense that I need to do a little work in this area but it is not a high priority for 2011.

Overall, this year went pretty well. Granted, I didn’t have a lot of objective goals in 2010. However, I feel much better about where I am at the end of 2010 relative to the beginning of it. I have a lot more clarity about where I want to head and work on in 2011. That will be the next post.

Here’s to a great 2011.