2009 Report Card

Dami — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 10:18:48 +0000

In 2009, I set a bunch of goals for myself in different areas of my life. Now is time to see how well I did.

Financial Goals (2.5/4)

Reduce credit cards with a balance from 4 to 2: Ended with 3 cards having a balance –> Fail
Save $1000 in a high interest rate savings account for Emergency: Saved up to $700 and then used it to by a ticket to travel to Nigeria –> Partial Success (Was used for an emergency, but didn’t hit the mark of $1000)
Open a Suzy Orman Save Yourself Account to which I put $100 a month for 12 months and I get $100 at the end of the 12 months: Success
Open a T Rowe Price Mutual Fund Account (RPBAX and PREIX) so I could catch the market as it was coming back up: Success

Review: I was able to venture into investing by setting up mutual funds (which appreciated) and put money away into the Savings Acccount from TD Ameritrade. However, I didn’t curb my debt as much as I should have. My debt was exacerbated by the fact that I had to use a credit card to pay for expenses to travel home. I can’t complain though, I hadn’t been to Nigeria in 7 years (because of school schedule) so it was worth it. However, I wouldn’t have had this issue if I had built up enough of an emergency reserve in the first place. Zone in on credit card debt in 2010.

Career Goals (2.5/6)

Write two academic papers: Success
Submit papers written with lab mate: Success
Write proposal: Partial Success (completed the proposal but part of my project changed hence a revision was required)
Defend proposal. Fall 2009 : Fail
Comprehensive Exam. Winter 2010 : Fail
Dissertation. Spring 2010 : Fail

Review: One thing I have avoided doing my whole graduate career, is the writing of my proposal. Each time I visualize writing it, it just picture a terrible chore and I lose motivation immediately. It’s part of the reason why I never got to finish my proposal on time. If I had finished earlier, then my project would not have been revised and I would have moved on to the rest of the checklist. This pushes my graduate career back by about a year, but this is an area to zero in on in 2010.

Health Goals (1.5/3)

Don’t drink soda: Success
Complete P90X: Partial Success (only did 45 days)
Sleep 6 hours: Fail (I struggle with this still)

Review: I succeeded in stopping my over-consumption of soda. I started off P90X very excited and as time went on I slowly digressed. It began with missing one day, then 2 days in a row and then trying to catch up. Finally, I stopped and gave the excuse that I was focused on writing my proposal. File this under the B.S. I tell myself. The problem I encounter with exercising is that I have always been skinny (due to a high metabolism) and this hasn’t helped me to be motivated at all. It’s like telling an athlete to budget. It’s relevant, but one doesn’t see the immediate need because there are no alarms yet. This is something I have to work on in 2010 as well. As far as sleep goes, that has always been an issue with me because I can be an insomniac (my friends would call that an understatement). I am still not sure how to deal with this. Suggestions anyone?

Personal Development Goals (9/24)

Read 1 book per month (4 out of 12)

Listen to 1 motivational tape per month: (5 out of 12)

How To Master Your Time by Brian Tracy
Success and the Self-Image by Zig Ziglar
The Science of Personal Achievement by Napoleon Hill
Powerful Time Management Skills from Franklin Covey
The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley and William Danko

Review: This is an area where although I got below 50%, I was pretty excited. A lot of the material I was trying to consume was hard to read and rather than fill in the space with fluff, I decided to slug through it (especially Four Pillars of Investing). I will be toning down the amount of material in 2010 and to ensure that I understand what I am reading, I will also start doing some reviews on here as well.

Lessons and Outcomes

Some things worked quite well (savings and personal development) and others not so well (credit reduction and career advancement). I reached for the stars and I landed on grass instead with a below average score.

This is the first time I have kept track of my goals from the start to end of the year. It has been a very helpful experience
As I focus more attention on one goal, another will most likely suffer e.g. while I was focused on writing my proposal, I stopped listening to audio tapes and reading non-fiction. While this would signify progress, it also meant I wasn’t taking the breaks I needed to take
While I stopped drinking soda, my coffee consumption went up.
Even with the plans I made, some things were still difficult to do e.g. working on my proposal.

Overall, I had issues with balancing one goal with another: savings vs debt, reading academic vs non-academic material, curbing an addiction vs creating another. Were my goals too high? No I don’t think so. How else could I have kept myself aiming high if the goals weren’t remarkable for me? I do understand that these goals might not even be close to relevant for others, but hopefully you can look at the areas of your life you want to touch and outline a plan.

OVERALL GRADE: 15.5/37 (42%) —-> FAIR

We’ll see how I do in 2010. I will put this up at a later time, also giving the opportunity for anyone interested to map out their strategies for the rest of 9 months.

Image courtesy of wertheim

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First of the Month: Whatever happened to those New Year Resolutions?

Dami — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 05:27:11 +0000

It’s the first of September today and as with the beginning of a new day, new month or a new year we are often inclined to set new goals/resolutions. I think it’s like having a clean slate, so like kids in a candy store we excited to just get home and start writing on the slate. I’m excited about the new month too, so I decided to look back at the goals I set at the beginning of the year and see how far I have come.

When 2009 began, I made 10 resolutions and I sent them to my girlfriend to look over to hold me accountable to them. This is exactly what I sent:

Eliminate 1.5 credit cards (Completed and Retooled)
Save $1000 and put in a mutual fund or CD (Completed and Retooled)
Write two papers (On-going)
Cardio (Run or Bike) 3 times a week (Retooled)
Don’t drink soda (On-going)
Lift twice a week (Retooled)
Sleep 6 hours (On-going)
Read 1 book per month (4 non-fiction books read so far)
Listen to 1 motivational tape per month (5 series completed)
Graduate or at least be close to it i.e. proposal done and defended, comprehensive exam passed, experiments completed and in the process of writing dissertation at the minimum (Retooled)

This email was dated January 9^th 2009, and I’m not even sure she remembers the contents of this email. It was the first time I had made resolutions and actually documented them and sent them to someone and not just chucked it away in my head. All the books and tapes I have read and listened to always stress the importance of attaching activities to your goals essentially breaking down these goals to manageable chunks. Fortunately, I stumbled on resources from Success Principles (a book by Jack Canfield co-author of the Chicken Soup Series), specifically the Achievers Focusing System (Quarterly Breakdown) and Daily Success Focus Journal (Daily Breakdown). I also created a weekly sheet for myself too (Download here). Now I know that’s a lot of writing and a lot of paper, but at the time I wasn’t sure what method worked the best for me. Should I break down activities on a daily basis? Weekly? Monthly? Quarterly? Biennially? It was all so confusing and I decided to try as many as I could and see what worked best for me. Currently, my system has been boiled down to a Quarterly Tracking and a spiral notebook for the daily to-do list. I especially like the Achievers Focusing System I mentioned above because it splits down goals into 7 areas (same concept I used in the weekly system):

Financial & Wealth
Career
Free Time
Health & Appearance
Relationship
Personal Development
Community & Charity

These resources aren’t anything fancy, but they have helped to keep me on my toes and aware of my progress.

9 months have passed since those resolutions were made. It’s a new month (new school year for some), and there’s no need to wait for 2010 to renew this commitment and neither should you. Hopefully these resources here are useful or just type “goal organizer” (or something) into Google and I am sure there’s something out there.

As long as those goals are written somewhere, you have a reminder to check back on. As Tony Horton (of P90X fame) always says “Write it down. How can you know what to do if you don’t know what you did?”

If you’re wondering how I am doing on my resolutions, I have details on my Goal Report and yea . . . there’s a lot left to be done.

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Green and Gray Matters » Resolutions

2009 Report Card

OVERALL GRADE: 15.5/37 (42%) —-> FAIR

Image courtesy of wertheim

First of the Month: Whatever happened to those New Year Resolutions?