Do A Regular Year End Review



Do a Regular Year-End Review


This post is from a journal entry written at the beginning of 2014. I'm posting it here in anticipation of doing another "End of the Year" review for 2015. Instead of waiting for the new year to start, I want to get a jump on things and complete the next one before 2016 begins. Looking back over the past year, I'll put things in perspective. My goal is to increase my personal creative productivity. More to come on 2015 later, but this is a look back at 2014.

There are lots of suggestions on how to start the New Year. Every year you hear about all the resolutions people are making. You listen to people talk about new healthier, more intelligent, safer, wiser choices. People are trying to build new habits with the beginning of another calendar year. Plans to lose weight, read through the Bible, etc., etc., and on and on.


Many people plan to be kinder. More assertive. More forgiving. Less argumentative. Some people plan to pray more. Do devotions with more regularity. Get more exercise. Eat healthier meals. Save more money, spend less, and earn more ... by now, you get the drift.

After trying to do many of these things year after year, I decided on only a few things. Again for the second year in a row, I've implemented the Be Awesome Check Board. This idea is based on Jerry Seinfeld's "Don't Break the Chain" practice of writing a new joke daily using a chart from The Writer's Store.

I expanded on that to move forward in several areas. In this, I choose a limited number of things I am working on and post a 365-day calendar with a box to check off every day I've completed something toward one of my primary goals. I did this last year, and it helped me focus on those things and progress in them daily. I used several of these check-off calendars to mark each day I made at least some progress in a given area.


The trouble was that after about a third of the year, I began to fail and get tired of doing everything I had said I wanted. I did do much better and was much more focused than I usually would have been for that period. At the end of the year, I moved forward in each area I attempted to concentrate on.


Drawing and Photography were one area, and until I started to forget the tracking part, it had added about 138 separate acts of concentrated progress. My drawing improved substantially, as did my Photography as well. All in all, this was a reasonable effort.


I did the same thing with my writing and journaling. Initially, I fully intended to write 1000 words daily, which is a worthy goal. I actually recorded writing on approx.175 days, but only some days of the year, as had been my goal. 


My output was closer to 1500 words a week rather than 1000 a day for the year. But, I managed to pump out the first draft of a new novel with about 50,000 words total during November. Even though that was only partially according to plan, the check-off sheet did help with reaching some parts of my goals.

I must admit that this was also the 2nd year that started off with great difficulty in having the death of another close family member to contend with and all the other distractions and emotional ups and downs that come with that. Hopefully, this year will be better.

Keeping the checklist for drumming also helped remind me to practice. Here I tracked approximately 175 days. There were more days than this that I failed to chart, but it helped me maintain some focus.

The exercise was the same, with about 164 days of tracked practice. Only about half of what I had hoped for, but still better than if I still needed to follow it.

Another area I attempted to track was Recording or the study of recording. This was probably the least effective area, not that I'm not into it, it is just that, I think it requires so much setup, and things have been somewhat unstable with having to move items around and again dealing with the loss and death of a close family member, and figuring out what to do with all of the leftover things, all this has made this a more difficult area to stay consistent in.

Blogging and Social media were initially intended as blogging something every day but have, over the year, become simply adding something more to social media. I have not been adding blog entries consistently, but I have been networking, interacting with people, and reading a lot online and from books.

At the end of the year, I was firm in moving forward in many areas, more consistently at first and then less through the rest of the year.


So now we come to the beginning of another year, and I'm setting up some new calendar counting charts and getting ready to post those again for the New Year. Let's consider setting up fewer and more broadly defined areas going forward.




Comments