My 2018 Annual Review
Inspired by James Clear and Chris Guillebeau, I’ve decided to do my very first Annual Review. Thought that this would serve as a great recap reflection of my year, in addition to the monthly projects and monthly reviews that I do.
Let’s get started 😀
1. What went well this year?
I launched a business! This year was when I finally ventured into the realm of self-entrepreneurship. It’s been about 5 years since I’ve been involved with startups, all thanks to a course in college that merged together social impact and business, and I’ve been inspired ever since.
Though working at a company is so very different from starting your own. I launched One Month Projects, a career accelerator program, in the beginning of this year, and it’s been such an up and down journey, both professionally and personally. I don’t regret it one bit and can say confidently that I’ve learned more about marketing, sales and development in the last 9 months than the last couple of years. Here’s to the power of project-based learning, especially the side projects that started it all 🚀
I started living my dream life. I’ve been drawn to alternative careers ever since I learned that they actually exist, and held steadfast to my belief that work and play can co-exist. More than anything, I wanted to love the work I’m doing, especially as someone who really values the quality of time (it’s also my love language).
This year, because I made it a top priority to make my work remote and accessible from anywhere in the world, I was able to travel almost every month. In a sense, I’ve fulfilled my dream from last year of traveling for the whole year, though this year’s was even more incredible than I could’ve ever imagined. I went to visit study abroad friends from HKU in Australia, road tripped across half the U.S. for national parks, hosted career workshops in Malaysia and Bali, and visited extended family in Shanghai. Now I’m at home, where I spent the last two months with my baby brother, and it’s been a dream come true.
I fell in love. Well, technically this isn’t the first time that I fell in love, but this is the first time that love felt so unconditional. As in, I finally learned what it’s like to be loved by someone, and to love someone for truly who they are right now. In the past, I’ve definitely been overly influenced by promise of new adventures (whether it was wealth or just access to a car for traveling), a deep desire to be that person in the future, or pure admiration for how perfect they seem.
This is not to say that love can’t be fun, or that one shouldn’t have mutual respect and admiration for the person they are with. It’s more that these feelings can be coming from a place of #wholesomeness, rather than attempts to fill up voids. In hindsight, I realized that what I often looked for others where areas of my life that I felt were missing or inadequate. It was coming from a place of “I’m not good enough”, especially as someone who grew up in an Asian household. Questions of self-worth often came up in my current relationship : is this what love is? Is this what love can be? Do I even deserve this? Am I good enough to have this? Can I really be enough to be the way I am now?. Now, I’m learning to give myself and my partner the space to just be, without wishing anything was different.
A closer dive into fields that I super care about:
Writing: Overall, I’m pretty satisfied with my writing progress. I got my first writing client in the beginning of the year, published posts on the future of education, and finished my first NaNoWrimo! Currently, I’m working on how to write persuasively and to capture others’ attention. So I hope you’re still with me :D
Business: I launched my career coaching program One Month Projects in March after going through the biz accelerator Zero to Launch. So far, I’ve had 9 cohorts, with clients ranging from 10+ to a couple depending on how much time I spent on marketing. Also experimented with a bunch of channels like guest posting, hosting workshops, etc, and decided to focus on creating writing content. Though I think I could’ve hit higher financial goals, I feel really lucky that I got to get to know some of my favorite clients and see the program positively impact their lives. Also super proud that I just launched the brand new business website!!! 👈
Dance: I made three dance videos this year, focusing more on storytelling and emotions each time. I’m glad I kept up with it, especially getting back into it after traveling (though the adjustment period was quite painful). It was awesome to know that taking breaks isn’t the end of the world, and part of dance will always remain with me. I’m yet on another break from being at home, and picking up contemporary dancing in the meantime!
Personal development
These are the skills I acquired this year:
- public speaking
- stretching habit
- forgiveness
Top 3 favorite books:
- Atomic Habits by James Clear
- Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
- Playing Big by Tara Sophia Mohr
2. What didn’t go so well this year?
My biggest regret of the year was not spending more time on my business. It was great how it afforded me flexibility — from working whenever, wherever. And I took full advantage of that by enjoying myself and traveling to somewhere new every month.
However, the opportunity cost was that I didn’t have the focused time needed to grow the business. After 9 months, the business is still much more volatile than it is stable. And I still have ways to go before it can be my full-time career.
My biggest disappointment of the year was not sticking to my monthly challenges. I didn’t progress in dancing and videography as much as I would’ve liked, as well as in other habits that I’ve picked out for myself. In terms of personal development, I probably didn’t grow as much compared to the previous years.
I think the main obstacle was that I didn’t have a clear theme or direction in which I wanted to go towards, so the goals seemed not as urgent nor inviting. This is definitely something I want to change for next year.
My biggest time waster this year was not prioritizing time. I fell in the trap of “I have a lot of time” and so spent it half carelessly. I would get up late in the mornings, agree to things that felt more of obligations than heck yeses, and in general just dilly dally at times because I could.
However, just because I have a lot of time flexibility, doesn’t mean that I should spend it on whatever that comes my way. I can set artificial deadlines to intensify the focus, as well as say no to things that would interrupt my routines (trips, dinners, courtesy calls, etc.).
Overall, here are three words that would sum up this year: travels, love, entrepreneurship.
3. What am I working towards for 2019?
Writing
- create 5–10 pieces of evergreen content. This would attest to my expertise and ability to create the most valuable content for career changers.
- get published in big publications (The Muse, Thought Catalog, Forbes, etc.). This would attest to my ability to pitch and write persuasively for large audiences.
Business
- break six figures (yes, it feels hella scary). For my software engineering peers, this is a mere baseline for them out of college. For me, this would attest to my hustle as an entrepreneur, validation of product-market fit, and ability to impact hundreds of people.
- generate 10K visitors per month. This would push me to get a solid grasp on marketing and copywriting, two skills that I want to excel at.
Spiritual
- consistently meditate every day up to 30 minutes. This would inspire me to take meditation seriously, focus, and deeply savor life.
Health
- figure out what foods I can eat and can’t. This requires getting to know my body and combat some allergies that I feel when I eat certain foods.
- get the basics down. For example, sleeping at 11pm, exercising every day, drinking water, etc.
Personal growth
- get clearer thinking. I want to clean up mental hygiene, strengthen decision making processes and think critically (basically become more like Ray Dalio).
- acquire 3 new habits a month. We are the sum of our habits — before I did one habit a month and now I want to accelerate my progress with 3 habits.
Travel
- explore staying in places for 3~ months. Depending how I feel when I visit places, this may be something I’d like to try out. For this year, Korea, Canada, Argentina, and China are in the works.
Relationships
- generate understanding towards family. I’d like to try more of seeing where they are coming from, openly communicate, and nurture the relationship from there.
- love unconditionally. Enough said, though very difficult to do.
Fun + recreation
- learn contemporary dance. This will enable me to be more expressive and be able to still get better at dancing without a studio.
- become consistently flexible. This will not only matter a lot in the future as I get older, but also great for dancing. I want to nail the splits (like all the way down on both sides) as well as strengthen hip flexors and work on tight hamstrings.
- level up on videography. I want to focus on shooting better videos (angles, framings, planning it out beforehand), experiment with different apps + mobile lenses (Gopro finally?!), and feel good with the foundations enough to buy a drone at the end of year.
The theme for 2019 will be foundations.
I’ll be building habits and projects to establish strong foundations now — ones that’ll last for the rest of my life.
Here’s to routines, systems and processes 🎉
