Where I express personal thoughts in words
As I turned 30 and reflected on 2024, this year stands as a pivotal chapter in my life's journey. Looking back at my weekly diary entries, three major themes emerged that shaped my experiences: adaptation, growth, and connection.
This milestone year brought numerous opportunities for personal and professional development. From strengthening relationships and expanding my horizons to embracing new challenges, each experience contributed to my growth journey.
The end of the calendar year presents us with a valuable opportunity to reflect on the year that was and plan for the year that will be. It's easy to glaze over the former and focus on the latter, but failure to reflect will eventually manifest as a failure to grow.
I started conducting a Personal Annual Review 9 years ago as a sophomore in college. It has been an immensely helpful exercise to which I would credit many of my greatest areas of progress. This annual exercise nurtures and develops sparks of inspiration, celebrates my uniqueness, helps me appreciate all the good in my life, tracks my personal growth, and allows me to strategically plan all the great and beautiful things I want my future to hold.
For the 2023 annual review, I will follow the template by Intelligent Change outlined in their “Best Year Journal” - a tool for setting relevant goals and having a fulfilling year ahead that I have been using.
The holiday season is my favorite time of the year. It's a natural time to step back and reflect on what happened this year and define how we want to focus our energy and time in the year ahead. So much can happen over the course of a year: lessons learned, victories, hardships, special moments, personal growth, new relationships, etc. With our inboxes quiet and our schedules free of meetings, we can afford to take a moment and think about what we achieved and what’s next.
Dating back to 2014, I have taken time at the end of the year to conduct a comprehensive annual life review (2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014). This exercise has helped me identify what is important, remove what is not, and evolve in different ways. Continuing the tradition, in this annual review, I'll attempt to gain a holistic perspective of my life in 2022 and where I want to go in 2023.
Systems thinking is a way of seeing the world as a series of interconnected and interdependent systems rather than lots of independent parts. As a thinking tool, it seeks to oppose the reductionist view — the idea that a system can be understood by the sum of its isolated parts — and replace it with expansionism, the view that everything is part of a larger whole and that the connections between all elements are critical.
I just spent the past month finishing “Tribe of Mentors”, the latest book by the legendary Tim Ferriss. It is packed with wisdom and tools that will change your life. The book contains more than 100+ interviews with people around the world. I made my notes, did some highlights and will be referring back to it on the need per basis. After all, I learned this trick from Tim himself.
Recently, I finished reading Ray Dalio’s “Principles” — one of the most recommended business books of 2017. One of the world’s most successful investors and entrepreneurs, Ray shares the unconventional principles that he’s developed, refined, and used over the past 40 years to create unique results in both life and business — and which any person or organization can adopt to help achieve their goals.
I would highly recommend you to do your own annual review. It’s a great exercise to self-reflect and plan out your life. We tend to overestimate what we can do in an average day but underestimate what can be done over the course of a year. Looking at a whole year in review, you may be surprised at everything you’ve accomplished.
