People at Work & Play

Michael Melcher, personal coach writes about the value of a year end review of your goals.

 In a simple manner, Melcher recommends capturing key events that have happened to you in the year gone by. Step one is data collection. On a blank piece of paper, write down the significant happenings of the past year. You might jot down the names of people, places, events, projects, books — whatever comes to mind.

The second step is to identify the items that stand out for you. You can circle them, underline, or highlight in various colors. You might notice that you give more attention to some items than others.

The next step is to look at things on your page that are compelling to you. See if you can rank-order these happenings in significance, without analyzing why they are significant. What are the top 10? What are the top 3?

Now switch to left-brained thinking, and do some analysis. Ask yourself some questions about what your list means in terms of the kind of year you’ve had, and the kind of year you’d like to have going forward:

– What’s surprising about your list?
– What’s predictable about your list?
– Based on this list, what’s important to you?
– Based on this list, what’s not really that important to you?
– In the past year, what are some ways that you’ve grown personally? Professionally?
– In the coming year, what are some ways you’d like to grow personally? Professionally?

Once you’ve turned over your mental soil, you’re ready to draft some specific goals. You know what’s important to you; now focus on how you want to move forward in these specific areas.

This seems to be an interesting way of taking stock of the past to plan for the future.

Some years ago, the Pullur brothers who run a Hyderabad based tech firm called Pramati Technologies presented me with a calendar. It had a nice quote for each day of the year. The one for January 1 read:

” The New Year is set before us like an unwritten volume-all its pages blank. Let us write upon each page things that at the end of the year we will look upon with rejoicing rather than regret”.

I re-produce this to remind myself and my readers that we are responsible for our thoughts and subsequent actions. We can have a great day or a lousy one depending on what we think, say or do.

Let’s be conscious at all times of our thoughts and actions. Let’s act responsibly to increase our impact on our team and organization.

Here’s wishing you every success in your professional and personal lives in 2008.

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