Claudio Lassala's Blog

Inspired by James Clear’s “Annual Review”, I decided I should to mine, too. Heck, I do that on the projects I work on, I might as well do it to my own life as well.

So, the famous 3 questions that get the ball rolling:

1. What went well in 2015?
2. What didn’t go so well?
3. What am I working toward?

I will be brief on this post, and later write up posts to detail more of each item. There are things that worked well in 2015 that I won’t list here, but will write up dedicate posts later this year.

1. What went well in 2015?

Defining goals, writing them down, and tracking them: at the beginning of the year I had defined goals, outlined them with key motivations, and kept reviewing them (at least once a week) in order to make sure I was tackling them as time went by. This has not prevented me from NOT accomplishing some of the goals, but it DID help me accomplish most of them, as well as it helped me reflecting on my failures.

Workout habit, results, and side-effects: I wanted to get in better shape. I don’t want to run a marathon or look like a bodybuilder. I just want to feel better about myself. Working out is boring for me. Tracking workouts and building the habit has made me find out how I can make this fun and harvest some benefits as side-effects.

Filing my taxes on time: Over the last several years I was always filing for an extension because I just couldn’t file my taxes by Apr 15. Well, in 2015 I’ve filed exactly on Apr 15. Huge improvement from previous years!

2. What didn’t go so well?

Make my professional blog more active: this post you’re reading is published to what I consider my professional blog. This is where I post things related to how I make a living (mainly, software development). I ended up only writing two posts last year, despite the fact there are many things I’d like to write about.

Personal project related to my experiences living in the US: this is something I want to do because I always have people asking me about this, so I figure I should share this with a wider audience somehow. I have some very specific ideas on what I want to do, I’ve picked a name for it, created the channels, the logo, but just didn’t start delivering the content.

Personal/Professional secret project: this is a somewhat secret project just because I want to keep it low before it is all confirmed. What bums me on this one is because I did everything I could do on my end, but there are things that are just outside of my control. But, in order to cope with that, a Plan B is on the works.

3. What am I working toward?

Less ideas, more action: I think I’ve been very good at keeping track of ideas. And there are quite many ideas that keep popping in my head. I think I’ve finally started to take action on a few hand-picked ideas. I’m turning those into projects, putting effort into them, tracking it, and at this moment I’m feeling good about them.

Take one day at a time: Having ideas flowing and figuring out some sort of a plan is good, but I need to learn to focus on taking one day at a time, live in the moment, make the best off of it. There’s only so much one can do.

Get better: I feel like at one point I was better than I am today. I also feel like I can get better than I was before. Working on that!

Conclusion

There are a couple more things I could add to each one of those bullet points, but I’m still thinking through it, figuring out the good things I want more of, the bad things that need to be addressed, and the things I just need to let go.