Yearly Focus

2018 Focus: End Of Year Review

At the beginning of 2018 I wrote about my focus for the year. I’ve posted a few updates throughout the year (quarter year, half year & three quarters) and now is the time to do a final review.

2018 Theme: First Principles Lifestyle

Self Grade: 7/10

In terms of relevance with theme, this year provided plenty of opportunity. I ended up making two major job decisions and we made one where-to-live decision. Each of those provided an opportunity to evaluate our options based on first principles, what we wanted to achieve.

I think we did a good job drilling back into the heart of the matter and figuring out what we wanted and why we did. The difficulty is even knowing those things, the decisions aren’t easy as everything is a trade off.

2018 Challenge: Profile 12 Families (w/ Kids) Living Intentionally Different

Self Grade: 1/10

I failed to make any significant progress here. The only things I achieved were selecting two families, discussing the idea with them, and then conducting one interview. I failed to get anything on paper.

I believe this failure came down to two main issues.

One, this year had a lot more work than I anticipated. One move that took a solid 40-60 hours and a job search this Fall that took 150-200. That was time that was pulled off the table and meant there was less space to complete something like this.

Two, after spending my days working at a computer and in meetings, I just really didn’t feel like having more of that type of work. Though the topic is more enjoyable, the physical nature of the work is similar. I think this is one of the reasons my physical challenges were so great in the past, they were my excuse to exercise. Something to consider in the future.

2018 Habit: Daily Devotions

Self Grade: 8/10

In Q4 I ended up hitting my goal of 4 devotion times per week on 9 of the 13 weeks. This is tied with my highest yet and I was only 6 missed days away from having a perfect record.

In Q1 I was successful on 33 days, in Q4 it was 46, so over the course of the year I increased my frequency of practicing this habit by 40%, which is slightly less than the 50% I was hoping for a quarter ago. If you were to compare Q4 of this year to Q4 of last year though, which unfortunately I don’t have data on, the increase is likely closer to 100%.

I did make an audible mid-year to change my Q4 target from 6 days per week to 4 days per week based on how my successful weeks had been decreasing and my number of days total was staying about the same in Q1 to Q3. This turned out to be a great strategy – having an achievable weekly goal is a great way to make progress.

I had also specified that I wanted >75% of my Q4 devotion times to be in the morning. It ended up being 31 of 46 days, or 67%, so I was a bit short, but still did better than the 50% and 59% of previous quarters.

2018 Exemplar: John Muir

Self Grade: 7/10

Despite failing to read the most popular biography about Muir, I think I did a great job learning about him. I took in enough to produce this exemplar review, which I’m proud of. The only reason I won’t give myself a higher grade is that I failed to put any learnings into practice this year – mostly because I got started too late.