My 2022 Annual Review #

In Remembrance #

I remember thinking at the start of 2022 that my life was going to change. The email from Brilliant Earth about the engagement ring that I had ordered was burning a hole in my inbox. My younger brother had confessed his plan to propose to his then-girlfriend about a month before the new year. Conversations about buying a house in Seattle were underway. As I write this in 2023, my now-wife Heidi is getting ready to sleep in the fourth state we lived in in the last year. Yeah, “my life was going to change” may sound clichéd, but it was also a massive understatement.

I started off the year in Seattle and Heidi was living in Georgia (long story). We got engaged in May in Vancouver. After getting psychologically crushed by the housing market in Seattle, we decided it would be best to consider a different market to live in, despite our mutual love for Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. We settled on Denver after some consideration, but we needed a place for a few months between moves (another long story). We packed up my stuff in Seattle and moved in with some dear and generous friends in Arizona for all of two months. During this time we eloped, Heidi moved out of Georgia, we visited New York, and we started learning to budget together (which definitely did not result in ANY arguments). After the brief sojourn in Arizona, we headed to Denver, where we’ve had at least one free weekend!

So, 2022 was the year of change. Terrifying, exhilarating, whirlwind change. Almost every month in 2022 had some major life event occur. Heidi and I were so exhausted by December that we were looking forward to a week of nothing between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Unfortunately, we made our holiday travel plans with Southwest Airlines and they had different ideas for us. At what point are the punches rolling with you instead of the other way ‘round? Now looking out over the horizon that is 2023 and beyond, I want to figure out how to harness the determination that kept me on top of that bull in 2022 into a steadily and gracefully moving into the next phase of our lives.

What is this “planning” you speak of? #

Please don’t judge me for what I’m about to say: I used to HATE all those SMART goal exercises. In particular, high school me felt that they were an absolute waste of time as most 16-year olds do. I thought I knew better than those trying to teach me and I figured I could just wing it. To be fair, I don’t always think winging it is bad and I always want to leave room for improvisation. But as I look back at last year (and the 5 or 6 years before that), I realize that my best leaps forward occurred when I had something that I was marching towards. If you’re running a race without a finish line, how likely are you to end up running in circles?

With that in mind, I wanted to try something different this year. From past experience, I try to avoid “radical shifts” because those last about as long as it takes for me to download a shiny new app or make a shiny new workflow for myself. Instead, I wanted to start simple. After reading all kinds of annual review posts, newsletters, and blogs I decided to start with some visualization exercises. After leaning a lot on Tiago Forte’s wisdom over the last year, I decided to do my best to follow his annual review process to give myself a framework for this new mode of operation. I started with his personal narrative vision exercise before reading about his annual review process and how he sets his goals. Following that general process resulted in me generating the first list of life goals that I didn’t write just to satisfy an assignment rubric.

I know the first thought that came into your head after reading that paragraph: “But Alexander, if you only make goals but don’t change anything else, how are you going to actually achieve them?”

First off, you can’t tell me how to live my life. Second, you interrupted me. Let me finish!

The Winding Path #

A plan is useless unless there are some actions coming from it, right? Given my desire to leave room for a little bit of “Xander Magic,” I don’t want to introduce a system that is so rigid I forget how to breathe without written instructions. My tentative “plan,” if you could call it that, is to implement a bits and pieces of a few different productivity systems in my life. The primary focus will be relying on actions over ideas.

You might now be saying, “But what does a preference of actions over ideas even mean?”

For example: in technical areas my imposter syndrome and fear of failure has lead to a tendency to try to make my ideas perfect before I start executing the first action (I’m working on another post for that topic). I still do this despite knowing that every time I’ve learned from a project has been when I set out on the journey of trying to accomplish a task, fail spectacularly, then pick myself up and figure how to not fuck it up again.

With that in mind, I’ll focus on setting up projects and tasks to complete and deadlines to complete them by. Ideally, I’ll give myself the room to royally screw up and the grace to acknowledge that the screw-up is okay. After all, half of that learning process is my innate ability to absolutely cock things up.

There is one more concept I am trying to focus on this year: implementing daily, weekly, and monthly reviews of the tasks and projects that I am working on and completing. Of all things, why reviews? Fair question! I have come to think of reviews as different versions of checking a map as you are following a winding path.

Sometimes you might just take a quick glance to confirm your next turn, sometimes you might stop for a second to visualize the next few things you need to do, and sometimes you might climb up a tree to check for a landmark you should be getting closed to. I have a slight tendency to veer off course and go down rabbit holes on occasion. So if the only thing I get better at this year is consistently checking the map, I’ll be happy. I am putting my faith in the repeated mechanism of reviewing my actions to keep me on track and allow me to stay the course as I write my 2023 story.

My Personal Stories #

As part of the visualization exercises, one concept which really stuck with me is the concept of the stories we tell ourselves being constraints to our success. I’ve read about this concept in a few places, but the first time it really struck me was when I read a newsletter from Peter Nguyen, whose website and blog: “The Essential Man”, was my first foray into following newsletters. In Peter’s own version of an annual review, he talked about his wife’s shyness:

Whenever she told herself she was shy, it prevented her from going out, meeting new people, and possibly having fun. She had to live up to that story of being shy. And the uncomfortable truth is, we all have stories like this.

This quote really resounded with me, to the point that I saved it to use in this post. I have long-held narratives in my head that have prevented me from seeing past my perceived faults and failures to my positive traits or successes. Towards the end of 2022, I began to push my manager and my team for a promotion in my current role. This was the first time in my career I had done something like this, and it scared the bejeesus out out me. It was even more bewildering was when people agreed with me that I was ready. Fresh out of that situation, Peter’s annual review struck a chord. I began to think harder about all of my personal narratives that played on loop in my head.

Stories I’m Leaving Behind #

This first category is somewhat strange to me, because I’ve never sat down and thought about all of my negative self-talk. It’s been enlightening to stop and detect when these narratives take over:

• I can’t finish projects
• I’m not cut out for tech
• I have to know everything and be perfect before I attempt a new skill or hobby
• I need alcohol to be more fun and sociable

Stories I’m Trying to Tell #

Have you ever tried talking positively to yourself and mean it? Chances are unless you are a narcissist, Joe Rogan, or Logan Paul, you probably felt a bit like a douchebag. I know I did when trying to think of stories that I wanted to tell moving forward:

• I take charge of my own destiny; I don’t wait for the perfect moment or opportunity.
• I am a builder.
• I may not always get it right on the first try but I will keep learning and striving for better.
• I can surprise even those who are closest to me.

Planting the Flag #

Finally, one last annual review mainstay I have to do to wrap this up: one word or phrase to describe what I want out of this year. This was another visualization exercise that resonated with me. Going back to having some sort of “North Star” to march towards, one word or phrase to set my hat on means I don’t constantly have to have this essay in the back of my mind, nor do I have to keep my list of goals as my wallpaper on my phone. One word is easy enough to remember and reflect on when I am at a crossroads.

When I started thinking about one word to distill my goals and desires into, I kept coming back to one thought: as someone with ADHD, “variable” is practically my middle name. Ideas, plans, workflows - all are liable to change at a moment’s notice. I have gone through more productivity systems and daily workflows than shoes in the last two or three years. With that in mind, I selected the word consistency. There are a multitude of activities and areas in my life where this applies:

• Health (mental and physical): daily stretches, meditation, diet
• Hobbies: jiu jitsu, climbing, strength training for both
• Work/Life: Review cycles, self-enforced deadlines for projects, celebrating wins and not just mourning losses, date nights with wifey

One more quote from Peter that stuck with me:

Striving for better requires constant reflection and effort.

Big dreams are all well and good, but they are only dreams if there is no effort behind them. I want to be that person that dreams big and achieves their dreams. I want to be someone who builds, who learns, who charts their own path and follows it. I want to be consistent in my efforts to be better every day.