As an annual tradition for a number of years, I would put out a set of new year’s resolutions KPIs every year in early Jan. Before that, I would review my previous year’s list. This week, I look back to my year in 2022 to grade myself according to the goals I had set out to accomplish.
I had set out 6 KPIs 12 months ago and it was basically a refinement from my 2021 list with some newer and stretched objectives to challenge myself. Luck does play a part sometimes but I believe proactive planning is critical to help me track my progress periodically and measure it against a balanced scorecard of sorts.
The first one is to aim to read 20 books within 2022 after having managed to complete 15 in 2021. Using the Libby app on my iPad, I could borrow up to 17 ebooks at any time from NLB for free. Titles available are very current and I could easily find the latest bestsellers there. Sadly, I only finished reading 12 this year and missed my goal. Laziness and too much TikTok, Youtube and Netflix. I should have also read more fiction books rather than non-fiction ones. I give myself a C minus grade for this one.
The 2nd KPI was to expand and continue on my lifelong learning journey. I started the year with a bang, enrolling on the NUS Fintech 3.5 months full-time course with the School of Computing. I had to pay $2k after all subsidies. It was a deep dive into the technical aspect of coding and programming with certain topics that interested me – Algo-trading and Smart Contracts. I had a crash course on HTML, CSS and JavaScript and struggled with DevOps (Front, Middle and Back end) trying to keep up with the younger classmates who were more tech-savvy.
I also did another 3 more short courses on Excel, Tableau and even a Whisky appreciation one 😉 Finally, I tried to apply for IBF TFIP (2nd try) and BCG Rise 2.0 but these fell through and did not happen. I give myself a B+ grade here for effort.
The 3rd goal was to get deeper into Cloud Computing – Azure, AWS or Google Cloud. This was a big Fail. I did absolutely nothing here for the whole year. It was probably due to the Fintech course early in the year that put me off this topic totally. For most of the classes related to Cloud, I was usually lost by the time we were into the middle of each lesson. It was a pain for me to even try to follow coding instructions as a simple misstep would derail me, while the rest of the class moved on ahead of me.
The 4th KPI was to try harder to learn a programming language. I did not feel encouraged to pursue this as it required lots of patience and practice. Plus the fact that no-code software development and copy/paste from Github libraries seems to be more user-friendly nowadays. With the arrival of ChatGPT, one can now simply request the AI machine to code or even debug for you. I pivoted to learning to use more visualization tools like Tableau and Excel instead. Hopefully, I can leverage my past management work experience to be able to provide more in-depth and insightful data analysis and Dashboards as an additional edge against my younger competitors. I rate myself a C here.
The 5th ask was to learn and improve my video editing skills. There was an urgency here as the Muvee software I had used for the past 18 years to auto-edit my family videos stopped functioning. The software producers ceased to update it in 2018 and I was stuck in limbo. I had to find a replacement asap. I have been experimenting with various latest ones like Adobe Premiere Pro, Magix and Movavi. I find them hard to use as I was used to a click-and-create final version concept after providing all the required data and instructions.
As an interim solution, I went back to the earlier versions of Muvee that was still workable but the end results are not as satisfying as before as it is unable to optimize and save the finished product in higher video formats even though it was provided with higher 4k video raw data. It was also not able to recognise newer photo formats like HEIC. I currently have a 2 years backlog of raw videos I need to edit. I rate myself a C here. Will need more effort to buck up.
The final KPI was to always stay healthy and happy. It was a tough year with all markets going up and down (but mainly down) which swayed my emotions. Even my forward-planning action plans for training resulted in zero results for months. 2022 was also the annus horribilis year for all investments. Everything was red and it was a disaster for many, myself included. The FTX saga was also a big bummer.
The buying on dips strategy that had worked so went for the past 14 years since the 2008 GFC stopped working. It was the end of cheap money and the bursting of asset bubbles. Covid was the trigger point leading to high inflation and followed by aggressive rate hikes.
Nevertheless, I grade myself a B here as there were some highlights that made all the investment woes bearable. Through an ex-colleague, I managed to start a new consultancy contract in Oct which may result in a full-time job in 2023. I managed to regain my driving license again within 6 months of intensive lessons and tests in late Oct. I lost it in 2021 due to a stupid accident.
2022 feels like a normal year again as travel is returning back to normal. China will be opening up its borders next week too as it finally abandons its zero Covid strategy. We managed to complete 3 wonderful trips with the family, one to New York in Apr and Bangkok in Sep with each of our sons. Finally, we had a France vacation as a complete family of 4 for a year-end holiday to end the year. Other than being at home together during the Covid lockdowns, the last complete family vacay was in Dec 2019.
It felt so good to experience quality family bonding time again. Cooking our own meals in the lovely Marseille apartment and having movie nights together (Netflix’s Alice in Borderland season 2). Eating long French degustation meals and multiple heart-to-heart chats over fine food and wines. These experiences were priceless and I will treasure them forever.
Final KPI grading tally: 1. C- 2. B+ 3. F 4. C 5. C 6. B
With 2022 over, it’s time to set up my 2023 goals again very soon. What will 2023 hold for me? Come to think of it, time really passes by really fast every year. But in the midst of the Covid lockdowns, we thought otherwise and it felt like eternity… LOL
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