2006 & 2007 Greatest Accomplishment

Let’s see what I did well in the past and screwed up in the past as well:

What I Did Well

• I successfully ran out of my comfort zone and joined a new company. I learned a lot of things out of it. My learning curve shoots up exponentially. Most importantly, what I learned build up my competent area in my expertise.

• I successfully maintained my yearly income raise at 7% rate or higher in order for me to achieve financial freedom at 40. So far, this holds true in these 7 years of my working experience.

• I managed to move my parents out of their comfort zone too. They are staying in East Malaysia and I’m in the West Malaysia. I meet them once a year (sometimes more than that) and this is not a solution in long term. They have sold their house eventually and officially will move to West Malaysia in May 2008. They are going to stay at this house.

• I managed to start 2 blogs(i.e. software blog and financial blog) to generate income out of it. I set a very minimum goal to get a Google’s check by end of this year and I finally able to do it by 2007. This is also one of my second incomes. Although the earning is not as many as I wish, it is a good start and able to cover the cost I registered a domain which I don't use. :D Most importantly, I use blogging to help me to manage my thoughts and goals. I can also share what I learn to all of you.

What I Screwed Up

• I failed to survive in a new company. Perhaps I stay in the comfort zone for too long. Although I learned a lot of things in this new company and I realized that I cannot perform as good as in my ex-company for several reasons. When I know I can’t perform as what I expected, it translates to my next focal review which will not meet my 7% target. I rejoined my ex-company in different department with the second time of salary raise to maintain the 7% rate.

• I failed to start a business. I was once together with my wife and few colleagues planned to start a “comic bookstore” business. We did a lot of researches and we financially did not go for it. Starting a business is not as easy as I thought. It is not only time consuming but it requires a huge amount of capital. Maintaining a good relationship with your business partners is also another problem and needs to be managed well. For this experience, I realized that I don’t born naturally with business (not sure about internet business yet) and I don’t do well in sales too.

• I discontinued my second income on giving 1-on-1 tuition service. I stopped doing this because I wanted to put more focus on the new job which I failed eventually also. However, what I did is conflict with my personal financial goal which is to build my second income. Then, why I want to stop? I shouldn’t have discontinued my second income.

• I failed to exercise at least once in a week. I think in average I exercise once to twice a month. My target is once in a week only. Although I understand the importance of health, but I ignore it like the rest of you. This is my bad. Perhaps I should remind myself often that we need health to build wealth.

• I failed to track my financial status monthly. 2 years ago my wife took an initiative to track our finance daily. So, I told her tracking it daily is very hard. Sooner or later you’re going to stop doing it. Guess what, I’m right. Few months later she gave up and I took over her job. I have a brilliant idea to track it monthly instead by monitoring our bank account expenses. I have been doing this successfully until the last September 2007 I stopped updating it monthly until today. Reason is "Lazy" and "Busy" - a very popular reasons. Perhaps I should just change it to yearly instead of monthly or I can set a check point at every six months.

This is what I did well and screwed up in past 2 years. I hope I’m not a loser because I have 5 items in my screwed-up list as compared to 4 items in my success list. The screwed-up list will be used to help me to define my 2008 and 2009 goals.

Time flies! Whatever, I'm here to wish you HAPPY NEW YEAR 2008!