2017 Annual Review — The Year of Transition
By: James Le
Tags: Self Improvement, Health, Life Lessons, Personal Development, Life

Since 2014, I’ve spent the better part of a week in late December planning my life for the next year. If interested, you can check my past reviews for 2016, 2015, and 2014. Overall, this is probably the best decision I’ve made in terms of working towards multiple goals simultaneously. The idea is to create a road map for the year ahead — not a rigid daily schedule, but an overall outline of what matters to me and what I hope to achieve in the next year.

To begin the process, I simply ask myself 2 questions and try to come up with at least 6–8 answers to each:

1 — What went well this year?

2 — What did not go well this year?

The main part of the planning session focuses on the year to come, but before looking forward I spend at least one of the days reflecting back on the year that is ending. I can usually identify a number of answers for each question — successes and failures, times where I was happy or proud and other times where I knew I felt short.

Next, I’ll review all of the goals that I set the previous December, and write out the results. Did everything happened as I expected? Probably not, but it’s interesting to compare results with expectations and see what overlaps and what diverges.

This leads to the next, longer state of the planning process where I look ahead to the forthcoming year, carefully thinking about which projects I’d like to pursue and which actions I need to take to ensure their success.

What Went Well in 2017

Graduating from College:

The past 4 years spent at Denison University have been an interesting rollercoaster for me. I wholeheartedly enjoy all the academics, social activities, and relationships with peers and professors. Most important of all, I am extremely happy with my last semester in college. Academically, I took a couple of interesting classes in Environmental Psychology and Public Speaking, finished a hard Computer Science course in Data Structures, as well as explore my interest in Big Data & Data Mining with different independent study groups. Socially, I had a blast hanging out with my roommates and hosting parties for my fraternity. Every weekend, my room was filled with people having fun together and I have never felt more alive in all of my adulthood. Those are great times to be missed.

To reflect on my whole college career, I would rate it an A-; as I have significantly expanded my intellectual capacity, made life-changing relationships with other people, and also left a presentable impact to the Denison community. There were definitely couple of things that didn’t go as planned, but for the most part, I am really satisfied with my undergraduate experience.

Daily Fitness:

This is a major achievement for me this year. Fitness has always been in my need-to-improve bucket in the past couple of years. I finally have the available time to commit into this habit after finishing college. Since September, I have been consistently exercising every single day and experimenting with a variety of workout plans. I want to share my workout schedule here after so many iterations and learning from fitness gurus in the Internet: