Happy New Year 2016! Hope that I’m not too late with this post.
Before I get into the topic of new year resolution, I’d like to have a brief review about my 2015’s resolution.
2015 New Year Resolutions – Self reflection and what I learn
- Improve Time Management
Few days ago, I just came out my task list and goals, which I translates to a brief timetable so that I could systematically complete them accordingly.
I write a short task list everyday and review it as often as I could. That actually improved my productivity because when you plan something ahead, you will know what is needed to be done.
Of course, I’m not that efficient and there are still tasks that I couldn’t cross out from the To-Do list at the end of the day. But that’s OK, it means that you’re balancing the priorities of the tasks with your available resources, instead of being too free or too busy.
I think I’m halfway success with this because if I do manage to improve my time management, I would’ve succeed to achieve all my resolutions.
- Improve Financial Management
Since I’ve already have a rather good expenses and income tracking spreadsheet, I’ll continue to work on it so that it’ll show me more information about my spending habits.
Of course, this time I’ll prepare a special small fund for my own hobby and entertainment.
Yes. So far I’m still using the same tracking spreadsheet that I drafted during my university time. It does works at tracking my spending pattern, on top of that, I manage to fund for my photography hobby while having consistent savings.
- Health & Fitness
Cycling is out of my reach at the time being, I guess I need to pick up other type of sports to stay fit.
Swimming & Badminton.
Nothing really fancy here, I picked up badminton because my company is sponsoring the badminton court weekly.
- Photography
It’s been 5 years since I first got my Lumi-chan. How much has my photography skill has improved since then?
Looking back at my photos, I can clearly see that my photo quality are stuck since 2 years ago.
Therefore I planning to step up my photography skills by going back to basics and relearn everything. New projects for my LX3 coming soon.
The mentioned project is LX3 Project. The idea is to review all the photos I’ve taken throughout the years of owning the LX3, and post them in separate albums such as LX3 in 2010, LX3 in 2011 and etc…
LX3 in 2015 is conducted as a special LX3 52 weeks project, to test my photography knowledge as well as my understanding on my camera. Few months into the project, I realized that 52 weeks type of project is not really my sort of thing. Due to lack of discipline and unreasonable job work load, LX3 52 Weeks project halted halfway. But I did learn something out of it:
- My passion for event, portrait and landscape photography
- I’m struggling with LX3’s performance. (focusing speed, low light capabilities, battery life)
I’ve been staying in the comfort zone for too long, knowing the limitations of my gears yet choose to stay put instead of trying something else. Knowing , I pull the trigger and got my self a used Nikon D700 with a couple of lenses. Despite getting the new camera, I will kept LX3 project on-going and continue to review the photos taken with the little LX3.
Now, Worth mentioning is my Facebook page is gaining traction.
- Blog & Tech-Critter
In order to improve my written English, instead of skimming through online articles, I’ll try to analyse the way how other reputable online authors write.
I can’t really guarantee that I’ll pump out loads of articles, but I’ll try to improve the quality of the articles. You know, qualities over quantity.
Yes, I did achieved the target – Quality instead of Quantity.
At the beginning of the year, I was assigned to handle all the mobile related news and reviews for Tech-Critter. Thanks to everyone who helped, especially bro Low’s guidance as well as companies who entrust the devices to us, our smartphone review began to take off. Thumbs up!
- Learning
It’ll be a joke if I passed my JLPT N2 test which I sit for during the first Sunday of December 2014. That’s why I’m going to properly re-compile the study materials from N5 to N2, then aim to take the N2 exam again in December 2015.
Received the result around March 2015, and I failed the mentioned JLPT N2 test. That makes perfect sense because I never really completed my N2 studies back then.
Fast forward till today, instead of JLPT N2, I picked up something else instead – Understandings in banking industry’s issuing business. On top of that, leading a team to accomplish a mission impossible. I guess that still counts as another type of learning albeit I did not exercise what I preached for JLPT N2.
2016 New Year Resolutions
This year, my resolution is much simpler and straightforward. They’re basically an improvement over last years with some extra add-ons.
- Health & Fitness
Will add morning jogging into the mix.
Target achievement:
- 200 days of 20 minutes jog (4km) each.
- Photography
Will attend more local ACG events and master strobe lighting techniques.
Target achievement:
- Able to creatively utilize natural light & strobes
- Minimum 3 ACG conventions
- 500 likes at the page perhaps?
- branch as side job?
- Tech-Critter
Will make sure Tech-Critter’s mobile department gets the attention it deserved.
Target achievement:
- Expand to 6 mobile brands, from 2
- YouTube video production
Summary
That’s pretty much what I have set in stone right now. I’ll do my best to live up to my expectations and hope that I could gladly write off my resolutions during next year’s review.
What’s your new year’s resolution?