12 simple questions to ask when performing an annual review
My Annual Review 2022
The most valuable thing you need do for 2023:
The Yearly Reflection.
It’s how you can turn this year’s pain into life-moulding lessons.
To make it simple, I’ve broken it down into 12 questions for you to address.
What Happened This Year?
A lot has happened in 2022. During such an eventful year, it feels like we went through a decade worth of events.
Catch up by:
Listing down the 5 major events that happened this year.
What happened?
How the events impacted you?
What can you learn from them?
What Went Well This Year?
Celebrating wins is just as important as reviewing what can be improved. No win is too small to celebrate.
What disasters did you avoid?
What investments did well (if any)?
What new skills did you learn?
Do more of what worked well this year.
Some of my wins this year:
I was recognised as a top writer on Medium on topics of investing.
Consistency in publishing an article once a week (no matter how busy I was).
Nothing spectacular, but progress over perfection.
What Didn’t Go So Well this Year?
Now it’s time to face the hard and uncomfortable truths.
What were your biggest mistakes this year?
What assumptions and information led you to make these decisions? Be honest.
A few of my less-than-glamorous moments this year:
I suffered mental burnouts from time to time — I didn’t pace myself and needed a change of environment.
Not protecting my crypto assets, even after I purchased a cold wallet.
Played too safe in my investments.
What Did You Learn This Year?
Look at your wins and losses for the year.
What are some common patterns and mistakes that keep repeating? Work out a plan to prevent this in future.
Some of my learnings:
Setting a hard deadline to complete a certain task.
Creating a soft launch to prevent procrastination
What Strategies Do You Need to Update?
The meta in the investing world changes fast. What worked in the past may no longer work now.
Just look at the fall from grace of growth stocks this year, after its extraordinary run-up during the Covid lockdown.
Your thinking and preferences change as you the years go by.
Construct your portfolio based on your personal risk appetite.
Mine looks something like:
60% dividend
30% growth
10% trading/ speculative
It’s different for everyone. Find what’s yours.
What Cognitive Biases Did You Fall For?
Cognitive biases is your worst enemy in investing. Go through this list and figure out which ones you fell for.
Some psychological biases that I fell for:
Herd Mentality — seeing everyone raving about how good FTX was, I opened an account for myself. We all know what happened next.
Loss Aversion — this led me to invest too much in safe assets like government bonds.
What Edge are you Developing?
If you’re doing what everyone else are doing, you don’t have an edge.
Think about what edges you can develop to differentiate yourself in 2023.
Here’s mine:
Re-visit all my interests from the past and present. Incorporate the skills learned from these interests into the projects I’m working on.
Networking with like-minded individuals.
What Can Go Wrong?
Life is hardly ever plain sailing.
There are banana skins in every journey that you take. It’s okay to slip and fall, just get back up on your feet after.
No one plans to die, but we all have life insurance just in case.
Think of things that can go wrong and try to mitigate risks.
What Tools Can You Master?
Tools give you leverage, but collecting too many can have the opposite desired effect.
Pick a few tools and go deep.
A new thing I’ll be learning next year is crypto trading.
I want to learn Notion, to use it as my second brain.
To read the rest of the article, head over to https://medium.com/@thebenedictgoh