By: Revanche

You’re a year older, what have you done?: a quarterly look back

May 19, 2015

A friend recently eclipsed my career by a rather heady margin. Robin and I have had a friendly almost-competition where we push each other to achieve our goals and making our way up the ladder like a pair of dueling rock climbers has been a fun pastime. None of our other peers were interested in our frank discussions about earning money, negotiating salary, trading tactics and giving one another a good shove in the back to do the uncomfortable thing.

This week, Robin was promoted to the C-suite.

I cheered, of course! It was a move we’d been discussing for a while, as he contemplated whether it made sense to move up there or elsewhere.

Then I realized: oh crap, I can’t match that anytime soon! One of the things I’ve always prided myself on was keeping step with him. It’s one of the things that makes me feel less resentful of the bias against women in the workplace – at least I’m keeping pace with my fantastic male friend, I’m not doing too badly.

Every so often, I get this uneasy feeling that I’m failing myself, failing to live up to my own expectations. It’s not because of comparing myself to others, though I won’t lie and say that I’m impervious to the outside world as competition, it’s because I have an internal set of benchmarks that I don’t always acknowledge.

I keep hearing this echo: you’re getting older, what have you done this year?

A year is a nice solid chunk of time to rack up some achievements, or to slip through your fingers if you’re not paying attention. And it feels like I haven’t been paying enough attention if I’ve been lapped twice, both in salary and position, professionally.

It’s time to pull those expectations out into the open and see what is honestly worth pursuing and what I am already achieving.

What have I done?

In the last 12 months…

Career: I head up a department, with years of management under my belt. I took an incremental step towards hitting a milestone salary marks, but it’s proving elusive thanks to the recent management shenanigans. It’ll likely be another year before I can do something about that. So that’s annoying on several levels but the end result is that I am still reaching for a goal that I set ten years ago. I expected to have hit it by now.

Biologically: I conceived and bore a child, AND we’ve kept hir alive. That was a long term project, so pretty big. And definitely not on my list of goals so, bonus? Bonus!

Travel happened: in a big way, actually. We crossed off a couple destinations from our list and visited some old favorites. San Diego, Italy, London, Los Angeles.

Financial / learning: I embarked on our first real estate investment journey a year ago this month. And can we talk about the trust that PiC has in me to say: “sure, I’m not interested but if you want to buy a house to rent out and do all those things without my involvement, feel free.” I’m a great money manager and maybe that’s why I can’t imagine trusting someone else that much, unless they were me. Or someone I truly respected. (Nah I’m all about the control, no one would get to manage my money that way without my input.)

Financial / learning: We’re paying increased costs for Little Bean but we’re still managing to save, thanks to a combination of preparation and an unlooked-for increase in PiC’s salary. I’m less wound up about money and I’m looking forward to doing bigger and better things. There are some things I really want to do that have to do with making life better for myself and people like me.

To be fair …

One, any year that includes “created a new life” is probably going to get an automatic boost on the productivity scale, in my book. I’m not sure that you’d have to do one thing other than that to cross the minimum level of productivity, including lifting a finger to bathe yourself. Let someone else groom you, you’ve created a human!

But that might be because pregnancy was so damn hard and I already play life on Difficulty setting: Hard/Insane.

Two, I didn’t mean to rig the scale this way but my May 2014- May 2015 was pretty unusual. I’m probably not going to buy a huge investment every May. Or maybe I should.

To compensate, the next look back is only going to cover 2 months and will look like I’ve done nothing but eat, sleep and keep the kid alive 🙂

No really, taking a leaf from Laura VanderKam’s goal setting, I’m going to take a look every 3 months to see what I really accomplished. I didn’t set 2015 goals because, well, pregnant, but now? Why not!

Note: I’m listing personal projects that require work under professional because they are work, and I’m not showing goals for the 9-5 here. That means these are all to be accomplished in the 72 hours that I’m not formally working (~40) and sleeping per week (~56 haha).  These are rough and subject to revision or additions as I’ve never done it this way before.

Q2

Professional: Finish the first draft of my writing project: add 20,000-40,000 words.
Set up a mailing list for anyone who’s interested in reading it to get updates when the time comes.
Test 3 possible business ideas.
Blog at least 3x/week.

Personal: Spend a weekend with at least one friend we’d like to see annually.
Visit LB’s cousins.
Get outside to walk 5 of 7 days per week.

Q3

Professional: Edit the writing project.
Ask a mentor or two to critique it.
Blog at least 3x/week.

Personal: Vacation in San Diego.
Host a good friend for a week.
Keep walking 5 of 7 days per week.

Q4

Professional: Evaluate status of the writing project – edit and rewrite.
Ask a mentor or two to critique it, again.
Blog at least 3x/week.

Personal: Host family for Thanksgiving.
Perhaps vacation for a week out of state – scheduling pending.
Add 30 minutes at the gym 1x/week.

Have you got some 2015 goals to share? How are you doing?

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