Year End Self Assessment

Merry Christmas to every body. End of year is nearly there. This is the time for a comprehensive and in-depth self assessment.

I'm working now on the planning of this self assessment process and getting some thoughts about the best way of performing it.

In my personal opinion, it is a good chance to know further myself, my inner issues, to know my strengths and weaknesses and more importantly to know how to develop my personality in the positive direction further and further in the new year.

A key important part of our life should be dedicated to knowing ourselves. I believe millions and millions of persons who live and die without scratching even one inch deeper into their personality and they look to themselves with the other's eyes and other's perceptions or their subconscious self perception.

Self assessment is a great food for thoughts and rich of knowledge about the self and the life.

I want from this process to get better understanding about myself and what I want and to understand more my life.

Flash back of the whole year and self dialogue will uncover a lot of aspects of my personality and provide me good assessment of my performance throughout the year.


 

Self centered readings

I started to focus more my readings on the personal development and personal value added readings.
Fictional novels and literature became a luxurious in my situation.

I need to read what has a direct impact on my very personal life and has a material change on my live.

That doesn't mean that I undervalue the fictional or the other categories of readings. I still believe they could inspire indirectly a lot of great values in the personal life but the one has to project them more in his life.

I'm doing that as well. I project whatever I read on my own life and get value out of it.

It might be a newspaper article or whatsoever, it has value when I relate it to my life and use it to inspire me something useful in my own life.

Developing good habits - 02

 I'm still following my recently endorsed method of tracking the new good qualities and habits which I want to endorse and embed in my personality.
 Now I can quickly know which one of those qualities is progressing and which one is not.
 The gaps in my assessment table tells me straight away that I need to work more on the social communication and knowledge sharing.
 The method is really effective and it is inducing me to focus on my weaknesses to address them and to do actions about them.
 It has given a spark of enthuthiasm to blacken the boxes as quickly as I could because I believe in the ultimate reward of gaining numerous new qualities in my personalities and new good habits.

Developing good habits



 

 

 

 

Gaining a good habit takes a time. It requires to believe in its value and to resist your counter habits and to do it repetitively till it becomes organic part of your personality.

 

In a previous post "Personal Improvement through repetitive acts" I wrote that I started to track my effort to gain new good qualities and good habits in my life.

 

As shown above in the image, a table of the good qualities which I want to fully endorse and to embed them in my personality are listed in the first row. Each time I do any of them I blacken its corresponding box.

 

For instance, punctuality is listed there so whenever I attend my meetings on time or come to the work on time, I blacken its box.

 

The page includes about 50 boxes in each column. I believe whenever I will finish blackening all those boxes, I will gain a lot of good qualities and they will become more and more essential and organic part of my personality with less and less effort and with authentic believe backing them in my conscious.

 

I list above for example, punctuality, perfection, social communication, inner peace, discipline, productivity, etc,'

 

I can tell now from the visual inspection which ones are progressing and which ones which are still resistive to be gained.

 

This has started to give me further insights about myself and how those qualities are interlinked together as baggage so I need to address them as a baggage and help and support myself to gain them with additional supportive methods and change some of my life patterns.

 

It is a simple and effective method.

 

 

 

 

Excerpts from my motivation and self esteem boosting block note

My motivation self esteem block note is close to me all the time. It is my battery charging in life. I keep reading and writing in it to boost my energy and to overcome any suspected down moments.
It helps me to accomplish work and life tasks and boost my energy.

I have motivation block note since three years ago and it has become one of my essential mechanisms to overcome my low self esteem and lack of energy issues.

Let me read excerpts of my block note.

The life of my daughters depend totally on the accomplishment of this task.
This task is a death/life matter for my daughters.
This task is the most important thing in my life.
All my next life counts on this task.
(Talking to myself) You, who is addictive to loosing and the role model of the losers, stand up as a man and have some respect to yourself and achieve the XXX (I state here clearly the task to be accomplished).
Man , have some care to yourself and be something instead of total nothing.
You are disgusting person and scum and garbage bag. Get up as a man and do your responsibility.
Adel the loser has died for ever and his grave was berried deep into earth and he will never come back.
All my brain cells, my focus, my energy, my nerve system will be in this email to perfection it.

etc..etc..etc..

I've thick block note full of those boosting statements and I keep filling it.

As you see, I despise the loosing part of myself and state that clearly and detach my mind mentally from this part to face it.
I use exaggerated words to shock me and to awaken my senses.
I read frequently these statements before each task.
I believe those statements and damp any inner voice which creates doubts or disbelieves around them.
I believed them to the extent that those are the key reality in my life and otherwise was the illusion.
 

Personal improvement through repetitive acts

My daughters have asked me to drop them in the morning away from the school gate. They were urged from the school to walk to the school as part of school initiative to encourage the pupils to do more physical efforts and to urge the parents to park away from the crowd spots near by the school.

Each one of my daughter has  table to be filled with ticks for each time they walk to the school.
They urge me to increase their ticks and fill up the table.

This has inspired me - Please read the previous posts about the learning spirit and the inspirational attitude - to use the way to gain new qualities and habits in my personality.

In my motivational blocknote, I draw the qualities and the good habits which I would like to gain such as punctuality, deep insights in my work, creative ideas, initiatives, knowledge sharing, effective contribution in the meetings, problem solving, innovative ideas, ..etc...

Under each quality, I draw empty boxes. Each time I have deep insight in my work I check the corresponding box and each time I attend a meeting on time or come on time to my work I blacken the punctuality box.

My aim is simply to turn those qualities to a habit and to be organically embedded in my personality as an essential component of it and the subsequent act as a habit.

After this blog, I will blacken as well the box of the life reflection as one of my noted qualities there.

I've around 40 box to be filled. If I filled all of them, those initiated qualities will be transformed to essential building blocks of my character genetics and familiar habits.

The power of repetitive habits are stronger than the power of the conscious acting!

motivational doses

Everyday I charge up myself with motivation and self esteem doses from my motivation boosting blocknote.

I keep it always beside me on the office desk.

Whenever I found slack and lack of enthusism in myself I grab the blocknote and read my noted words and they urge me to accomplish the tasks.

Open up your receivers to the daily inspiration - 2

This is the second day of implementing my resolution to protect and to support my inspirational and reflection moments.
My determination is still there to shield my initiative from the daily stressful needs and to keep my inspirational streaming thoughts in a safe heaven from the daily fire fighting activities.

I feel great as a student in the school of life who is actively and proactively ready to learn and gain more and more knowledge.

What has happened is simply changing the main objective.
The previous main objective was addressing the pressing work and life needs to solve the problems.
My resolution was a decision to change that to seek knowledge through the motion in life.

No the motion in life is a medium for discovering and broadening my knowledge and not an objective by itself.

If that sounds so philosophical for you, or you believe that I'm going into bullshitting mode, try it and you will be satisfied with the result.

If I managed to continue my resolution and not reverting back to the normal worker person who is overwhelmed with the day to day basic needs, I believe the rewards will be so worthy.

I'm steering my conversation, chatting and question in work toward this truth discovering and inspirational mode and so far what I've gained is:
- Improving considerably self confidence.
- Steepening my learning curve.
- Deeper insights in the subjects.
- And.. impressing others with my deeper level of questions and thoughts!

In the following days and months, I will keep writing about this initiative and its challenges and rewards and its impact on my life.
 

Open up your receivers to the daily inspiration

In the middle of the business meeting, where my boss was discussing major business issues and everyone in the meeting was so focused to address the subject and to provide the status of the action items, I was as well concerned about that but this was not the only subject in my mind to focus on.

I was thinking about other irrelevant subjects to the meeting whenever I manage to cut out some moments from the meeting discussions.

I was thinking about the differential equations, and temperature and its effect on the density and mud weight and other subjects which may seem totally irrelevant subjects to the key business issues in hand.

This was part of my new resolution to open up my mind for the inspirations and let them stream wildly and open up the gate of further knowledge for me.

Today I implemented fully this resolution and I decided to protect my mind and my soul from the stressful focus on the urgent problems and issues and keep my all antennas to receive the signals and inspirations and to follow those signals.

the result was spectacular. I indeed gained a lot of intelligent thoughts and deep insights, in addition to the deep insight of what is going on.

I was not just overwhelmed with the urgent daily work issues and the daily routine but I was in continuous receiving mode of the new thoughts and new knowledge as my first priority.

 

Casual chatting as an educational process!

There are so many channels and sources of knowledge and information.
It isn't limitd to the traditional and conventional channels like taking course or training or reading book or receiving a lecture.
I can list dozens and dozens of processes which can be harnessed to act as educational and inspiring processed and they are nothing but normal daily activities like casual conversations and chatting, shopping, cooking, eating, observing, listening, etc.
Each singl activity of those could be harnessed to act as a powerful educational process.
So many channels of learning
Along the scholastic educational process we limited ourselves into the book packed education.
Let,search by doing, by observing,by chatting, 
I transformed the chatting to inspiring process for me to learn more.
Learn something new about myself, or about a new subject.
Even the casual chat could be transformed to a learning process if you open your mind to be inspired.
In the work place, I heavily follow that.
Whenever we are chatting during the morning coffe making or occasionally in th corridor I cease those moments to learn something and induce new thoughts and get new information
Those are not wasted moments if I paid attention to the conversation and opened my mind and my heart to be inspired with what even beyond.
I capitalize on those by further thinking and expand the envelope of knowledge out of them.
Chatting with the people can be a great avenue of learning if we are good and smart listeners and we raised the proper questions and build and grow upon the conversation further thoughts and ideas.
I started to turn each single activity in my life to a learning process, even when I,m shopping I educate myself about the products and the new products and open up my inspiration channels to learn and to explore more and more.
World is a wonderful and big school if we open up our heart,mind and soul in addition to ears and eyes and act as proactive students who are determined to receive as much as they could new knowledge and information.

I've seen TV program about a research sponsored by the american military to engineer and manufacture bionic limbs so the injured american soldiers can return back to normalcy in their lives.
The cost is humongous of these bionic limbs because of the hi-tech in it and the computer chips connected with the neurons and the tuning and coordination of the movement to just hold effectively a cup.

This has urged me to think about putting a price tag on our body. If I will price my hand how much it should be. It should worth millions then.

Actually this price is based on the value because it really can generate millions of it is utilized effectively and how it should function.

And how much for the brain, for the kidney, the heart, ..etc.

Or let,s reverse the question. If these organs are our capital and they are intensive capital, then their return should be tremendous.

I raised this questions to myself occasionally. All my body organs are so valuable and it's value comes basically from their potential to generate value.

I wrote in motivational block note, that is brain is there to be creative in my job, in my personal life, to create value, and to get my master Andy's contribute intelligently into the society and the world.
These billions of brain cells should be harnessed up to their limit of capacity and potential to create huge value in the life and to accomplish so many valuable achievements.

Same for hands, they should be heavily invested in constructing and handcrafting wonderful is.

It is very inspiring to put price tag on your body organs and to deal with them as your capital and your investment and to generate the value they ment to be there to create.

My motivation blocknote

Historically, I had a very low self esteem. I was struggling with myself years and years to improve that and to boost myself esteem.

My spirit was, in general, down and my willingness was weak to achieve something in my life.

I was always moving in life with a heavy steps and low moral.

I have my very own drivers but self esteem was not by any mean one of the top drivers.

One of the days, I decided to write some sentences and words to remind me with the self esteem.

Some reminding words to tell me that I am worthy the effort and I am a valuable person who deserves a better life and who deserves to love himself.

From day to another I was writing in this block note and reading what I read whenever I need.

The think block note was filled and I grabbed another bigger block note to fill it.

I changed my way in this self appreciation and motivation boosting block note.

Previously, I was conservative and realistic , as reality means to the very humble person Adel, that be so realistic in your dreams.

My Motivation self dialogue has overcome totally this boundary reality. It is skyrocketing , at least in my words, they what,s called realistic barriers to explore really my real potential.

Everyday I have this block note between my work place and my home.

I need it really to be close to me along the day.

Whenever I need a dose of moral and motivation booster, I grab my block note and read and highlight some sentences and words in it or write some motivation thoughts.

From the external perspective, the block note includes lot of exaggerated and unrealistic thoughts but from my very own perspective it is very realistic.

So does that work? Did it manage to increase my self awareness and self esteem?

I can gladly honestly say yes it did. It did indeed increased my self esteem and my energy to get things done.

I wish if I have  my own words written long time ago to yell in my face and to remind me and knock my head , man steer your own life and achieve something in it.

Willing to face my problems

I lived with my problems so long. They were accompanying me. That,s how I was dealing with my problems. 

I was so negative  and brainless and tied hand person who doesn't face or address or solve his problem.

My way was simply ignore the problem and pretend that it is not existing.

Subconscious was the key driver in dealing with my problems.

My problems were long lived and even grow in my negative fertile soil.

Someday which I don,t exactly remember I decided to change that.

Nothing is better than facing the problem. No matter how the underlying truth is ugly but the illusion and its consequences are ugly and painful.

Since then, I decided to address my problem instead of turning my face away and pretending that they are not there or they are worthless to be addressed or they are unsolvable.

If I had a health problem I wouldn't solve it. The same for the academic problems, relationship problems, social, name it. 

Problem was only addressed subconsciously.

When I decided to change my way in dealing with the problem, I decided to face bravely the problems.

I decided to think deeply about the problem. I decided to ask for help and learn how to solve it.

I decided to educate myself and to gain the knowledge and the skills to deal with the problem.

Problem means a challenge , and each challenge means that you have to equip with knowledge and skills to be able to address it.

riding my bicycle

I accomplished new resolution today. I decided in the new year yo dedicate time got yew cycling sport. The goal was pending till last week when I bought the bicycle. Today I started my first cycling activity after probably 15 years of ny last cycling . I have determination to continue it as a habit from now to onward. The health and mental value will be great. Seeing the goal city from the cycling is totally different. I had the chance to see and learn more about the city. Cycling is a really great sport where it can develop fitness and mind. I am proud today of achieving my little goal as I am so excited about this sport.

Confusion and the revolution

There is a major confusion dominating a lot of people in Egypt about the consequences of the revolution so far.
Some people are mentally and emotionally so challenged and shocked from the disturbing news everyday which exceeded their capacity to assess and comprehend the situation.
Some of them started to wonder about the value of what's going on and if that what they really wanted.
I consider that all that expected and predicted mental and emotional shock which could happen to many persons if they lost the concentration on the long term objectives.
WE shouldn't let all the short term consequences to affect our morale and believing in the revolution.
We should continue the road to the end to gain the fruits and to reward the painful sacrifices of hundreds of martyrs.
I met some people who are questioning things which were supposed to be a common sense and written on the wall conclusions like the sins of Mubarak and if he really deserves what happened or no and worthy of the martyrs and even if the people are ready for the self-ruling and the democracy.
We must focus on the long term objectives.
We must continue in the painful but rewarding road to the end to gain eventually the fruits.
Fruits which were irrigated with our blood and tears.

Kuwait and Indonesia and the common sin

I received my assignment in Kuwait after three wonderful years in Indonesia. The first notice I've observed was the shear amount of SUV's for a small country.
The justification was stated simply everywhere that they need powerful car A/C's so that's why they have SUV's and of course the very cheap gas.
Gas here is cheaper than water!!
What a justification for consuming a finite resources.

In spite of the so many differences between Kuwait and Indonesia, they certainly share this sin, the wasting of their hydrocarbon resources.

Timeboxing

I'm using the "timeboxing" method to manage my time since two months now. The impact on my productivity was good and it is improving by the time.
I was always suffering from the distractions coming from the surrounding workplace which was giving me a negative feeling of the passing non-productive time.
The timeboxing has managed to control that.

What is timeboxing?
It is simply a method to assign time for each single tasks and to focus only on the task in hand till you finish it and block any other distractions. Do one task per time.
Secondly you need to record the time of each task.
Since the majority of my work is front of my Computer, I used Excel for the timeboxing. I used (NOW) function in two adjacent for each task. When I start the task I copy the value of (NOW) to set the start time and leave the other. The difference between both will measure the consumed duration. When I finish I paste the value of the finish time and this gives me the duration of this task and the start and finish time.
Sometimes I set a planned time for the task to compare between it and the actual consumed time.
This has improved my focus on the task in hand and improved my productivity and most importantly the quality of what I'm doing.
The another value was the precise logging of my tasks along the business day.
The sense and awareness of time is fully awaken as well.
It was near to perfect way to control the time and block the distractions and it has given me the sense of achievement.
What I'm doing now in the Excel spreadsheet, is writing a note of what could be done to speed up the productivity of the process in the next time. Next time I refer to this note to shorten the consumed time in the same process.
For instance, I found that thinking during the morning commuting about my business emails is saving a lot of time.
I emphasized and stressed the practice of this way to shorten the time of my business emails writing. And son on for the other tasks by getting some ideas after doing them to improve the quality and reduce the consumed time.
I found also based on the observation of my timeboxing that the thinking beforehand about my business day and the required decisions and actions should be taken is reducing significantly the hesitation and the further discussions and reducing my spontaneous actions and decisions to more planned and well calculated.

Effective mentoring

No doubts that mentoring could have a profound impact on the business if it would be implemented effectively.
I noticed that mentoring is poorly practiced in my company. It takes a long time to streamline the new hires fully into the business.
Definitely there is a better practices of implementing the effective mentoring which can speed up the streamlining and the full engagement of the new hires and the mid-careers into the business.
Mentoring should be an essential responsibility for each experienced employee and he should be fully committed to it and shouldn't be handled as a sideline tasks which can be compromised.
Whenever we implement the mentoring, it becomes totally subjective process which is up to the level of commitment of the individual and it is not following a systematic and standard approach to ensure its effectiveness.

My manager was complaining from the poor knowledge and reliability of the local staff. I told him that happened basically because of the poor mentoring you have in this business unit. They can't work independently and they should be closely mentored and gradually delegated in the different assignment. Specific development objectives and Training and development plan should be in place.

Effective Mentoring should be well rewarded and appreciated to encourage the experienced employees to contribute and invest their effort and time in this process.

For instance, if the objective of the employee X to work as independent team lead after two years then the mentor should ensure that he is following the appropriate career and development path to achieve this goal and the employee should be informed about this midterm objective to fully adopt it and consent to it.

What we are doing is simply throwing the new hires into the ocean and who will swim will continue and who will sink will be abandoned. This is definitely the worst way of developing the people and the organization. Learning through the very hard and most stupid and primitive way.

As a process it should be continuously improved by the measuring of its success criteria like the time span and the progress and the number of mentee.

Distance learning and web conferencing and captured expertise could speed up the process and free it from the constraint of the number of experienced mentors in many locations.

Mentoring should be core process in each organization and business unit as it was always for the small workshops where the carpenter was mentoring the new green hire and gradually delegating to him the different assignments and that how was the knowledge transferred from generation to another.

Outsourcing and a window of hope

As a corporate employee, I have to, as thousands in the company, to prepare my expense reports whether they are business, medical or benefits expenses. Last time I did that, I had to collect all my receipts and stick them to be scanned and sent to our financial auditors. I had to record them in the website with their corresponding costs.
This process has taken a full business day. Multiply this time and effort by tens of times per year and thousands of employees and you will figure out the humongous time wasted in non business productive time.
Following that, I thought - as usual - about alternatives to ease this bottleneck.
I always believe that the bottlenecks in the business environment should be addressed seriously by intelligent solution to maximize the productivity and the revenue per head.
The simple question pop-up in my head, was simply why shouldn't we outsource this simple mechanical task to any contract clerk to do it and he or she will not mind to take peanuts to do that to have a job instead of nothing. Isn't better than wasting a full power employee with this non productive tasks and time.
No doubts that expense reporting is an essential procedure for any organization to monitor its reimbursables, however it is definitely not productive process and it doesn't contribute to the production.
Two solutions could address this bottleneck in the productivity, the business intelligence and the outsourcing.
I will elaborate more on that in the next blog.

The full capacity of my mind

I strongly believe that I'm still using very tiny portion of mind. Certainly, I'm not get the maximum potential of it.
I need to improve the utilization of it and exercise the full operation of it continuously. It is all about thinking more and more and and more efficient thinking.
It is all about operating my mind.
I started to closely observe how I'm using my mind in my daily life activities.
It is very useful process to evaluate the efficiency of my mind during my daily activities.
The amount of creative and innovative ideas and the logical and mathematical processes.
The level of processing.
for instance, the conversation is representing a major activity in my daily personal and professional activities, however my mental activity is mainly the spontaneous reaction with so much processing. It is a point of concern where I need to increase the thinking while talking and leverage the level of my speech.
Another crucial point, the negative influences from the surroundings where the surrounding people or the environment sometimes represent a depressing and discouraging ambiance.
I should resist this negative influence and free my mind.
It is my current interest and challenge, how I can unlock the full potential of mind and reflect that on the quality of my life.