My Personal Scorecard for 2007

I have been toying with the idea of publishing a book on Personal Scorecard with my ex-colleagues when I was providing professional service to the military units and formations in crafting out the Balanced Scorecards. Personal Scorecard is not easy as we may or may not know our purpose in life. Without knowing our purpose in life, whatever we do today may or may not take us to where we want to be – that is if we want to be somewhere in first place. Personal aspiration is subjective and each of us have different character trails so much so that to standardise on an approach to develop a Personal Scorecard is indeed challenging. Besides, who do we, for lack of a better word, be accountable in life to besides ourselves? Of course, some may bring in religion, social constructs, and traditions as our “higher orders” whereby some may found it less acceptable to live their lives by others’ standards.

While I am still in search with the existence of such a Personal Scorecard, I think basing on New Year resolution is a good start. A New Year’s resolution is a commitment that one makes to a project or a habit, often a lifestyle change that is generally interpreted as advantageous. Though we may not know our purpose in life, I trust that we should be able to see what is good from bad and to recognise things that we can do to make our lives better. In a way, the concept of Balanced Scorecard still hold, the approach is entirely different.

First thing on my mind was my lack of enthusiasm to Cynthia’s desire to see the world. To me, a trip down to Botanical Garden or Sentosa or even a road trip to Malaysia is good enough. But Cynthia wants to see places that she has not seen before. There are many measurements that can address this as long as they satisfy the S.M.A.R.T. (simple, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely) rule. I can go with number of days overseas but then I will have to separate the long haul and short haul trips for the difference in impact. How about the places that we have not seen and the place that we have? In the end, I have chosen Traveling Budget Utilised as my measurement. It is a good proxy while giving us the flexibility to mix the different types of trips.

Shall I measure everything that I do? Of course not. So measurements like number of songs written, amount of content posted in my website, number of times I meet up with my friends per month, and etc. are important but are not things that I wish to track constantly. I know I will do reasonably well regardlessly. So I limit the number of measurements to what I most want to track. The magic number is ten.

I am not doing well in leading a healthy lifestyle so I think setting a target of 8 hours of exercise per month should be doable. That works out to be 2 hours a week. Half of the time having home cooked dinner should be achievable too. At present, Exercise Hours is zero and Percentage of Home Cooked Dinner is close to zero. So, any improvement is going to be good.

I have been lazing in managing my own money. I have seen how even with such a little effort Cynthia has put in, she has made some good return. So this New Year, I am going to start investing my money to beat the low interest rate.

On the other end of the money spectrum – a money making career – I need some sense of measurement as well. I have no idea what Career Fulfillment Survey is going to be. But the sooner I have this worked out, the clearer I know what I expect from my career.

After putting off the idea of turning my hobbies into something more serious for such a long time, I guess I should take this opportunity to see how far I can go with them. To the least, in the year 2007, I would have put in my best. So I am going to see how many live performance I can make and if I can publish a book or two on any topic.

I guess drinking in moderation at times is not that bad so long as I don’t have a hangover that affect my next day. I thought of having other measurements such as the unit of alcohol consumed but it is hard to quantify with the different type of alcohol.

My another habit to moderate is my time spent on gaming. My current benchmark is about 130 hours per month so having it down to 40 hours I think is a determined effort to make a change.

As I looked at these nine measurements, I pondered upon things that I should do to make my life more memorable. Things that I have no idea yet and hence, I classified them under Extraordinary Projects that have significant impact.

I don’t know how long I can sustain this process. Judging at this merely ten items, I think I have lots to do tomorrow. Wish me luck!

A recap of my measurements for Year 2007 by clicking here.