Kicking off H2 with a Strategic Review

As we ended the first half of 2026 in June, I remembered that I had actually made a plan for this year. A plan that had been forgotten during the vagaries of life. It was surprising to me that I had operated throughout most of the first half of the year without looking back at my plan. Especially since it was a plan I had put a lot of effort into crafting. So before I get into what I had planned, and my achievements or lack thereof, I want to talk about how I even came up with a plan in the first place.

Since about 2020, I have been making yearly or multi-year plans for myself. It began after I experienced a mental health issue that showed up as depression and loss of interest in my life. This led to a strategy session with my mom and a multi-year strategic plan for me for the next few years. If you've been following me, you probably already know this because it led to my posts on Living Intentionally and Choosing My Way to Fulfilment in 2020 and 2021, respectively.

I've come a long way since then and have experimented with various ways to keep up my drive and pursue my purpose. Including Bible reading, journalling, active learning, and more. All things I had identified as important to me since back then. But honestly, being disciplined and consistent about these activities has been a challenge. Even after reading books like Atomic Habits, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and Can't Hurt Me, to name a few. Thus, every year I end up trying some new variant of my approach to see if it will stick - and that is why this year's plan was different from every year before it.

The main difference this year was that I stumbled upon 2 useful ideas on Pinterest that I thought I could employ in my planning. The first was a visual of life, as broken down into 12 areas. This is the same visual I have used for this blog post. And the second was a spreadsheet planner I also discovered on Pinterest and bought for a few dollars. I expected that the introduction of these 2 elements would help me structure and track my progress better. As such, my plan for this year was broken down into 12 major areas:

1. Health
2. Appearance
3. Love
4. Family
5. Friends
6. Career
7. Money
8. Self-Growth
9. Spirituality
10. Recreation
11. Environment
12. Community

Each of these was further broken down into 5 specific topics, which you can see in the image. It's quite a comprehensive list, to be honest, which is why I decided to plan according to it. As you can imagine, by the time I had finished the plan, I felt very accomplished. Every area was covered, with deadlines and desired outcomes to boot. So at the beginning of the year, I thought I was ready for the rest of it.

Now, let me begin with my first failure. I never actually used the spreadsheet planner that I bought. I didn't translate all the items in my plan into the spreadsheet, so it never got used. In fact, I had forgotten all about it until I was reviewing my plan in June!

Which brings me to my second failure. My mid-year review was my first review. I hadn't referred back to my plan since January, when I completed it. So my awesome plan wasn't actually driving my actions. Only what I remembered was. These 2 failures were the biggest, and quite big they are. So when I discovered them in June, I was not happy.

Nonetheless, I carried out a mid-year review, noting what had been achieved so far. As expected, I made progress on the items I had remembered, but little to no progress on those I had forgotten. Since this was a new approach, there were also items which I hadn't thought about before this year that just went totally unheeded (like Community).

So as we begin Q3, I have 2 new assignments:

1. To begin monthly reviews of my progress (or quarterly at worst), and
2. To start using my spreadsheet.

Even if it's just for the bottom half of the year, I believe that employing these practices will lead to better results. And if you're also someone who does or is interested in regular goal-setting and tracking, I hope these notes will help you. Even if all they do is let you know that I'm in the struggle with you.