Today's summary

Recently, through book reading and internalization, I realized how important it can be to do daily summaries. It gives you an end to each day with highlights and lowlights. You come into the realization of what has worked during the day and what needs improvement. I decided to do daily summaries either through writing or thinking in my head at the end of the day.

Below I will summarize my personal learnings from today's Corporate Learning Center's class "SMART as hell", which teaches about setting SMART goals to facilitate your success. The teacher, Glen Hughs, whom I think is brilliant with all sorts of quotes from different books, also talked about how you can manage your performance review by setting SMART goals and doing quarterly reviews.

1. It is up to you to drive the individual development plan and SMART goal setting for the next year. It in turn impacts your performance review for the coming year.
2. You are getting a leg up when you set up SMART goals that have upsides (and downsides come with upsides of course). Otherwise, with goals that do not have upsides, you are setting yourself up for ratings of 3s. I was particularly struggling with this item before, as I was not sure how I could get a 4 or a 5.
3. When you are at the individual contributor level, make sure at least a good amount of your goals is independent/does not depend too much on other people's results.
4. There are metric goals and rubric goals and both will work as long as they are clearly defined.
5. Metric goals work well for things that can be quantified.
6. Rubric goals work well for things that cannot be easily quantified and are better described and judged using different categories and qualities.

A couple of SMART goals I set for myself after the training:

1. I will redefine my annual goals with my manager to make them SMART during the next 1:1 meeting this coming Monday.
2. I will realign with my manager on my annual performance goal of 4 or above based on my performance in the first two quarters of FY13 before January 15th, 2013. (Make plans to close gaps if necessary)