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It’s the end of 2014. That means it’s time for some personal evaluation. How did your year go? In this episode, I give you six questions that will help you evaluate this year. These questions will help guide your thinking and your evaluation process. The insights you’ll gather from this episode will also help you plan for the next year.

A couple of announcements first: my book “May Powers Ka to Be #SuperEpic”, which is a personal development book for aspiring young leaders. It’s written in conversational Taglish, and would be a perfect Christmas gift for High School or College students. For more info, please visit http://BeSuperEpic.com.

I also have another book “Start Up: Find your place. Engage the world. Sustain your life.” This is the book for new graduates and new young professionals. So if you’re looking for a guide book for your career and life, this could be a good book for you. For more info, please visit http://StartUpBookOnline.com.

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Go back to your contract, which contains your job description. Review each piece of job listed in your contract. How well did you fulfill each expectation? If you have access to the performance review form, go check it out. Assess yourself on a scale of 1 to 5.

1 = Significantly Below Expectations

2 = Below Expectations

3 = Meets Expectations

4 = Above Expectations

5 = Significantly Above Expectations

Don’t overrate yourself. But if you ask me, it may be better to err a little bit on the side of under-rating, unless you are extremely confident that you can justify a “Significantly Above Expectations” rating. Don’t underrate yourself either. It will come across that you do not sufficiently trust your skills and abilities.

Be as honest as possible. If you have trusted colleagues in the organization, seek their honest feedback throughout the year. This will give you a good idea whether you meet expectations or if you are merely deluding yourself.

If you want to have a more realistic assessment, you’ll need additional data, which can be addressed by the next two questions.

What projects or issues have you handled this year? If you are in sales, go back to the deals you’ve closed. Are they average accounts or are they big deals?

This is applicable to both employees and business owners. List down every bit of accomplishment this year–from the small ones to the earth-shaking ones. These will help back your personal assessments in the first question.

Did you have any personal projects this year? Financially, what have you accomplished? Were you able to increase your savings account? Have you started investing?

Mistakes are part of our lives and our career. Although some mistakes may be more serious than others, the important thing is to learn what we can from each mistake.

For this year, what kinds of mistakes have you made? Relational? Work-related? What caused these mistakes? Is it because you were overloaded and beyond your present capacity? Or is it because

Keeping track of accomplishments is a great practice. But failures and mistakes? Most of the time, we’d like to bury them six feet underground. Or worse, we are tempted to blame somebody else for those mistakes.

Mistakes and failures are part of life. What’s important are the lessons you can learn from them.

Beginning this month, why don’t you keep track of the monthly highlights of your career? I have a Spreadsheet where I list the highlights of each month. For example, last July, I was the overall head of the Philippine team of an international young people’s event attended by around 400 delegates from all over the world.

It was big!

But we also faced a big problem–typhoon Glenda ravaged the venue we chose and we had to move to two venues within 5 days! It would have been a humongous disaster. But thankfully, our local and international host team managed it well. And I learned a LOT from the experience.

A month or two may not have highlights. But you can probably list some of the important career lessons or insights that occur to you during those months.

If you diligently keep track of these highlights, by the end of the year, you have a good view of your career performance this year. If you have metrics for your career, then you can be confident that you did well. In case the highlights are not stellar, or they are dismal. Don’t worry, even mistakes can be occasion for growth as long as you take to heart the lessons from them.

You can download the Spreadsheet here.

Habits can take you up the ladder or bring you down. Identify habits that you absolutely hate in your colleagues and other co-workers: like tardiness, sloppy work, bad handling of meeting, bad financial management, etc.

Now, assess yourself if you possess any of the habits you hate. Or if you’ve been struggling in an area of your career, you better list them down, too.

If you are always late–for appointments and for submitting reports, know that this habit is highly detrimental to your career. It’s time to scrap that. Take some cues from our post on How to Avoid being late.

Observe the senior managers in your organization. If you have any opportunity to speak with them and learn from them, grab it! You will benefit greatly from such opportunities. If you are good, you may even capture their attention. If they remember your name in a positive light, that’s all that could help you be considered for promotion somewhere down the line.

If you have a chance, observe the habits of these managers and bosses? How do they handle stress? How do they dress up? How about their people skills? Are they sociable?

Read biographies of the people you want to emulate. Identify the habits that helped them reach the top. Then come up with a plan to cultivate these skills.