My Accounting Holiday Tradition

Happy Holidays!!!

VIDEO SUMMARY

So it is December. It is the holiday season, so I thought I would share my Holiday Tradition. Now this video is going to show you how crazy of an accountant I am. My Holiday Tradition, is that my Christmas celebration should be run like a boardroom in a corporation. So what I do every Christmas, is I create a PowerPoint Presentation, and I give this presentation to my friends and family. I’ve been doing this for five years now, and I really love this tradition. So I’m going to break down how this works and why it is so effective.

So the presentation is very simple. It covers my accomplishments from the previous year, and my strategic goals for the coming year. But then I go a step further. I have my friends and family sit down, and I pitch to them this PowerPoint presentation. And I pitch it, like I was pitching a new business idea. And what is so great about this, is you are not just taking time to reflect and plan, you are communicating your goals with your loved ones. And now that I’ve been doing this for several years, I even have other people starting to give PowerPoint presentations. And everybody starts talking about and sharing their goals.

Now I want to talk more about how I write these goals because I do it in a specific way. I break them into five different categories, and this helps to give your goals a well-rounded perspective. The categories I use are: Career, Fun, Health, Business Development, and Giving. Now these categories can change, depending on where you are at in life. These categories have changed for me in the last five years.

The other thing I do is really limit the number of goals in each category. You don’t want a huge long list of goals. The purpose is to really to prioritize what is important to you. If you could only pick 1 or 2 things in each category to focus on in the coming year, what would they be?

So let’s go through the five categories I am using currently. And it will give you an idea of how I think about them.

• First is career. And this would be whatever job you are doing right now. It’s a big part of your life. You spend a lot of time at work. So what are the big accomplishments you want to have in your job this year.
• Next is fun. You want to make sure you have goals about fun, because otherwise you only have goals about your career. For me this has to do with relationships and hobbies. A big thing here is I always put in a goal about a trip I want to take. My schedule is always so busy, that if I don’t write down that I’m going to take a trip, it just will never happen. And this doesn’t have to be an expensive trip. It could be a weekend road trip to a part of your state where you haven’t been before.
• Next is health. Health is very important to me, because if you don’t have your health, it impacts all the other parts of your life. So I always do an assessment of where my health is at and how I can improve. And this could be things like diet, working out, mental health like meditation.
• Business Development for me has to do with growing your career outside of work. What are you doing outside of your job to get you to the next step in your career. This could be developing business ideas. This could be what you want to do with your investment portfolio. For me, I would include a goal about my YouTube channel. What kind of things do I want to do with the channel in the coming year.
• And finally I have giving. And this has to do with charity. I think this is a very important thing to think about. How you want to have giving as a part of your life.

So those are my categories. Again, you could have different ones depending on where you are at in life. You could have one for family, one for spirituality, one for education if you are still in school. There’s no rules here. You are just documenting your goals.

So let’s talk about accomplishments. Because all you do is pull out your goals from the previous year, and you just use all the same categories. You see which one of your goals you achieved during the year. And you reflect if there is anything else you achieved even beyond your goals. So I have been doing this for five years, and the amazing thing is I accomplish almost all of my goals every year. Not only do I meet most of my goals. I surpass them. And I make some pretty intense goals. So it is really cool to be able to go back in time, and track your performance against the goals you set for yourself.

Leave a comment down below letting me know what you think! If you find these videos helpful, please subscribe to my YouTube channel.

Neither Zach De Gregorio or Wolves and Finance Inc. shall be liable for any damages related to information in this video. It is recommended you contact a CPA in your area for business advice.