Personal
2011 Lessons Learned
01-Jan-2012
While looking over my 2012 goals, I realized that I hadn’t really thought about 2011. This year I want to practice regular renewal and recommitment to my goals. In the past, I achieved my goals more or less, but that wasn’t through a practice of recommitment. It was a chaotic result of my other obsessive behaviors. I am working to make this a more repeatable process this year by constantly evaluating where I am.
To that end, this is what I learned in 2011.
This year brought big changes in my professional life. Atalasoft was acquired, changing my job somewhat (more focused on product development, but with a more aggressive roadmap and bigger team). Having this focus has helped make sure we deliver our roadmap. Additionally, it has let me direct all of my energy at product management, which brought me to consuming the works of Horace Dediu, Clay Christensen, and exposed me to the “Jobs to be done” framework, which has had a profound impact on my thinking. While trying to find out more, I met Bob Moesta, who generously spent an hour teaching me more details of the framework with plans to talk more about it.
Lesson #1: Focus allows you to make outsized gains in the area you focus on.
This year, I have found a purpose that has helped me improve my networking. Drawing from Seven Habits, I have long thought that the best “uses” of a network was to help people find each other for their mutual benefit, but I haven’t been good at thinking of ways to do that proactively.
Through my work with the local Regional Employment Board, my exposure to so many job seekers and employers, and my belief that high unemployment is the most important problem to help solve, I have set the broad goal of trying to make connections that result in hiring by myself and others. Additionally, I have blogged some practical tips about job seeking for programmers, and I tweet every good local tech job I see.
Lesson #2: A goal centered around a purpose is easier to achieve
My biggest goal of 2011 was to “get in better shape”, which I defined as having a BMI and health measurements (blood pressure, cholesterol, etc.) within normal ranges. I started the year trying out 4-Hour Body and trying to get back into running, but when that didn’t work, I finally joined Pioneer Valley CrossFit in June. In December, I got serious about eating better and adopted a paleo diet. I started 2011 at 180 pounds and ended at 153, with 80% of the loss after June. More than that -- I am more fit than I have ever been in my life.
Lesson #3: Be willing to change tactics quickly if they aren’t working.
This year I hope that I apply these more consciously. What did you learn in 2011 that will make 2012 even better?
To that end, this is what I learned in 2011.
This year brought big changes in my professional life. Atalasoft was acquired, changing my job somewhat (more focused on product development, but with a more aggressive roadmap and bigger team). Having this focus has helped make sure we deliver our roadmap. Additionally, it has let me direct all of my energy at product management, which brought me to consuming the works of Horace Dediu, Clay Christensen, and exposed me to the “Jobs to be done” framework, which has had a profound impact on my thinking. While trying to find out more, I met Bob Moesta, who generously spent an hour teaching me more details of the framework with plans to talk more about it.
Lesson #1: Focus allows you to make outsized gains in the area you focus on.
This year, I have found a purpose that has helped me improve my networking. Drawing from Seven Habits, I have long thought that the best “uses” of a network was to help people find each other for their mutual benefit, but I haven’t been good at thinking of ways to do that proactively.
Through my work with the local Regional Employment Board, my exposure to so many job seekers and employers, and my belief that high unemployment is the most important problem to help solve, I have set the broad goal of trying to make connections that result in hiring by myself and others. Additionally, I have blogged some practical tips about job seeking for programmers, and I tweet every good local tech job I see.
Lesson #2: A goal centered around a purpose is easier to achieve
My biggest goal of 2011 was to “get in better shape”, which I defined as having a BMI and health measurements (blood pressure, cholesterol, etc.) within normal ranges. I started the year trying out 4-Hour Body and trying to get back into running, but when that didn’t work, I finally joined Pioneer Valley CrossFit in June. In December, I got serious about eating better and adopted a paleo diet. I started 2011 at 180 pounds and ended at 153, with 80% of the loss after June. More than that -- I am more fit than I have ever been in my life.
Lesson #3: Be willing to change tactics quickly if they aren’t working.
This year I hope that I apply these more consciously. What did you learn in 2011 that will make 2012 even better?
Comments
2012 Personal Goals
28-Dec-2011
I was inspired by Heidi Grant Halvorson in the Harvard Business Review blog today to work on my 2012 goals:
Another influence on goal setting for me is Covey’s Seven Habits. The last one, Sharpen the Saw, suggests we work to increase our Mental, Physical, Emotional/Social, and Spiritual/Renewal capacity.
To that end, I developed these personal goals for 2012:
Mental
Physical: work out 5 days/week, and
Social/Emotional
Spiritual/Renewal
This is similar to the SMART philosophy of goal making (good goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely), which I try to follow.Get specific. When you set yourself a goal, try to be as specific as possible. "Lose 5 pounds" is a better goal than "lose some weight," because it gives you a clear idea of what success looks like. Knowing exactly what you want to achieve keeps you motivated until you get there. Also, think about the specific actions that need to be taken to reach your goal. Just promising you'll "eat less" or "sleep more" is too vague — be clear and precise. "I'll be in bed by 10pm on weeknights" leaves no room for doubt about what you need to do, and whether or not you've actually done it.
Another influence on goal setting for me is Covey’s Seven Habits. The last one, Sharpen the Saw, suggests we work to increase our Mental, Physical, Emotional/Social, and Spiritual/Renewal capacity.
To that end, I developed these personal goals for 2012:
Mental
- Publish 75 blog posts
- Work 3 hours per week on personal coding projects
- Publish 3 apps
Physical: work out 5 days/week, and
- Be able to do 10 dead hang pull-ups
- Be able to do 10 ring dips
- Be able to bench press 155 pounds
- Rx 30 workouts at CrossFit
- Eat paleo food on 275 days
Social/Emotional
- Do 100 hours of community service
- Eat meals with 25 different groups of people
Spiritual/Renewal
- On last weekend of each month, spend at least two hours alone somewhere outside and unpopulated. Look over goals and plan the next month.
Planning out a Blog
01-Dec-2011
As I mentioned last week, I am participating in National Personal Project Month (NaPerProMo) along with Plan B Nation and others.
My plan is to write every day, but publish on a once or twice a week schedule. This will help me build up a backlog of posts, so I have something to post even if I don’t have time to write. I also post about once per week on my work blog at Atalasoft, and I’ll probably use those posts as jumping off points.
To help me get started, I spent the last two weeks planning out what I want this blog to be about. In the past, I have had a hard time coming up with anything to write about. I had focused on programming (specifically iPhone programming), but I do most of my writing about that in StackOverflow answers, and my posts were just elaborations on common questions.
I came up with this plan:
The topics that I ended up with are:
Some categories didn’t work out. For example, I am a CrossFitter, and recently joined my gym’s Paleo club. I feel like I have interesting things to say about that, but they are neither my expertise, nor are they similar to other topics I will blog about. I will still be able to fit it in somewhat, because one of my programming projects is related to this.
I recently switched over to Trello for managing personal information, here’s what my plan looks like in it:
The first column is the queue of upcoming posts, and the next five are the five categories I identified with a list of topics. I color-coded each category, so that the queue would show that I was mixing between the categories. The final column is a list of finished posts.
I am obscuring the topics because I don’t want to commit to these just yet, and since I generated more than 50 ideas, I know that some of them will never be done. I saved a full snapshot to possibly discuss later.
I also decided to turn on comments as an experiment. I’ve been using Disqus elsewhere on this site, and the latest RapidWeaver supports it for blogs, so I turned it on for now.
My plan is to write every day, but publish on a once or twice a week schedule. This will help me build up a backlog of posts, so I have something to post even if I don’t have time to write. I also post about once per week on my work blog at Atalasoft, and I’ll probably use those posts as jumping off points.
To help me get started, I spent the last two weeks planning out what I want this blog to be about. In the past, I have had a hard time coming up with anything to write about. I had focused on programming (specifically iPhone programming), but I do most of my writing about that in StackOverflow answers, and my posts were just elaborations on common questions.
I came up with this plan:
- Pick five categories that I can write about.
- Brainstorm 10-20 topics in each category. If I can’t think of that many, throw out or alter the category.
- For categories that don’t pan out, try to find a spin on the topics I generated for it, so that they fit in one of the better categories.
- Pick a week’s worth of topics and put them in a queue.
- Each day write the next one, and put another in the bottom of the queue.
The topics that I ended up with are:
- Software Business: This is obvious, since this is what I spend the bulk of every day thinking about
- Programming: I have been programming for a long time, I have some personal projects that I want to open-source, and it also naturally fits into what I know and think about. I intend to get away from the more technical posts that I typically write, and focus on high-level ideas and follow my projects’ progress.
- Programmer’s Job Market: Ever since I became a member of my local Regional Employment Board, I’ve been thinking more about the labor market and how it’s changing for programmers.
- Reviews (books, apps, etc): I read a lot about marketing, business, and other non-fiction topics. I don’t read nearly enough for book reviews to be a category, so I expanded it to apps and other things that I use.
- Riffs: Tweets, Hacker News, other blogs, my own past blogs -- these are all fertile ground for topic ideas. It gives me an opportunity to link to others, and make this blog part of a larger conversation.
Some categories didn’t work out. For example, I am a CrossFitter, and recently joined my gym’s Paleo club. I feel like I have interesting things to say about that, but they are neither my expertise, nor are they similar to other topics I will blog about. I will still be able to fit it in somewhat, because one of my programming projects is related to this.
I recently switched over to Trello for managing personal information, here’s what my plan looks like in it:
The first column is the queue of upcoming posts, and the next five are the five categories I identified with a list of topics. I color-coded each category, so that the queue would show that I was mixing between the categories. The final column is a list of finished posts.
I am obscuring the topics because I don’t want to commit to these just yet, and since I generated more than 50 ideas, I know that some of them will never be done. I saved a full snapshot to possibly discuss later.
I also decided to turn on comments as an experiment. I’ve been using Disqus elsewhere on this site, and the latest RapidWeaver supports it for blogs, so I turned it on for now.
Business of Software Pecha Kucha
06-Sep-2008
Had a lot of fun with my Business of Software Pecha Kucha. My topic was Engineering the Evaluation Funnel, or how companies that have downloaded evaluations can still track usage with being creepy and sending back information from the application.
I'm going to be recording a version of my presentation and posting it soon.
I'm going to be recording a version of my presentation and posting it soon.
Django, WebFaction, RapidWeaver and Christmas
25-Dec-2006
Atalasoft closes for the week between Christmas and New Year's, so I have time to catch up on some things I've been wanting to do -- namely move this site to WebFaction. I chose WebFaction once I decided that I wanted to learn Django (after reading this great comparison of Django and Rails). Following along the forums, there were more than a few good mentions of WebFaction as a good Django host.
A couple of weeks into Django and a couple of days into WebFaction, so far, I'm pretty happy. It's Christmas today, so even though I had some questions for WebFaction, I really didn't expect them to get back to me -- so I was pretty happy that they do -- I guess I should expect 365 24x7 from an ISP, but I hadn't been getting it before.
In addition to new hosting and a new webapp framework -- I've also settled on RapidWeaver for content management. I moved to Mac for home a couple of years ago, and I still hadn't found a good desktop CMS that was as good as CityDesk on the PC. RapidWeaver has beautiful themes built in, and a lot of the features that I've gotten used to. The built-in blog is nice (would be nicer with an import from RSS), but it didn't take too long to transfer everything over.
All of this work is to get this site going again.
A couple of weeks into Django and a couple of days into WebFaction, so far, I'm pretty happy. It's Christmas today, so even though I had some questions for WebFaction, I really didn't expect them to get back to me -- so I was pretty happy that they do -- I guess I should expect 365 24x7 from an ISP, but I hadn't been getting it before.
In addition to new hosting and a new webapp framework -- I've also settled on RapidWeaver for content management. I moved to Mac for home a couple of years ago, and I still hadn't found a good desktop CMS that was as good as CityDesk on the PC. RapidWeaver has beautiful themes built in, and a lot of the features that I've gotten used to. The built-in blog is nice (would be nicer with an import from RSS), but it didn't take too long to transfer everything over.
All of this work is to get this site going again.