rambling goal review [12/11/2006 03:43:25]

Time for some brutal self reflection here.

Nearly four months since I set out my 12 goals. One third of a year. The good news is that I've stuck with it. The bad news is I'm nowhere close to one third of the way done. Let me run down the list here:

• Raise $8000 for Leukemia / Lymphoma Society: halfway there. I need to start putting money away, but also find out how early I can sign up for the ride next year, and hit up all those people that promised to donate last time but didn't.
• Bring my weight under 200 pounds: despite all the biking, I haven't dropped an ounce. I need to seriously ramp up my daily exercise, and stay away from sugar.
• Read all the books on my stack: My original estimate was 90 books, but I think that was low. I have bought a couple since I started, but not many. The exact count today is 82. I need to make sure I don't buy any more books, and just keep trudging through or skimming whenever I hit a slow chapter.
• Release my web framework: well, I have jettisoned several libraries, which has shrunk the workload considerably. Other than that, progress has been slow.
• Raise liquid net worth to $10k: Instead, I've actually gone into debt, starting with buying a road bike.
• Raise my salary to $5k/month: no progress.
• Spec and implement tangentstorm: almost no progress. I still have the original prototype code, and I've begun digging into wxOGL so that I can move forward, but that's it.
• 100,000 word rough draft of novel: some progress. I haven't written a line of fiction, but I have a title, a couple characters, the conflict and basic plot, and a couple pages of notes. I'm actually pretty excited about this one, and plan to spend a couple hours working up an outline this week.
• Visit 25 groups in Atlanta: 5 down, 20 to go, including one this week (a Christmas party for a friend's company). I actually have met a few new people, so this is pretty cool.
• Six dates: I haven't even tried. I've actually talked to quite a few women that I kind of like, but... I just don't have the time and energy at the moment. I thought I was setting the bar low at 6 here. Maybe I should start talking online? :/
• Leart to play Mozart's Rondo Alla Turca: Finally, some progress! I've got my the turcanator to the point that it can actually play the selection, and even let me (try to) play along with it. R.A.T. is made up of seven short, repeating segments, and I'm now able to play the main segment, though rather slowly. I think I can probably commit the whole piece to memory in about 40 or 50 hours of practice, so this is looking very doable.
• Implement a profitable trading system: no progress. I've had the system since day one, and I have a start on the software. The prototype is still needs another two or three weeks of work, and then I need to let it run.

The real question is: what have I been doing for four months? Well, I've been working on other things. There are two categories: company stuff and sharpening the saw.

The company stuff is the bulk of it. I sit down to answer email. People ask me for stuff. I wind up doing a lot of grunt work, and my brain keeps coming up with projects to automate things.

The major company project has been the marketing effort, in the form of the javascript course. The game is more or less done, but the tutorial is still just an outline. The rationale for this project is to support my salary target by bringing in sales. Typing this up tonight made me wonder if maybe I could get the same effect with a tutorial about the web framework, packaging it as an advanced course in web development, covering RDF, REST, AJAX, and my stripped-down framework/application: strongbox, platonic, and amoeba. Even, yes, OpenID. The marketing concept would stay the same, and I have just as many notes and outlines for those things as I do the javascript stuff, and I have to write documentation tutorial for the framework anyway. And (most of all) one of the main original points for the framework was to drive sales. The world doesn't want another framework, but it might just want a peek under the hood once I can show off amoeba.

I just wish I would have thought this through before I spent all that time writing a game. The game tutorial is a great idea, and I hate leaving any project half finished, but I guess I'd rather the javascript project were half finished and people were out there using amoeba than the other way around.

There have been other work-related projects though. The lifetime hosting drive. Training Liz. Acquiring DCD hosting. Mostly I'm contstantly wanting to automate the low level grunt work, and empower my customers to do more of those tasks themselves. I thought having someone helping would lessen my workload - and it has - but it requires investing time and energy up front into training, and setting up a ticket system (which I'm still not happy with) and so on.

The other major interference generator has been sharpening the saw. That's a 7 Habits term. In fact, it's the seventh habit: basically, finding ways to be more effective. Self management is very hard, especially when there seems to be a never-ending stream of new projects coming from work. I really think that's my core problem though: if I clarified and committed to my work goals the way I've commited to the 12 personal goals, then I think I wouldn't have to struggle so hard to cope with things. It's so much easier to say no to new ideas when you already have a list of things you're saying yes to.

And of course, there have been a few small projects that I took on more or less at random. Every example I can think of, though, was rationalized as an investment. I never would have bought another hosting company if I had a company strategy - unless the strategy required it.

I'm rambling again here. To sum up:

• Progress on my goals have been slow.
• The main obstacle seems to be interfering company goals.
• Therefore, I need to clarify and manage company goals as well as personal goals.