My Mid-Year’s Resolutions for 2008
Posted June 24th, 2008 by Chris Gurney
To borrow a phrase from a friend: Holy macaroni!
It’s already halfway through the year! What the heck happened!?
At this point I’d love to refer you back to a blog post from January where I outlined my resolutions for 2008… but Past Chris didn’t deliver.
So, to celebrate the end of the hump month (if you will) I thought I would re-establish my own goals for the year, and make sure I’m on track with them… or at least make sure I’m somewhere near the rails. Sharing them with you only increases my odds of actually doing these things, or at the very least raises my odds of embarrassment.
It all starts with my desire to:
Explore, and Experience More of Toronto
It’s been just over a year since I moved into the big city. For those who don’t know me know me, I grew up in the country, and lived in smaller towns and sheds and places. So, in contrast to all that, I’ve been having quite a blast, and am rediscovering things I only vaguely remember as a kid.
For one thing, I’ve been making it a point to visit as many restaurants as gastronomically possible, mainly of the brunch variety. My buddy W- has been instrumental in helping to make this happen. Many an egg benedict — or a vegetarian counterpart — has already been harmed in the making of this adventure.
I’ve also been attempting to check out more events and am looking to partake in other experiences outside my usual “zone of comfort”. (The topic of skydiving came up recently… Hmm!)
I’m also learning that there’s also a flourishing tech community in Toronto, and am taking advantage of that as much as possible. My hope is to also get involved in one or more of these groups, most likely with ProductCampToronto.
I’m hoping that along the way I will:
Forge New Relationships
I’ve already met a bunch of cool new people since last June, and always enjoy meeting more of Toronto’s denizens.
I’ve also relatively recently started to really take advantage of several social network interweb things, including twitter, flickr, last.fm, and others. Now the trick is figuring out the best way to make them fit my daily lifestyle (more on that in a later post).
I also hope to:
Become a “Known Quantity”
…with respect to something. This basically means that I’m hoping that, by sharing useful information, getting involved, people will start to notice or follow me (in the twitter sense of the word, or otherwise) as an “expert” on some topic. The question is, what? =)
To do this I’ll continue to try to:
Write More Stuff
…mainly with respect to my blog. I actually did pretty well in May, but things slid a bit, as work got busy.
My thinking is to commit myself to something like two small posts every week, and perhaps do a larger post at least once a month.
You may have noticed that I changed my site’s tagline up above, not too long ago, to say something about software productization. Be warned that I’m sure it will continue to change until I figure out what it is I’m choosing to focus on… and, yes, it may very well involve chickens.
Along these lines I hope to improve my writing skills, which implies that I should:
Read More Stuff
Unfortunately subscribing to even more blogs doesn’t count. (I’m pretty sure 194 subscriptions is more than enough for one person.)
Last year, and continuing into this one, I’ve been pretty good about reading words on actual paper. In fact, I seem to be averaging about a book a month, which I’m more than happy with.
After spending some time in the non-fiction aisles, I’m happy to be journeying back into novel territory, which I haven’t done in years. (I look forward to Hitchhiking around the Galaxy soon.)
And, lastly, to execute on all of this I need to:
Continue to be a GTD Ninja
…and make David Allen proud. For me, I think this means doing proper Weekly Reviews. Right now I’m pretty content if my email inboxes are empty at least once a week. However, a full-on, once-a-week review to make sure I’m prepped for the coming week, with all my Action Lists in order, is something I’d like to get into the habit of doing.
So anyway, I think that about summarizes my more important resolutions for this year.
Well, see you in 2009! Umm, I mean… see you next post!
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