Goals

As we come to the end of 2011, its time for the annual review of goals and another declaration of next years goals. So let’s wind them down and see how we did.

• Goal #1: Continue to work less. – SUCCESS! I consider this one more about family time than anything else. Family time has a high value to me and to be honest, I get pretty cranky when work interferes with that time. From 5-8 at night, I’m pretty much off limits unless its something involving my family. So while I’ve put in more hours on the side business this year at night and on weekends, the little boss gets my attention while he is awake. So I consider this one a success!
• Goal #2: Drink more water – FAIL. I’d like to blame this purely on my little on and the lack of sleep that I get, but in reality, he’s fallen into a nice pattern of sleep and this is really due to the side business keeping me up at night.
• Goal #3: Ship Code – FAIL. Sure I’ve written a lot of code this year and I have gotten several new web sites out the door. But that wasn’t the goal. The goal was to write and ship on of my iPhone app ideas. I’ve made a lot of progress on it, but haven’t gotten it out the door.
• Goal #4: Write a new blog article every week – SUCCESS! OK, maybe I should take partial credit on this one. The frequency hasn’t been exactly 1 post per week. But my average is there! As of this article, I have posted 56 articles in 2011. I’d like to have more posts but we’re making progress.
• Goal #5: Run in 3 5k races – SUCCESS. I destroyed this one accomplishing this goal by middle of the year. I want to have a fitness goal for 2012 again and it will probably be along these same lines, but I want to stretch it out and make it last the whole year long.

3 out of 5. 60%. This is not acceptable. Making progress from the 50% I hit in 2010, but we still have a long ways to go.

So far, I’m off to a good start in completing one of my goals for 2011. Its not a huge stretch goal for me, but it keeps me in a certain shape in order to complete goal #5, run 3 5K races in a year.

Race #1 is in the bag. Considering it was run on 2/12 in Iowa, you would expect absolutely freezing temps. To be honest, I was overdressed seeing as it was in the mid 30s at the start of the race. And I was only wearing a tshirt, long sleeve T and then a sweatshirt. I should have dumped the sweatshirt but I was solo on this one and didn’t have a good person to hand it off to on the route.

I only hit 50% on my 2010 goals and I’m looking to improve on that in 2011. So here we go, let’s do this.

• I’m a new Dad so I want to make sure that I keep my #1 goal from last year. I want to be around for Nolan so the main goal for me is to continue to work less. I know its a repeat goal, but I think its pretty important to keep the work / life balance in check. Goal #1: Continue to work less.

Well, its 2011 so that means its time to review my goals for 2010 and set some new ones. This post will be focused solely on reviewing 2010.

• Goal #1: work less – SUCCESS! I think that 2010 proved that I could be more productive at the office without putting in a lot of nights and weekends. My boss recently gave me the permission to say No! which has been huge for my productivity. I’m hoping that this current work environment continues through 2011. The future is exciting!
• Goal #2: 2 in 12. – FAIL! This was my running goal and while I did run more this year, I didn’t hit my goal. The best that I did when I was running quite a bit this summer was 1.5 in 9. 1 in 6 happened a few times but I couldn’t make it to 2 miles in 12. I was more commonly a 8 miler man honestly and it was only when I really really REALLY pushed myself did I hit those numbers. And to be honest, it was stupid when I did push myself like that. I always paid the price and couldn’t run for crap the next couple of times out. Nolan coming along kind of killed my endurance as I didn’t exercise nearly enough. But I’m turning that around.
• Goal #3: the 5 hour work week.– FAIL! I didn’t put in 5 hours a week, but I did do quite a bit better on the side business. More hours before Nolan but he’s falling into a nice pattern which is making it easier to dedicate that one hour back again.
• Goal #4: Inbox Zero! – FAIL yeah, not even close on this one.
• Goal #5: read one book a month. – SUCCESS! While it doesn’t seem like it, I read quite a bit this year. Maybe not every book all the way through, but a good majority of just about every baby resource I could get my hands on. A lot of them were fairly short and not near enough fiction books. But still, I call this one a success.
• Goal #6: Stop checking email first thing in the morning. – SUCCESS! I think it goes with #1 but I have definitely stopped checking things first thing in the morning. Maybe not as much now that Nolan is around and I need to pass the time while he sits up and falls asleep (typically) after his morning bottle.

Conclusion

It wasn’t a steller year, but still fairly successful as far as my goals went. While I fell short in quite a few areas, I did better than I expected while failing. I’ll live with 50% and look to improve this year. Onto 2011!

I’ve been really bad about keeping up with various blogs lately. I mean really bad! I’m months behind on several of my favorite blogs. So it should come as no surprise that I’m just now stumbling upon this post which I wanted to chime in on.

I’m not a stranger to stating public goals to here are my two things:

1. What do you want to get better at?

I could go on about a good dozen or so things that I am pretty horrible at. But if I had to narrow down just one thing, I would pin it on its this. I need to be better at going to bed. I know, it sounds really simple doesn’t it. You’re tired, go to bed. But I’m not that guy. Typically my wife will go to bed at 9:30/10 and I’m up still until 12, 1 and this week even 2 a few times. Sometimes it is work related (the 2AMs this week), but often times it is not. Sure dabbling with a side business can do that to you, but its not my main focus. And with a wee one due any day now, I need to get a LOT better at getting my sleep in.