2009 Review and Aims Part II

On the first of June I published a summary of my aims for the rest of the year. The plan was that these were 6 month goals, but that I had a cheeky extra month to start working towards them, test them out and see how realistic they were. So now that I've had my extra month it's time to review these goals, and adjust them to make sure they are both realistic and challenging.

  1. Get Fit
    • jog steadily for 30 minutes

    I haven't been for a jog in several weeks. Rugby takes up a couple of hours twice a week, and I haven't yet found the motivation to go for a jog on top of this. I am getting fitter and healthier, I just need to go for a jog and see how I'm doing with my goal.

  2. Conquer Javascript
    • Write my own application from scratch
    • Become familiar with at least one Javascript library

    So far I've had very little free time to dedicate to this cause, however work has provided me with some opportunity to get familiar with YUI. I feel like I've had quite a breakthrough, and goal no. 2 is certainly going well. Therefore I've decided to add a third JavaScript-related goal - To learn & write an application in Objective J.

  3. Make this blog successful
    • Publish at least one post per week
    • Publish a full Symfony tutorial
    • Complete at least one of my personal projects
    • Increase visitor average to 50 a day
    • Increase comment average to 10 per post

    My first month of attempting these goals really hasn't gone so well, mainly because the fitness thing is taking up so much of my free time. On the other hand, I have been slowly increasing my comment and visitor averages so I think I'm all set to reach my targets. I have re-written my blog css to make it easier to write posts without having to think about styling.

All-in-all I'm off to a slow but steady start - I've still got plenty of time to achieve these goals. Rebalancing my life in a more healthy fashion (read: getting off my arse and doing some sport) is going to take some getting used to, but should lead to my having more energy and motivation. I think the most important thing to work on is setting aside blog time & publishing something each week because without doing that nothing else will ever get done.