2009 New Year’s Resolutions
If you’re a regular reader of my blog you know that I’m a New Year’s Resolutions kind of guy. Note, writing that just felt good; I know in reality that regular readers of my blog do not exist.
As is typically my pitch, I will encourage all of you to ponder what the new year holds and devise a list that will make you better / stronger / faster. I create a list of resolutions and group them into the following prioritized categories: Wife, Kids, Professional, Fitness, Personal and Guitar. Although I love my job, I also subscribe to the “on your death bed you won’t be wishing you spent one more day in the office theory.” Hence note that top billing goes to wife and kids.
I won’t bore you with my entire list. Rather, I will give you some insights into my Professional resolutions. However, as a long time married man I will briefly digress and encourage all of you that share a similar married-fate to have wife-related resolutions. Wives need consistent loving, caring, feeding, and attention – nuff said. Now back to a subset of my professional resolutions:
- More Efficient Reading Via Technology – my guitar playing resolutions (started 2 years ago) has sapped much spare time. So I’ve decided to amp up my reading by subscribing to Audio-Tech book summaries. In CD or MP3 format these will be easy to digest during commute time / travel time. Each abridged summary is only 40 minutes. I’ll digest 24 books in 2009 in this fashion. I love pod casts, and the web, and there is good stuff out there. But paying for good content continues to be the most efficient path to quality content. I’ll write a post later in the year to tell you what I think about Audio-Tech book summaries.
- Push The IT Profession – IT careers have had a terrible rap since 2001, and enrollment in engineering IT curriculums at major Universities has never recovered. I have 3 kids – the oldest are 13 and 14. Although they are crazy computer literate, they have no real concept of programming. My resolution is to change that by teaching them basic programming. And since I don’t believe in re-inventing the wheel either, I will let you in on a little pearl of kid-programming education I recently discovered. Chris Pine’s Learn To Program tutorial (https://pine.fm/LearnToProgram/). It’s quite cool – teaches using the Ruby programming language, is super easy to install, lessons are short-ish and well organized, and are perfect for kids that have no experience programming. My kids like doing the sessions and think it’s fun. Full disclosure, I’m an engineer, my wife is an engineer, we stress academics at home especially the sciences, so we’re essentially odd to the core. I’ve got a Chipotle burrito for anyone that can beat me to the punch by getting a younger kid through the exercises!
- Network Via Old-School Techniques Supported By New-School Techniques – as a professional I don’t have to tell you how important it is to get out there and meet people, lots of people. So this year I will resolve to make the effort to stay in touch with people and meet new people. And as a follow up, I will continue to be involved in new-school social networking via Linked In, and soon facebook.
Let’s here some of your publicly-discloseable resolutions. I welcome your comments.
Mike Brannan
