My Professional Retrospectives

In the spirit of the New Year, I’ve decided to try something new and I’m going to publish professional retrospectives at the end of each month.  Each retrospective will provide a summary of what I’ve been up to over the past 30-or-so days along with my plans for the up-coming month.  These entries will eventually follow a set format but, for now, I’m just going to wing it.  Initially, there will be no rules in place and these posts should be considered experimental at best. 

Though I hope everyone will benefit from the upcoming entries, the retrospectives will primarily be written for selfish reasons.

What’s to come?

With so much going on in our industry, I find it really hard to keep up with all of my interests.  Though I don’t think I’m the only one in this boat, I still believe you would laugh if you were aware of how randomly my thoughts bounce around throughout the day.  This would be most evident if you were to see a full list of half-written, unpublished blog entries I’ve compiled over the years or if you had a look at one of my many task lists.  So, first and foremost, the retrospectives are intended to help me stay on track.

Speaking of half-written, unpublished blog entries, I hope the retrospectives will give me an opportunity to post little bits before (or in lieu of) more polished, full-fledged articles.  This, of course, assumes that something is better than nothing.  I also figure if there’s enough interest in something noted in a retrospective, it will probably motivate me enough to get the “real” article out the door. 

And since the primary object is to keep me on track, I’ll be posting some goals.  For example, if I’m really interested in learning more about Technology X, I may commit to publishing a “Getting Started” post in the following month. Or I may announce my intension to get involve in OSS project Y or do a talk about Z for user group ABC.  Sky’s the limit…

What just happened?

Additionally, these posts will act as reminders for where I’ve been and what I’ve done.  This may sounds funny, but so many details are easily forgotten. (By now you must think I’m the biggest scattered brain.) If you are required to submit time sheets on a weekly basis, I bet you know what I mean.  Unless you are disciplined enough to keep track of your hours as you perform the work, it’s often difficult to remember what you worked on last week — never mind yesterday.  So, I plan to keep ongoing notes and publish the collection as we enter a new month.  I thinking this is called web logging or something…

On a side note, my company performs bi-annual employee reviews.  If I capture what I’ve accomplished and what I wish to accomplish (a.k.a. goal setting) each month, completing my self-evaluation every 6 months should be a breeze.

Finally, I genuinely enjoy reading about what folks are interested in and what they’re really up to.  90% of the blog posts I read don’t get into the “real life” type stuff.  I’m not suggesting that personal information is shared (we had boy # 2 six weeks ago, by the way), but I would like to have more context around some of the stuff I read.  For example, I want to know if the blogger is writing about what they practice on a day-to-day basis in the office, is this something they do at night and on weekends or are they just talking out of their asses?  Hopefully, the retrospectives give you all better context about where I’m “coming from.”

Anyway, that’s the plan.  The first edition will come tonight (how sad) or tomorrow.  Happy New Year.