Resolutions and Goals
I have decided to completely give up on New Year's Resolutions.
What? That is stupid. It is the end of March; why are you talking about New Year's Resolutions?
Because this is just something that I have been thinking about lately. I mean, if I am going to mark time arbitrarily, why choose New Year's Day? It makes much more sense to me to resolve to do something on my birthday, since that signifies me finishing up another year on this planet.
Wait a minute. Wasn't your birthday back at the end of January? It is still the end of March, you know.
OK, when I say thinking about lately, I really mean "thinking about for the last four months or so". Just work with me here, I am trying to make a point. You see, this all has to do with my impending thirtieth birthday next year. I started evaluating my life and trying to figure out if I was where I needed or wanted to be by thirty.
Yeah, but, thirty is not that old.
Well, you are right, it is not. But, I decided to get an actual physical for the first time in years back in August and the doctor chastised me for things that I knew were problems, but I had avoided dealing with because, hey, I was young, right? Things like elevated cholesterol, elevated blood pressure, and being 45 pounds overweight. I decided that I wanted to fix all of that by the time I was thirty so I chose my birthday as the time to meet this goal.
Slow down; did you say a goal? I thought we were talking about resolutions here.
Well, I really don't see a resolution as what I need here. A goal is defined as "the result or achievement toward which effort is directed". So, I have set a goal of being "doctor-approved" healthy by my thirtieth birthday. If you look at the definition of a resolution, you see that it is defined as "a formal expression of opinion or intention". To me, a resolution is the means that moves you one step closer to achieving the end. A goal is something to focus on; it is the end result for which you are looking.
Can I have an example? I am not clear on the difference here.
Well, the first step was to come up with the goal of being doctor-approved healthy. Next, I asked myself, "What do I need to do to meet that goal?" Well, I need to look at why the doctor considers me unhealthy. That is easy; the doctor came right out and told me: cholesterol, blood pressure, and weight. Then I asked myself, "What can I do to correct any or all of these problems?" Once again, the doctor came right out and told me the solution again: change your diet and exercise. Now, I can come up with some actionable resolutions that will help me to meet my goal. One actionable resolution has been cutting red meat out of my diet. Another actionable resolution has been to start walking 30 minutes a night for three nights a week. I have done fairly well with the former, but the cold and damp weather lately has left me a little lacking towards the latter.
I think I see now. You are just applying the project-planning principles that you use as an engineer to other areas of your life.
That is right. I decided that I should embrace my engineer qualities and get them to work for me instead of against me. If creating viewing life as a series of projects and analyzing data helps keep me on track with my life goals, then that is what I should do.
Analyzing data? How does that fit in?
That will have to wait until next time.
Learning versus Doing
I like to learn. At any given time, I am generally juggling 3–4 books at once. Most of those 3–4 books are typically non-fiction of some form or another. A lot of those non-fiction books are computer science related, but not all of them. A quick glance at last year's reading list shows books on writing, management, a couple of biographies, networking and presenting, personal finance, and small business. This year's reading list is shaping up much the same. What these lists do not show are all of the books on my to-read pile. I have math books (mainly modern algebra and category theory), biology books (well, mostly things by Richard Dawkins, although The Origin of Species is on there as well), and several histories and biographies (mostly U.S. history and presidents). I like to learn a little bit about a large variety of topics.
My interests are not focused at all. While I am obsessed with computer science and engineering, I have never been able to focus. I flit from topic to topic; one day I am intensely studying the Cray-1, a super-computer from the late 70's, with every intention of writing an emulator for the architecture (yes, just for fun). The next day, I am just as likely to be reading about Database Systems
Case in point: I spent a great deal of time between Thanksgiving and Christmas of last year reading about Ruby on Rails. I had some ideas for a web application that I wanted to write — a project and task tracking application to replace a crufty spreadsheet that I wrote and maintain at work. So, I read a lot, worked on a couple of sample applications in Rails, and have not gotten back to actually working on my project. Well, that is not entirely true. While I have not been actively writing code for the applications, I have been giving it lots of thought and trying to work out what would be the best way to approach it. For all the thought I have put in to it, though, I am still not doing it. Granted, I am doing a lot of other things. I spend a fair amount of time reading, running a Dungeons and Dragons game, watching a bit of TV, just not working on the project that I thought was important to me.
When I finished The Creative Habit