I'm currently figuring out the goals I want to work on this year. I'm going to try and focus on a few specific areas instead of throwing out a bunch of goals and seeing what sticks.
Here are the areas I'm looking at so far:
- Creation
- I like to make things. In 2020 I reduced the amount of goals that involved making software, but I think that was a mistake. Even though I've been doing it for a long time I still enjoy creating games, tools, libraries, or little code snippets. I also found my 30 days of blogging experiment really helpful, so I want to write more this year.
- Contribution
- Last year I submitted a couple of minor fixes to other projects - mostly typo fixes - but I'd like to do more. I'd also like to spend more time and energy helping others.
- Finishing things
- I am really bad at this. I want to get better.
- Deliberately practicing
- This is something I wrote about last year and I really want to use it more often. I've been doing the same job for over a decade now and I feel like I've let my skills stagnate.
- Improving my processes
- This is somewhat related to deliberate practice, but is more about refining my existing approach to things. I recently read "95%-ile isn't that good" and it gave me a couple of ideas about how to improve the things I do.
Looking over this list shows that there are two main things I want to concentrate this year: making more things (either for myself or other people), and getting better at how I make those things.