2004 #4

Time to goal-track.

- Workday caffeine cut-back still on track, as are the lunches and vending machine policies. No slips this time.

- No extra games of fake poker. Stack looking healthy, incidentally. Shame it's not real.

- Watching loads of films. Haven't come close to missing this one since the start. Reliving the Matrix trilogy this week. A little sad that i'm past the best film of the three.

- My camera has taken a few shots, but they've only been inside my home. For some reason I don't seem to be able to elevate this to importance. I'll clear the card and go drop it in my laptop bag before I publish this. Hopefully that'll convince me.

- Bought two new work shirts. Neither one is blue. Goal met and complete! Nice and easy and looking a little smarter today.

- Weekly list reviews continue.

- Song-writing. With 10 days left in the month I have my song, and a rough recording of it, so technically this goal is met. I'm not done with it yet though.

- Still working towards the work goals. Back in a slump as far as my job is concerned - feeling lack of direction for the 9 millionth time. Nonetheless, this is reasonably on track. Will review these individually next week.

- Discussing positions within my company that I might be interested in hasn't happened. Due to my slump, i'm at a loss as to which positions I might be interested in. No progress for no good reason yet on this one.

- Exercise schedule - managed the two swims this week, but failed to cycle. Procrastinated on Saturday and it was too wet on Sunday. Forgot that it's too dark in the evening to make up for this in the week. This will ease as it gets lighter. Still aiming for the trio this week.

- Skills transfer/Skills gap - no new research. Plenty of time left and already some conclusions back in week 2.

- Work away from a computer screen. Not coming up with any ideas beyond something in music, and most of that even requires a computer screen at this point in time. Keep thinkin'.

- Management? About the same opinion as last week.

- Where to live - Birmingham instead now. See yesterdays post. Big progress made on finding suitable areas/lets. Too early to pounce right now, but poised to do this in early to mid February.

- Don't lose touch - had to turn down a visit to London to see Uni friends next weekend as already agreed to do something locally. No shortage of contact at the moment. Spending a bit more time emailing people too, which is good.

I must say, a few weeks into it, I really don't like how i've gone about doing this. The resolution style goals are fine and easy to measure. The career and life oriented ones aren't, and all i've really done is set myself some vague research topics with long deadlines in the hope of stumbling upon some kind of true calling. I'm going to rethink this before next week and at least reorganise it a bit.

I guess SMART goals would have helped me here, or at least MT goals. Manager Tools tells me that only measurable and time-bound really matter. You could argue my goals aren't specific, but that's really only because they're not measurable, they're just time-bound. Manager Tools, incidentally, is a great Podcast that has helped me improve at work, despite my wavering interest in management.