Professional Goals
These are some of the professional goals I'm pursuing in 2024.
1. Overcome procrastination π
I'm bad about putting things off until the last minute and would like to change this behavior.
Action Steps:
- Effectively plan ahead with a todo-list.
- Set aside specific times to work on tasks and timebox them + signal to my team over Slack that I'm unavailable.
- Do a better job of identifying and prioritizing tasks that need the most attention.
Timeline:
I hope to start working on this immediately, but it's not a finite goal and so will be continuous.
2. Help mentors and mentees connect π€
I'd like to create a piece of ritual content that allows for mentors and mentees to connect with one another.
Action Steps:
- Draft the post and run it by the team.
- Contact various folks: those who have requested this program in the past & those who I think might want to put themselves out there as mentors.
- Continuously share and promote this new post on a regular cadence.
Timeline:
I hope to get this one rolling before the month is up!
3. Improve AI and listicle moderation π€π
This year, I'd like for us to make progress with our abilities and process for moderating AI and listicles posts β 2 types of posts that quite a few community members have let us know they wish they could filter out from their feeds.
Action Steps:
- Confer with various parties to gather ideas that we could use to improve our methods.
- Select a number of these ideas to take to the next stage and implement various solutions.
- Come up with solid ways of measuring the success of these solutions and community sentiment to see if we've made progress.
Timeline:
This is something I plan to work on all year.
Personal Aspirations
For this section, I plan to keep it a little looser... here's my list:
- Participate in Veganuary (though as noted here, I've technically already lost π )
- Completing this 22 day ab workout (and continuing to work on my core afterwards)
- Getting to where I can do 3 sets of 10 pullups
- Write, record, and produce a full-length original song
- Play a concert with my band
- Read a book at least 2 hours/week (online articles don't count)
- Travel out west in the USA to experience some rugged terrain
- Find a good way to give back to my community
- Hopefully, hopefully finish building my house π€
Top comments (29)
I'm super curious in the mentors/mentees connection. Sounds super interesting! π€©
And hopefully you finish building your house!!! π
I'm rooting for you, Michael! ππΌ
Thank you so much, Ayu! I appreciate your kindness. π
Thanks for the well-wishes on the house. I've been trying to build since COVID and this is the year it's gonna happen. ππ€ππ€π
On the note of connecting mentors, it's official, I've started the series!
Mentor Matching Monthly π€
Michael Tharrington for The DEV Team γ» Jan 11
Please check it out and drop a link to Virtual Coffee if you think it fits for what y'all are doing! Shoot, I might link to y'all myself, haha. π
I'm also curious about that! π
I like your goals. Since I always set goals and... This year I'm not setting none and I'll see what happens over time if something was accomplished
Ooo, are you saying that you'll check in with me to see how I get on with my goals? Cause I would totally welcome that, Stefan. I could use an accountability buddy. π
No problem. Try this method that I'm trying The Secret to Achieving Your Cloud Learning Goals in 2024. It doesn't have to be for tech.
I recently created myself a bookmarks folder called DEV Community Recommendations... I'mma pop this in there and check it out later on. I could definitely use some good advice for getting my to-dos to done, haha. Appreciate it!
Good luck with that one...lol. I'm struggling with that myself. Just keep the goals in mind a work on them in stages. Before you know it, you will be well on your way.
@michaeltharrington
Nice goals!
Regarding the first point, I'm currently writing an article about my personal experience using to-do lists. It is not considered a technical article, so I was wondering, is it suitable to share it here on dev.to?
Hey Mark! Appreciate ya checking out my goals.
I think this would totally fit well enough!
To me, a post like this is tech-adjacent enough (+ it sounds super interesting) and I think it would fit particularly well under #productivity and arguably #career too. I know I've seen other folks share similar posts about things like how they make the most their days, techniques for focusing, and such. Your post sounds like it would fall right in line with these!
Honestly, it sounds like you're already being super aware about how you approach this so it might be unnecessary for me to say, but the one thing I'd recommend against would be using the more technical tags. So long as you tag appropriately, I don't think anyone will fault you for sharing a post with this sort of guidance... and in fact, I think folks will be really open to it!
Thanks very much for being thoughtful and asking this question. I hope you share this one. I'll be looking out for it!
Thank you Michael for providing a thorough answer to my question! I will definitely let you know when I post it.
Hey Michael,
I just posted my article, hope you will learn something new and find the article fun to read!
Oh rock on, Mark! I'll check it out in just a few. π
The procrastination arg.. this is a big ennemy! To-do are a cool method to beat that. Each week, I've got my TodoWeek with simple a more complex tasks. Like read, sleep more, publish new post, or just... send an email. π
Very cool list! π€πΌ
Nice, it sounds like you have a pretty good way of handling things! On the to-dos note, I do have a few things I currently use...
For one, at DEV we have a daily standup bot & a weekly bot set up in Slack which keep me on task and make me publicly accountable. I actually really like these!
I also use a little note-pad for jotting down things on the fly. I love my real-world notes... feels good to pick up a pen and scratch a line through things on my list haha.
I think I just need to hone my approach a bit. I could get a little better about planning my time in advance and I'd like to use my notes to do that to some extent. I wanna have moments of free-form work and other moments where I set aside time (ahead of time) to work on certain projects, pieces of content, or other tasks.
Currently, I think I just get a bit too scattered and bounce around from thing to thing as I naturally do. I think I could be more focused and efficient.
I use Notion for manage my projects, docs, and todos with kanban system. I also like to write my tasks on post-its from time to time!
2. Help mentors and mentees connect π€it would be wonderful to have some page where mentors can stand out about them and mentees to ask for mentorship/helpTotally agree with you, Arthur!
Since you sound interested, here's the first iteration of this. I just shared an article and plan to make it a monthly series!
Mentor Matching Monthly π€
Michael Tharrington for The DEV Team γ» Jan 11
I'm considering doing more with the #mentorship tag in the future too... stay tuned!
Hey, Michael, all great goals! I am skilled at giving songwriting feedback, if that's something that could help you on your way with the goal of recording an original song...
Wow, I would love to have your help and feedback! Thank you so so much, Monty. I'll be hitting you up about this!
I look forward to it!
As always, you push the ideas of the community to bring solutions to make Dev better. Truly inspiring goals this year Michael. Canβt wait to chat about the progress throughout the year. Will be putting my goals in soon. Putting a reminder on my phone now to type it up tomorrow or I will forget.
Thanks so much, Jeff! Really appreciate your kindness.
Had a busy week last week and just popped back into this post to soak up the positivity. Your message here put a smile on my face. π
Heyo! Good luck on the house, workout, song, band, books, travel plans, community plans, and everything else! I am super interested in the mentoring program, for like building a basic HTML, CSS, JS website, and things like that. Hopefully I can join and weβll go from there
I think I see where this is going :)
Hahaha! So true though. π
Great goals, overcome procrastination, record a song, playing in a concert and read more than 2 hours per week are also in my list for 2024
Oh rock on! That's cool that we have so many overlapping goals, Bruno. I'm gonna have to put another Music Monday out there where I encourage everybody to share their own music. I'd love to hear what you're working on!