New Year, New Goals

I usually won't give two fucks about the start of a new year, especially since every day can count as the start of a year but for some reason, this one has got me in my feelings. I keep thinking about what I want to achieve this year and where I'd like to be in my career by the end of 2021, among other things.

So, I decided to share with you my career goals for this year to help me be accountable and maybe you can learn a thing or two from this.

To begin, let me quickly share some things about myself:

My name is Sandrava Philips and I reside in Sandton, South Africa for now. I'm currently unemployed but I do some freelancing and work on personal projects to keep my skills sharp. I love building stuff up, especially from scratch and speaking with people from diverse backgrounds. My dream role is with a startup working as a Software Engineer or Customer Engineer or something related to these two.

Moving on, I prefer to make short term goals for the period of 3 months and then reflect on what I achieved with regard to those goals after the time has elapsed. Afterwards, I add to or remove from those goals as I see fit.

With that in mind, these are my career goals for the first quarter of 2021:

1. Get a full-time/part-time job.
2. Network and be more social.
3. Be a better programmer.

Now, let's break down these goals to weekly/monthly goals:

1. Get a full-time/part-time job.
   • Apply to at least 5 jobs per week, i.e one every weekday.
   • Sharpen your skills(code at least every weekday) and broaden your knowledge(refer to goal number 3).
2. Network and be more social.
   • Post at least once every week on every social platform I use, i.e Twitter and LinkedIn(once every two weeks on LinkedIn).
   • Attend a networking event or conference, either virtual or in person, once every month and do cold outreaches at least once a week.
   • Publish an article at least once a month.
3. Be a better programmer.
   • Sharpen your skills everyday of the week, either by coding, reading or taking a course or a combination of two or all three. And since I prefer not to code on weekends, reading or simply taking a course will do.

And that's it. Feel free to join me and you can also send me an update on your progress by email(sandra_philips@outlook.com) or tag me on your post on Twitter; I'd love to read your stories.

Till next time, aja aja, fighting.