Last year, I wrote a monthly progress update on my goals. I'm doing the same thing for 2019. Previously, I wrote these articles on Medium. Now I'm switching over to dev.to 😄
Achievements
Here, I’ll share the goal followed by the related achievement of the month after the arrow.
Emotional
- Focus on relationships that matter -> Spending time with friends/co-workers
I feel like this month I actually made progress towards this goal. I sometimes say yes or do things because I feel like I should rather than because I want to. This month, I spent more time with high school friends that are important to me and I also spend some time with my co-workers outside of work.
I hope to continue focusing on these important relationships rather than trying to please everyone.
Intellectual
- Read 12 Books -> Finished "The Clean Coder" and "Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations"
One of my co-workers recommended "The Clean Coder" by Robert Cecil Martin and so I started it last month. It was a fantastic book! It made me realize what it means to be a "professional" developer and gave tips on how to work towards that in my career.
I also read "Accelerate...". I wasn't a huge fan. The research was interesting, but it felt more like an academic paper published inside a book. It merely validated my previous beliefs of how important things like CI/CD are in shipping software quickly.
- Launch 2 Products on Product Hunt -> Lots of work on mentored.dev
April was a productive month for mentored.dev! I give some credit to the Pioneer Tournament I joined, which has forced some accountability on this project.
I hope to continue making progress and eventually, ship the first version this year.
Professional:
- Speak at 5 conferences-> Spoke at Magnoliajs (2/5) 🚀
I had an absolute blast speaking at Magnoliajs in Jackson, Mississippi. It was my first in-person tech conference I was speaking at.
The experience taught me a lot. I realized:
1) how down-to-earth tech speakers are
2) jokes/humor can spice up talks more than enthusiasm
That being said, I hope to continue speaking at meetups/conferences and getting better at my delivery.
- Write 6 articles -> Published "The Practical Checklist for Getting a Job"
I had been holding onto this article for a while. I wrote it up for a friend maybe 6 months ago but never got around to publishing it. Instead, I was sharing it with people privately.
Now, it's published and ready to be shared with the community! 😄
That's all folks! Until next month!
[Photo by Stephen Walker on Unsplash]
Top comments (6)
Hey Joe!
I think ya might've accidentally left off a bit of text here:
You've had an awesome month! This is great idea btw, loving the format of
goal -> related monthly achievement
... cool article!Haha whoops! Sorry about this. Meant to finish that before publishing but overlooked it - thanks for catching that 😅
And thank you! I thought would be an easy way to share my goals with others. Glad you liked it!
What a great idea. I love the way that you're not just sharing your goals but setting such a nice context for anyone reading.
Thanks, Mark!
I try to assume no one has seen the other articles, so then if they find themselves here, they're not completely lost.
Nice. Welcome to Dev.to
I should post my progress updates on here as well! Hold myself accountable to my goals.
Thanks, Andy!
Yeah, it's worth a shot! Might help 😄