Managing your Life the Agile Way in 2009
We’re just a few days away from 2009 and it’s that time when we all start looking back at the last year and set goals for the coming new year. I felt like sharing some of my thoughts on how I’m aiming to approach the new year.
Historically, I’ve never been a huge fan of New Years Resolutions because my attempts were always too big to successfully measure. The goals themselves weren’t poorly thought-out, it’s just that it’s really easy to make a list of personal targets, without putting a lot of emphasis on how you’re going to achieve them. The biggest trouble that I’ve had with goals is allocating enough mental energy for implementation planning. (if only I had someone to and wireframe my life…)
Due to this, New Years Resolutions haven’t been a huge success for me. I’ve found it much too easy to pass the buck onto the usual suspects, which consist of: lack of time, energy, too much work, general life changes, health, etc.
So, for 2009… I’m going to try something different by focusing on a set of best practices that I can use on a daily-basis. I suppose that my main goal is to not place too much emphasis on any specific targets and instead place the responsibility on myself to follow these best-practices and see what good (or bad) comes of it.
By rephrasing my internal conversation from, “What did I achieve this last year?” to “Am I doing things the best that I can?” I am confident that the answer will usually be, “not likely.” I do believe that through this subtle change in context, I’ll be better apt to self-evaluate how (and why) I am doing the things that I do and refactor accordingly. If we’re not consistently Refactoring ourselves (as we do with our code), we’re going to retain a lot inefficiencies in our personal and work lives, which make it difficult for us to quickly respond to changes and opportunities.
Our life (personal and work) is just another project that we manage. Much of methodologies that we spend learning about and adopting can easily be translated to these other areas of our lives.
So as I brace myself for 2009, I find myself asking, How can I lead a more Agile life?
I’d love to hear how you’re adopting best-practices inspired by Agile methodologies in your life and I promise to share mine over the coming year.
Related Posts
Was away on vacation
It’s been quiet here the past several weeks and that’s because for the first time since I started Planet Argon, I was able to take an extended vacation.
My partner and I headed to France (Paris, Nice, Lascaux II, and Bordeaux) for a few weeks. It was a first time for both of us. I’ve posted some photos on my flickr (vacation set).
I’d like to thank my amazing team for helping make it easy for me to take off for that much time. :-)
In any event, I wanted to post a few non-technical links…
- Veggie Tastespotting (tastespotting without the meat)
- Robby’s Muxtape
- Robby’s Grabb.it
- Robby on twitter
- Robby’s feedflix (netflix queue/stats)
Link yours up!
In the coming weeks… I’ll be posting some more thoughts on Project Management, time management, and anything else that seems to come up. If there is anything you’d like me to write about, feel free to drop me a line with a request.
Another Brick in the Wall
Today is my 26th birthday!
Today I am getting our new Lead Systems Administrator, David Gibbons, up to speed with how we run our hosting servers. Expect to hear more from him in the near future. He’s jumping in and going to help take some of the hosting responsibility off of my lap as I am spending more of my time working with clients and our developers.
December is a huge month for PLANET ARGON and we have lots of fun things to announce over the next few weeks. David should have a headshot on our about page in the next few days. You can spot him in our IRC channel as dgibbons. Stop by and introduce yourself to him! I’ve known David for about 3 years and it’s great to have him join the team!
Today I am also celebrating that I got engaged last night. My lovely girlfriend took me out for dinner last night and proposed to me!
Today I turn 26 and it looks like the next year is going to be pretty exciting… :-D
...back to work.
some friends and us are meeting up at Lucky Lab brewery in SE Portland tonight:
From Allison’s email to people: Robby’s Birthday! (at the Lucky Lab) Date: Monday, Dec 05, 2005 Time: 7:00 PM Address: 915 SE Hawthorne Blvd.,, Portland, OR
cheers…
