Wow, it’s actually been (a little over) a year since I posted my goals for 2009.  Going back and re-reading those goals, I’m a little surprised at my goals, and saddened that I made so little progress. I thought it might be a healthy exercise to look at how I did in meeting each of my 2009 goals.

Goal 1: Get the new layout integrated into this blog.
This one isn’t completely my fault, only mostly.  My friend actually decided that he didn’t like the layout he did and wanted to make another one, and I think he hasn’t had time to do that yet.  Sadly that was in like June, which means I failed to integrate the previous layout into this blog for a full 6 months.  🙁

Goal 2: Learn Silverlight.
Ack, I really dropped the ball on this one.  I looked briefly at Silverlight, and I did learn some WPF and XAML, but I never actually sat down and did anything with Silverlight.  I have no excuse other than I had no pressing need and insufficient free time to tackle this.

Goal 3: Learn XNA.
… 🙁

Goal 4: Continue to make 3 blog posts per week, minimum.
I didn’t keep up a 3-per-week average, but I did ok.  The readership on my blog (according to Feedburner) grew from ~20 to over 100, so I’m actually fairly satisfied with my performance on this goal.  Yes, I did fall short of the 3-per-week I set out to maintain, but I think I made some useful contributions on a fairly consistent basis.

Goal 5: Write more.
I actually nailed this one, but not in the way I thought.  Aside from finishing my thesis (a 100+ page monster of technical writing), I also contributed to and authored numerous research publications.  Sadly only one has been accepted so far, but at least I’m getting lots of practice.  I still would like to do some CodeProject articles, but that’s taken a back seat to other things for now.

Goal 6: Maintain a more positive attitude towards work.
Again, I feel like I nailed this one.  I think I’ve stayed very positive despite a bumpy year.  Hiring a good friend and great dev in James helped, but I still tried not to let things here get to me too badly.

Overall, I’m disappointed that so many of my goals fell by the way-side, but I’m not surprised.  I failed to account for a several things that should have made my list, including finishing my thesis, graduating (in only 3 full semesters), and becoming a new dad. 

Goals for 2010

Time to set up my apologetic blog post for 2011!  I decided to set fewer goals this year than last year:

Goal 1: Move forward on ideas for new products. 
I have had several product ideas floating around in my head for many months now, and over the years I’ve had several great ideas that I procrastinated on only to see others implement them and become wildly successful (I’m looking at you, Facebook).  I don’t want to endure the pain of seeing another one of my ideas make someone else rich, so I’m focusing on maturing my ideas in 2010.  Already I’ve fleshed out a small handful of ideas, and I plan to move forward aggressively with one in the near future.

Goal 2: Read more technical material.
I feel like I’m falling behind a bit in terms of technical knowledge.  It takes constant vigilance and dedication to stay on top of what’s going on in the research world in my field (Information Retrieval), plus there’s always new things going on in software development in general.  In 2010, my goal is to read more technical books (already finished up Head First Design Patterns, now working through both Taming Text and ASP.NET MVC In Action) as well as to stay more current on what’s being done in the research world.

And that’s it.  I do have additional goals not related to development (sadly “relax more” didn’t make the cut), but I’m focusing on these two big weaknesses and hope to have a more positive review of 2010 one year from now.  See you then!