Tag: goals

It’s a holiday today, but I’m dropping this as I spent last week working on it. I wrote about having a career plan on Friday, with a few notes in there on how I was viewing my career in 2024. This post will cover a little more of my thoughts on the future (for me) and my plan.

Note: I’m mid-50s, and my career is closer to being over than beginning, so take this with a grain of salt if you’re in your 40s or younger.

Thoughts on My Career in 2024

I tried goals for a number of years, but those are hard for me to work on through a year for a few reasons. One is that my view in Dec/Jan is not always one that continues through the year, at least not with my job. Second, I start to get focused on the goals and it creates stress and pressure that I don’t need. Rather that improving in an area, I’m driven by the goal.

I don’t like that.

I also find my career is evolving more rapidly in the 2020s in the past, with each year moving me in new directions that are tangentially related, but hard for me to build goals in since both me and my employer are learning new ways to use my talents throughout the year.

I’m closer to the end of my career, with roughly 10 years—ish left. I’m also doing more work with customers as an architect and advisor rather than a marketer. I find my time is spent more with sales than marketing or engineering, and I both need new skills there, but I also have to focus my time in different areas.

Lastly, a portion of my job is still journalism, running SQL Server Central, so I need to remain aware and learning about the state of the data professional in the world.

With that in mind, I’m setting plans in motion to help me in those areas, without goals. Just a direction. I think that’s a new approach for me, where I look to find time to grow in a direction, but without the pressure of a goal. If I have to skip some sessions or alter the direction, I can do that easier by altering the direction rather than trying to abandon one goal and find a new one.

Think of this as finding a new route while on a road trip rather than being driven by the time of arrival.

The 2024 Plan

Where do I want to be in a year? Here are the things that come to mind:

• Produce a specific content on Redgate technical issues or architecture recommendations that I upload to our Seismic site.
• Learn how to use all the Flyway commands well from the CLI so I can make good recommendations for flow and using them
• Learn to use static code analysis tools and create custom rules in a pipeline
• Be comfortable enough with AI to use it every week

That might be too much, but the first 3 are really related to my job, so I’ll be getting career growth out of them and I can spend some of my time at work focusing in this direction. These are areas I’m interested in and having a direction to produce these learnings as documents shared within the company will force me to learn them a bit better.

The last one about AI is not because I think AI is great, but because I’m still unsure of how or where to use it. I have some coursework on AI from Microsoft that I’m going to go through and try to better understand what’s happening, what’s involved with training, and how I can prompt better. I think this will be a good tool at some point, if not for writing code, perhaps for other things.

That’s my plan, now, what’s yours?

I set goals at the beginning of 2023 for Q1. I didn’t do well, as my evaluation earlier this week has a D for my efforts.

I’m re-evaluating things, and for now, I’ve decided not to set more goals for the time being.

Why?

One of the things I end my career presentations with is this: we work to live, not live to work. Find balance in your life, between your career and life.

I truly believe that, and as I re-evaluated myself last week, I realized that I am out of balance. There have been some stressful things in life that have been hard on me, but more than the actual thing, it’s had an impact on my mental health. I’ve been a bit drained, so I haven’t wanted to take time to focus, preferring to relax a bit more with my wife, guitar, or a good book.

I started to recognize this when I did my Feb update, but thought I could push through. I didn’t, or couldn’t, and while I appreciate the optimism, I realize that I don’t want to ignore the additional stress in my life.

A Deliberate Pause

I don’t want to let goals go, but I am going to ignore them for Q2 and focus on being kind to myself and recognizing I need balance here. I’ll revisit this in late June and see how I am doing then.

The grade for March is also D. Details below, but just not making a lot of progress in these areas. In fact, I find myself not motivated to work on goals very much. That’s a bit sad, but it’s also where I am in life.

So far I have for 2023:

• Jan – D
• Feb – D
• Mar – D

I set goals at the beginning of the year, and I’m tracking my progress in these updates during 2022.

Reviewing Goals

The last month has been hectic. Both life outside of work and work have had me tackling lots of little tasks, which is distracting and reduces my energy for focused work. As a result, I haven’t been doing much on these goals.

I think I’m slightly overloaded, and worried about burnout, so I’m going to ignore goals for Q2.

Reading

Two books on the list: marketing and coaching. I haven’t picked a marketing book, but I picked Wolfpack for coaching. With one started and one not, this is an F.

Progress:

• Wolfpack – 47%

Career

My goals:

• Set up a tracking system based on the book for my efforts with customers
• Track and calculate my scores to help me better approach how I work with customers.
• Review this with my boss and with someone in sales

Rating: B

I have been tracking my interactions with customers here. There haven’t been a lot, but it is interesting to stop and think about how this is going. I have chatted with my boss and gotten a little feedback.

Community

Here are the goals I set.

• 2 speaking engagements for community (RMOUG Training Days complete. SQL Bits complete)
• Reach out to 10 SQL Sat groups that did not run an event in 2022 and motivate them for 2023. This should be at least 2 emails to each person/group.
• Reach out to all 2022 organizers and ask about plans for 2023
• Start coding a tool for converting schedules to HTML.
• Hold office hours once in Q1
• Send 3 monthly SQL Saturday updates to the community

Rating: D

I did complete another community (unpaid) speaking engagement. I’ve reached out to a few SQL Saturday groups and we have a few more events on the schedule, but I haven’t had a lot of energy to do this and the limited responses are discouraging.

Yes, I get discouraged.

Haven’t started a tool, didn’t hold office hours, two updates sent.

Personal

My goals:

• Use my Power BI report for stats
• Update the Power BI report based on feedback from athletes
• Build 6 wooden coasters – I haven’t made enough time for my hobby here, so I’m going to start small. We need more coasters (as noticed over the holidays), so I want to build 6. Same style, different.

Rating: D

I haven’t updated the Power BI report. In fact, I found a couple errors in calculations since DAX is a weakness of mine. As a result, I pulled down some pages. I also think my data model is slightly broken and needs work. No time spent on here.

It’s been cold, and when it isn’t, I’ve had other things to tackle, so no time on wood projects for me. I feel bad about this, but I also know I have too many hobbies. With my Duolingo language stuff, guitar, and then coaching, not a lot of time to spend here.

The grade for February is also D. Details below, but just not making a lot of progress in these areas. So far I have:

• Jan – D
• Feb – D

I set goals at the beginning of the year, and I’m tracking my progress in these updates during 2022.

Reviewing Goals

The various sections are listed below, and I’m giving a SMART grade based on what I listed. Have I gotten much done. January wasn’t too busy for me at work, but a little busy outside of work with coaching ramping up and my wife being down from work for a few weeks.

I got a bit done, but not a lot.

Reading

Two books on the list: marketing and coaching. I haven’t picked a marketing book, but I picked Wolfpack for coaching. With one started and one not, this is an F.

Progress:

• Wolfpack – 8%

Career

My goals:

• Set up a tracking system based on the book for my efforts with customers
• Track and calculate my scores to help me better approach how I work with customers.
• Review this with my boss and with someone in sales

Rating: B, I rated myself on a couple more calls and got feedback on a call from another person in the company. Not a ton of activity here, but I did make progress.

Community

• 2 speaking engagements for community (RMOUG Training Days complete. SQL Bits on my schedule)
• Reach out to 10 SQL Sat groups that did not run an event in 2022 and motivate them for 2023. This should be at least 2 emails to each person/group.
• Reach out to all 2022 organizers and ask about plans for 2023
• Start coding a tool for converting schedules to HTML.
• Hold office hours once in Q1
• Send 3 monthly SQL Saturday updates to the community

One speaking engagement complete, one more on the schedule. So far doing well here. A few submissions in for later in the year.

I have been reaching out to other groups with limited success. I have emails out to 10 groups with limited success. It does look like there will be at least 3 events in 2022 from places that didn’t run one in 2022. A B here.

I have reached out to 2022 organizers, most seem ready to do a 2023 event if they can find space.

Personal

My goals:

• Use my Power BI report for stats
• Update the Power BI report based on feedback from athletes
• Build 6 wooden coasters – I haven’t made enough time for my hobby here, so I’m going to start small. We need more coasters (as noticed over the holidays), so I want to build 6. Same style, different.

Same rating of a C here, as I’ve updated the report a little, I continue to use it though I need to fix a few calculations. No woodwork done with a busy life and mostly continued cold temps.