Voice of the DBA

Tag: goals

  • Goal Progress–Apr 2020

    Time for my monthly progess report on goals. I set goals and had an update last month. This month, I’ve had a reminder for 4 days that says “work on goals” on my desktop. The reason it says 4 days is that I dismissed it last week. Otherwise it would say 11 days.

    Reading

    I haven’t tackled the non fiction, non technical book other than a few pages. However I did go through another chapter in the Pro Power BI Desktop book. Most of the intermediate chapters I skimmed through last month or early this month were based on loading data from different sources. Those are all variations on a theme, so I didn’t do much more than skim.

    Chapter 7, however, on transforming data, was more interesting. This is where I can use some skills, and where I learned how to do somethings like change the locale interpretation for data. Things I need to do since I work with UK data at times and I’m a US date person. I practiced a few things so I did learn a bit.

    Projects

    No specific progress, but I did start working on a live stairway class, going through DAX stuff, which will help me here.

    Report

    Overall, I’m failing at these goals, but coping with life.

    I’ll give myself a D for now.

  • Goal Progress Report for March 2020

    I made goals at the end of February, when I returned from sabbatical. Since then, the world has been turned upside down with a pandemic, and I’ve been struggling to cope.

    However, here is the progress report.

    Reading

    As I write this, I’ve had a reminder from Outlook on my screen for two days. The reminder is to work on goals, but I’ve managed to not do this. Mostly because I’ve been busy and haven’t had the time to actually combine career work with work work.

    In addition, at the end of the day, I’m worn out. I’m not looking to tackle another project. Even on weekends, I’ve been taking care of some other things and haven’t wanted to work on something. I haven’t had the mental focus.

    That being said, early in March, I did get through 4 chapters in Pro Power BI Desktop, actually following along and building my own reports.

    No other progress. I’m falling behind here.

    Projects

    One of the things I wanted to do was build a Power BI report. I actually started, though not from a database. That’s easy to correct later, but for now, I just used Excel. I got a partial report completed, but I was struggling with display v aggregates. As a result, I stopped for now, hoping to do more Power BI work.

    Falling behind here, but the whole world is. I’m giving myself a break and hoping to get more momentum in April.

  • Setting 2020 Learning Goals

    I deliberately didn’t set any goals at the start of 2020 since I was taking six weeks off for a sabbatical. That’s done, and it’s time to look forward.

    I know I have a few things that will be important for work. Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL will be on the list as we expand and try to sell more database development tools. We’re also working hard on improving SQL Monitor, so finding a way to improve me query tuning, analysis, and monitoring skills will exist.

    The goals I want to set here will be more personal goals that may relate to my career, but they’ll not necessarily be things I do at work. I’ll carve out some time elsewhere to get through these.

    Reading

    I like reading, and do a lot of us to escape and relax. I completed around 120 books last year, but almost all were fictional or non-technology books. I had hoped to get through 6 tech books, but that didn’t work.

    This year I’m going to scale back and tackle this in two ways. First, I want to get through at least 3 tech books that relate to specific coding or other skills. I’ve still got a couple from last year, including a Power BI one, so that’s one goal.

    The other one will be 2 career related tech books. I started Making Work Visible, and I need to finish that, along with another one.

    Goal:

    • 3 technical books
    • 2 non-tech, related books

    Projects

    I do a lot of demo stuff and build lots of PoC type things, but I need a couple projects. Specifically, I want to get projects done that will help at work, but will be useful in some way to me, or perhaps even others. With that in mind, and dovetailing slightly with those items above, I want to tackle these three projects and get them in a somewhat useable state:

    • A Power BI report that updates from a database
    • A mobile app reading data from somewhere
    • A website that showcases changes and data from a database.

    Not big projects, but getting something organized and relearning some tech about reporting and coding is important to me. I have a few rough ideas for which topics to use for these, but I want to try some basic PoC and see how things go.

    Checking In

    I think I need to check in monthly with these goals and start to see how I’m making progress. I’ll set reminders weekly to spend time here and then monthly to update some stats on where I am.

    I think this feels slightly ambitious, but we’ll see how 2020 goes. Hopefully better than 2019.

  • Reviewing 2019 Career Goals

    According to this post, I rate 2019 as a Failure. Of the books I planned to read, I read 2. I started 2 others, but they’re in progress, even right now.

    This post is a look at what happened and why, along with a few ideas on what to do better in 2020. Look for the new goal post next week.

    The Challenges of 2019

    This is really a set of excuses, or at least it sounds that way to me. Ultimately, I just didn’t focus on my career very well. I’m somewhat hoping that doesn’t matter, but I’ve tried to live by “hope for the best, plan for the worst.”

    I started out strong with my reading, going through these books 3-4 times a week at night, practicing with some code. It was a nice break after work or after the gym to learn something. Despite coaching and being busy with my family, I was making progress.

    That failed in March for a couple reasons. One, I was struggling with a project in my life that needed time and two, I committed to deliver some content for another vendor. Those items created a lot of stress, and reduced the energy I had for career time outside of work.

    Add to that the amount of travel I did in 2019. I spent a lot of time on planes, going over 140,000 miles from April to November. While one would think that sitting on a plane is a good time to read, it’s not a good time to learn for me. For a number of these topics, I need to be in front of a PC, and often on a plane, I don’t. I want to relax and escape. If I work, it’s because I need to, and then I’m writing or reviewing something for work.

    I had planned to skip a few months of reading work, and even wrote about this. However, I never got back to this and I got used to dismissing my reminders to check goals. That was a mistake on my part.

    I also got distracted with other technologies, doing more work with containers last year, which is OK, but it wasn’t part of my plan, and more importantly, I didn’t update the plan.

    Doing Better in the Future

    How can I do better in 2020? That really starts for me this week, with my return from a sabbatical.

    First, I need to keep a plan handy. This year, I’m going to put the plan in my reminder appointment, and that way I can review it each time the reminder comes up. I’ll also be able to adjust it and write a post that reflects the updates.

    That’s the second thing. Each update needs to include the plan and progress indicators. I’ll do that, if for no other reason than to understand where I am. I don’t mind not making the goals, but I want to know and decide to not make them for good reasons.

    I also need to account for the fact that I am a busy person and some portion of my schedule is out of my hands. I think aiming for 4 books a year is realistic for me, with 6 being the likely goal. I do get busy, and I realize that part of why I love reading is that it takes me away from life. I need to account for the need to spend time reading non-technical books.

    I also think I need to better think about the things I do outside of work and career. I have a lot of interests, and those things need time. That means less learning for me.

    I also think about the need to cement some of this learning in other areas, so I’d like to actually add in some project work that uses skills I’ll work on. I think that’s important, and like many of you, my work doesn’t always give me the chance to use new skills. To ensure I do capture some learning, I likely need to actually build something.

    I’m not sure how things will go, but I plan on creating goals now and then writing an update every month.