Last year I wrote a tech new year’s resolution post where I wrapped up the year and listed my goals for 2008. I stated that I wanted to reduce clutter in my life in regards to physical possessions and digital assets. I think I have successfully accomplished what I set out to do.
After a home invasion/assault/robbery made me rethink where I was living, I moved into a secure apartment of my own (instead of purchasing a Springfield Armory XDM 40 firearm for protection – Georgia firearm laws are surprisingly lax). Unfortunately with a bigger place of my own, I ended up getting more stuff to fill it up, like a couch, coffee table and the like. However, I have been able to get rid of all the small things cluttering up my household. The new apartment had a surprise for me: a ridiculously fast fiber Internet connection.
That helped me smoothly segue into the “cloud.” If anything, 2008 was the year of the cloud for me. I began to embrace online storage and SaaS solutions and thereby loosen my reliance on local storage and the accompanying burdens.
2009 Tech Resolution – Productivity & Learning
While I still have a few things left to organize and complete this decluttering process, 2009 will be about the next step, productivity and efficiency. After having just graduated from college my next big challenge will be adapting to the working life, and working from home at that (coffee maker ordered). I will need to master a work routine. However, I don’t just mean your typical GTD-esque productivity boosting. I want to master the tools I use to get my job done.
For example, I’ve been using the TextMate editor for years but only just learned that it can do CSS validation and that the Ack in Project bundle will save me time fumbling around with grep to find a certain line of code. By becoming more familiar with the branching and stashing capabilities in git I’ll save time by being able to work on specific pieces of code all at once and push whatever changes I need at the given moment. The same goes for prioritizing to do lists, bug tickets, emails and so on.
2009 will be about learning for me. This isn’t to say that I didn’t learn anything in my last 4.5 years of college, but now I will have the time to focus honing skills that will be directly applicable to me in the work I do. For one, I will be doing a lot more reading. At the moment, I have Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, and Donald Trump’s Think Big and Kick Ass lying on my desk (granted the Trump book is more of comedic relief – example, the chapter on the importance of getting a prenuptial agreement or the part emphasizing getting revenge, only 10x worse than what someone did to cross you). Of course, there will also be the many technical reference books that will be next to me (at the moment that happens to be O’Reilly’s Rails Up and Running and Justin Williams’ Rails Solutions).
Rodin’s The Thinker (source).. yes, odd placement in this article, but related to learning.
Oh and I have to learn how to file my own taxes. Hello H&R Block..
What’s on your plate for 2009?
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I am going to try and do two chicks at the same time!
What is Office Space quote? </jeopardy>
The “welcome googler, you should subscribe”(paraphrased) text shows when coming from Google Reader…I’m guessing it only looks at the domain?
I get the welcome googler thing too- from reader.
2009 is the year I get to overload at university. I will be remembering how to jump through educational hoops. This will be interesting after a year of freedom from all that. :)
PS- Doug, while it was an office space quote, I didn’t appreciate it. Paul’s site is one I come to for informative interesting tech writing- the comment was a bit juvenile and didn’t fit.
I’ll try to further my move to the cloud in 2009—I don’t have a fast enough internet connection to do everything online, but with Google Apps for my domain, MobileMe, DropBox and Amazon Web Services much of my computing activity already happens online. Very handy since I’m using multiple Macs at the moment.
Have a happy new year!
Since my apartment got broken into while I was visiting my family for Christmas and my iMac and backup drives stolen I guess I’ll try to live more in the cloud so I won’t loose all my photos that weren’t on Flickr already and my code, documets and so on. I guess a mixture of github, dropbox and maybe backblaze and similar services. I already use gmail for my email and other cloud based sevices for a lot of other things so the transition won’t be a drastic one for me.
“2009 will be about learning for me.” Let me just rephrase by saying that you should live every year as if it’s the last one, but learn as if you can live forever!
All the best for 2009
I happened to come across the original quote form Gandhi a few minutes after reading this article: “Live as if you would die tomorrow, learn as if you would live forever.”
I’m afraid that if i could learn like i could live forever i would put it off for tomorrow
You’re from Texas and you wanna talk smack about Georgia’s gun laws? Don’t they issue you a gun in Texas when you’re born? :-)
Where in Texas do they require you to own a gun by law? :-P
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennesaw,_Georgia#Gun_law
Thanks for the great posts in 2008, and I hope your 2009 is great!
Sadly, uploading large files to the cloud is no option for me as the maximum throughput in my area is 2048 kBit/s down and 192 kBit/s up. But there are some lightweight apps I use like Google Docs.
Although it seems kind of cheesy, I really liked this video from Will Smith about “Running & Reading” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEMEBBwO6J8). So my resolution for 2009 will be pretty simple: staying mentally and physically fit.
I am with you, I need to learn/master my GTD as well. It’s some where in my list of to do. I’m sure.
On another note, I would also like to go through life with the concept of carpe diem. I know it’s cliche, but it’s a great goal. It’s like that movie “Yes Man”.
Best of luck to you in the upcoming year!
Just got done with Malcom Gladwell’s outliers today. Very interesting book, Gladwell didn’t fail to make us think differently as usual. 2009 tech wise, i want to spend more time perfecting what i already know (computer languages and technologies), close to the lines of what you have planned. experiment more and see where it goes. Yeah I actually just found the beautiful world of textmate, it is awesome!
I want to attack 2009 from two angles: mental and physical. Want to increase my knowledge by reading/stimulating my mind (40 book goal) and want to increase my physical capability by working out consistently.
Really looking forward to move up in the cloud in the first few months of 2009.
Good stuff man. Looking forward to what you’ll bring us in 2009.
Paul, have you done a write up on Text Mate? I am currently on coda, but am considering changing. I like code because it has a basic ftp upload built in. Coda seems like a very efficient app for what we do.
In 2009, my two things are graduating from Tech and finding a job, hopefully in something related to journalism (ideally at CNN).
I got Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers too. Very interesting book so far. I started reading it as soon as I unwrapped it and was half-way through when I put it down. I think it’s a good idea to branch out a bit and read interesting authors like Gladwell and learn about things outside your usual area of expertise. It’s surprising how often you can make connections and end up gaining insight on your major interests.
Nice! Good luck. Hope you achieve all what you plan. Here is my plate – http://www.lewro.com/design/the-targets-for-2009-mine-and-yours
Just wanted to say that I have learned a ton more in a much shorter amount of time since graduating college and I’m sure the same will be the case for you. This is mainly from spending spare time apart from work reading business books that really caught my attention and online articles from Twitter, Digg, etc.
I have been using http://www.eztaxreturn.com for 3 years now to do my taxes with not one complaint. It should be cheaper than H&R Block and very straight forward for someone like you just out of college. Let me know if you have any questions about it – I already helped 3 of my friend file their returns on it so I am used to it.
http://twitter.com/jsmakr
I’m going to try to be more backup-proactive this year. I also really want to successfully complete another year of Mechanical Engineering.
Happy new year, Paul, and keep up the great work!