Beautifully said. Small and measurable is huge. Small enough to complete in 90 days and check off the box to have a feeling of accomplishment. Measurable to make pass/fail a boolean. I love it. Remember, too, to celebrate when you succeed on knocking out those explicit success criteria.

Thank you for sharing.

Now i create a few strategic goals every 3 months (something like become an expert in C++ 11 features or learn about Asset allocation ). The strategic goals have a set of exit criteria like “be able to read and debug the guts of Casablanca C++ REST API ). Then i create tactical goals for every two weeks which is in line with my strategic goals (like learn about the type of smart pointers in C++ 11). This helps me in two ways – first, the tactical goals are small and measurable – so the chances are higher that I’ll actually be able to finish them. Secondly, since i re-assess my progress every two weeks, even if i cannot meet the tactical goals in one two week period, it’s much easier to catch up in the next sprint.

To answer your question “What changes do you need to make that you can address now? ” – I’ve been doing pretty well on most of my goals except for hitting the gym and eating healthier. Planning on tackling this before it becomes a “burning” issue a few years down the road 🙂

Thanks! This is something I’ve been researching on a lot, the difference between a goal and purpose. Basically, the conclusion I’ve come to is that a goal is an achievement that helps you fulfill a purpose.

There’s a post worth of information here, but I liken it to Scrum and Kanban. When you’re focused on delivering a product, you use Scrum, and drive towards those dates. Once the product has been released, you can switch to a Kanban mode where you handle issues and requests as needed. Sometime, a big request will come in, and you’ll need to switch back to a Scrum mode. The daily habits that help you fulfill your purpose would be the Kanban cards, whereas the steps you take to achieve a goal would be the Scrum tasks I’m oversimplifying here, but I’m hoping this is clear.

But nothing is meaningful without a purpose, I have found.

The 48 Laws of Power is a great book. Some people may be put off by Greene’s writing (he himself said you’d need to be a psychopath to use all 48), but the lessons there are worth reading (or listening in my case).

I love your emphasis on aligning your activity and improvement with your direction. This helps get clear on the why and with the right why, the how just takes care of itself. Thanks for pointing out the 48 laws – Reading Robert Greene is something I keep putting off – need to bump that up the list and make that an item of improvement I take on after I finish my current book.

Thanks John – the caveat is important – dependencies matter and prioritizing things is more complex than just picking the most important or the most urgent item. That needs to be factored into the calculation of what is next on the list.

“When you identify a way you can make your life better, the best thing you can do is act on it. Make it a way of life.”

This is such an important concept. Many people think they need to simply execute, execute, execute. The question is what are you executing towards? What do you want in 5 years? 10 years? 20 years? Once you identify that, it’s amazing how simple think become, and how many of those urgent issues simply fade away. It also helps you manage your energy, as you will only spend it on things that are worth it for your long term strategy. It’s all about Law 29 of Green’s 48 Laws: plan it through to the end.

“It captures what we know to be true in the real world – taking on debt leads to a burden in the future that will interfere with progress on the issues of tomorrow”

Yes, the only time taking on debt is a good idea is when you have a clear plan on what the repayment strategy is. Without that, it simply becomes “later” and later means never.

Udi’s comment is another great one, that has been expressed in many forms. Like “winning the battle, but losing the war”, and being too afraid to sacrifice the queen for the checkmate.

All 3 points I think point to my answer to your title: when you know where you’re going, and when you’re ready to accept the sacrifices that must be done.

Wonderful way to establish the ‘why not now?’ challenge of doing things that we know to be of long term value or getting in the way of long term value. The key caveat is remembering that there may still be legitimate reasons or prerequisites to starting out on some challenge. For example, we can’t clean the kitchen if the dishes are piled up (nod to Jose’s comment) or we can’t vacuum if there’s clutter around the house.

Same thing applies to implementing best practices or optimization. It’s difficult to establish a road map for upcoming frameworks or features if your codebases are cluttered and disorganized in general.

Thanks Jose. We are very much of a like mind.

THIS, THIS, THIS.

I’m tired of fighting this uphill battle. I still clean up whatever I can but I don’t go out of my way anymore.

Technical debt is like dirty dishes pilling up in a sink.

Second:
I haven’t set New Year’s resolutions in years. I start anything on any given day and just go with the flow. If I had waited for the “right time/day”, I wouldn’t have continuously blogged weekly since end of June 2015, learn to meditate, or run 50 miles in a single month.

Inspiration and motivation are capricious mistresses. The muse favors those already “in the zone”.

TL;DR
Start now. DOOOO EEEET!