todo for 2007, 2008
I didn’t get around to writing a todo for 2007, apparently. I did write a todo for 2006, though. I also wrote a review of my progress, in January.
- waste less time
- read more
- learn more (computer) languages
- use more (human) languages more often
- learn to drive a car
- buy a house
I bought a house in September 2006, but the rest are all decent goals to take as read for 2007. I… well, I didn’t do too well. I meant to have a driver’s license well before Martha was born, but I didn’t get a learner’s permit until February, and I still haven’t gotten a license. My brother-in-law has volunteered to help me get ready for my test, and my permit expires in February, so I think I may actually finally get my license – only thirteen years after nearly everybody else in my age group.
I’ve written a good bit more to family members who aren’t native English-speakers, but I’ve lazily written only in English. I keep meaning to tie this goal to my “read more” goal, so that I can read a book or two in Spanish or German each year. It doesn’t happen.
My reading in 2007 was actually not too bad. I didn’t read many books of substance, but I burned through a decent amount of fairly light reading, almost exclusively walking between home and the bus. I finished a number of series that I’d been working on, and I hope to at least continue that trend this coming year. I need to try to find the complete Nero Wolfe. That should fill quite a few walks.
I haven’t done more than usually well at working with new programming languages. I did some more Ruby and Python, which is nothing new. I did some more playing around in Haskell, but nothing really interesting. I wrote a little more Lisp. I read the first few chapters of Programming Erlang, but I haven’t put much of it to use. I think that this year, my first priority is actually going to be more Perl, as I want to do some things that will require I delve into B and XS. I still hope to do some work in Erlang, too, at least. I’m so behind on actually getting established projects done, though, that it’s hard to realistically think I’ll start picking up new things just for the joy of it.
“Waste less time” is sort of a weird goal. I don’t know how to measure it or call it met. This year, I started using OmniFocus instead of (among other things) index cards to track the things I wanted to do. In 2008, I am going to keep it populated with the things I need to do, with due dates – and I’m going to try to stay on top of my todos.
Now that we’ve bought a house, I get to replace that goal with “fix the house up.” I need to finally make the third floor habitable, make the back yard rompable, and deal with all the interior doors. (There are plenty of other projects, too.)
I don’t think I’m going to proclaim any other big goals for 2008. That’s quite enough work already, and my I’ve got plenty of other little goals to deal with.