A couple years ago I saw this somewhere:
Knowing where you’re going greatly increase your chances of getting there.
I don’t remember where, but it did struck a chord with me and I love trying those kinds of things. So I wrote my personal goals for the current year and a few more to come.
Now, three years later, almost everything I wanted to do, I accomplished and sometimes surpassed in ways I couldn’t even imagine.
Items in bold are the ones I completed. Note that I was updating the list all the time to fit my interests and new objectives, but I never took out something because it was too ambitious, quite the opposite.
2007 Goals
- Make money with a website
- Have a site with more than 500 daily visits (refactormycode.com)
- Participate in a conference
2008 Goals
- Be known in the programming world (Thin)
- Present at a conference
- Work from home
- Work with passionate people (Standout Jobs)
2009 Goals
- Build my own programming language (tinyrb + Min)
- Practice a sport at least once a week (running)
- Make money online (createyourproglang.com)
- Speak at an international conference (RailsConf, MeshU)
- Train each week
- Learn 3 songs on the guitar
- Start my own business
- Work from home 5 days a week
- Work for myself only
2010 Goals
- Have another child
- Make > $100K/yr
- Snowboard when I feel like it
- Weight 175 lbs
- Learn 10 songs on the guitar
- Heli-ski in Blackcomb
- Use my own programming language for real things
- Try kite-surf
- Write a real book
I hope this inspires you or someone to do it. Lots of successful people have been doing it for years, because it works! If you haven’t done so yet. Go write your goals for this year and the next one and so on.
Do it!