It Rains In Triplicate

So, thoughts and events of the year past, just like everyone else …

Major Events

• Our first kid, Abigail, was born on March 16. That sort of thing makes everything else feel sort of small in comparison. Abi continues to thrive and grow, and everyday, of course, is something new. Fortunately, she is routinely sleeping through the night, which makes everything just a little bit more manageable.

Life

• I’ve shed a fairly significant amount of weight in the last year, becoming more in control of myself (and having significant motivation from the kid). Not done yet, but it is no longer an insurmountable goal. Ultimately, I’m about half way to where I want to be. That said, I was last at my current weight in my freshman or sophomore year of college.
• The Wife and I celebrated 8 years of marriage, 4 years in our house, etc. Everything proceeds in a comfortable and blissful pace
• Getting better at taking non-work, non-frantic time. More reading (yay kindle), more time away from the work computer
• Became better organized, although far from perfect. My work inbox is empty by Sunday evening every week, I have a strong GTD practice in place, etc.
• Started in on getting work done on the house. Home offices were combined so that the kid can have her own room, so spent some time organizing the room, and bought some furniture for it (yay ikea), have a usable dining area in the house and an island in the kitchen (yay ikea), have new windows (in progress) and siding (in progress), and putting up useful shelves and surfaces in the house (in progress)

Work

• Passed 5 years of employment at the same place
• Spent my first full year as a personnel manager, growing my group and doing, so I’m told, a good job. I think I am now part of the lower-middle management.
• Started down the path of project management as a project chief engineer / scientist, another skill I didn’t think I had, but am told I’m doing a good job (having a superb team behind me helps, I think)
• Spending vanishingly little time doing anything hands on, instead doing development through delegation and working from a strategic perspective. Not a bad thing, but different.
• Successes with internal business development, finding interesting work for many people and getting some of my research ideas on large scale collaboration funded
• Spent a lot of time thinking about business, managing, etc. Read all of Jim Collins’ books (Good to Great, Built to Last, etc), and starting in on others. Still formulating my own theories and thoughts on the topic, but am finding reading what others say fairly interesting and helps in my job.
• Gave some good talks on my work, both internally and externally. Attended and was track chair for a conference, which I’m doing again in 2010.

Projects

• Fell down on this topic this year. Wrote some scripts, sketched out some ideas, but nothing really done and worth discussing
• Spent less time than I’m happy with on the guitar, piano, and in DAW software, but my technique is slowly starting to improve again

Goals for 2010

Life

• Lose mumble-mumble pounds (I have a goal in mind, it is actionable)
• Adopt a reasonable and consistent exercise routine consisting of 3 days of cardio and 3 days of strength building
• Get my personal organization in line with my work organization (too many personal emails languish before being answered). Institute a zero inbox policy on my personal email boxes as I’ve done with my work mailbox by end of January.
• Spend more time building and maintaining an online presence, either by twitter, facebook, or reinvigorating my blog. Goal of one meaningful post a week

Work

• Write. I have at least 4 papers that need to be written and published. Got to get them done. Goal is to submit 2 papers in 2010.

Projects

• Spend more time on the piano and improve my technique (precise routine TBD, but on the order of at least an hour a week)
• Complete a project. Doesn’t matter which one, but finish something already. Goal is one project that sees fruition and I can write about here (meaning non-work related)