Here we are – the first day of 2018 and Im anxious and excited to get 2018 off to a good start. Looking back – it just occurred to me that I didn’t write one of these for last year. Not sure what happened there, but Im glad to be getting back on track. So let’s start with 2017…
2017 was a great year for me. I started the year continuing my work at IBM with the Watson group. About half way through the year (I think) I was offered the opportunity to transition to a role in the Cloud Networking group. It was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up to work with folks whom I had an incredible amount of respect for. So I began the transition and within 3 months had fully transitioned to the new team. Since then, I’ve been heads down working (the reason for the lack of blog posts recently (sorry!)). But being busy at work is a good thing for me. For those of you that know me well you know that “bored Jon” is “not happy Jon” so Im in my own little heaven right now. Im learning a lot and getting to work on new things and ideas that I wouldn’t have had exposure to elsewhere.
2018 looks to be another busy year for me on the job front but, as usual, I have other goals as well. So without further blabbering from me, here are my 2018 goals…
- Get better at time management – This is a big area I can work on with many facets. First and foremost – I’d like to work on being more productive in the morning. A typical day for me involves getting up between 6 and 7am. I help my wife get the kids ready – she takes them to day care – and I usually go to my office and get to work. I’d like to try and see if its feasible for me to get up earlier to try and get some things done before I start my work day. 5am seems a bit early – so Im not sure what the right time is but any time I have in the morning would be free time that I could get things done in. The bigger challenge for me here will be making sure I got to bed at a decent time to make this feasible. As it stands now – I typically work until midnight or 1am and I often get caught up in something and push this to 3 or 4. While its great to get work done – this isn’t a great model for me to follow and I realize that. So I need to work on that. The other piece of this is working to be better at sorting out my work/life balance. It seems almost trite to bring up – but its often hard for me to draw clear lines between work and life.
- Be healthier – The downside of working from home is that the cafeteria is always open. I snack almost all day long. This is driven by many things – skipping breakfast and/or lunch is a big reason I typically snack so Im going to get better at having actual meals. Im also going to make a point of buying better food to snack on. The other area that bites me is that I live in Minnesota. During the summer I can run in the morning or over lunch. During the winter (when it’s -15 without the windchill right now!) I don’t care to go out to run. Im going to try and find a better way to work out inside and try and stick with it.
- Blog more – Since starting at IBM the amount of blogging I’ve done has gone down considerably. I want to fix that. I view blogging as one of the means that I can give back to the networking community and Im disappointed with my current cadence of blog posts.
- Give another talk – While I’ll admit I was hesitant to do it – I managed to give my first talk last year at CHINOG07 (see here!). I actually really enjoyed doing it and Im hoping I can find another topic and another conference I can give a talk at.
So there you have it – my goals for 2018. You’ll note that I’ve taken running a marathon off the list. I still want to do this, so maybe I’ll add it back onto the goal list later on 🙂
I hope you all had a great 2017 and have an even better 2018!
Great post, I enjoy reading your blog. I’ve opened your talk in a new tab so will watch that at some point today. Good luck with the new(ish) job and the snack avoidance. 🙂
Snack avoidance has proved difficult but I’ve managed to stay away from them for a whole day so we’ll see if I can keep this up 🙂
Very cool, thanks for sharing your goals. You’ve inspired me in the past to use this time of year to make goals and I’ve put my own list together that I haven’t written down yet, so I’ll do that and share back
Nice!
This is a different Steve, maybe only Steve’s are allowed to comment on your blog! But similarly, just caught the containers talk and found it a great intro so much appreciated.
Tip for training would be a heavy punch bag in the garage, very satisfying and a serious workout!
Thats a good idea on the punching bag. I bought a rowing machine recently on a recommendation so we’ll see how that works out. I fear that it wont quite be a full replacement for a good run but its better than nothing!
I am very happy wiht your blogs, especially the handson approach and detail on the k8s front, great stuff and ive recommended the blogseries for all my collegaes who started workgin with k8s. I think your blog is the exact thing missing from the official k8s documentation.
I can relate to the work/life balance, it’s a hard thing to do. Also, I can see very succesfull people looking back and see all they have accomplished is working and even when they are very good at it and enjoy it, they regret not living enough when they retire. Ive seen the other side too, doing work just to live like 8h on a day and then family life kicks in and missing the fullfillment of work left me hard to enjoy life. Also, skipping on sleep makes me grumpy around the kids, which feels kind of counterproductive. It’s realy hard to find the exact balance, but if find I can really enjoy a break/life when i’ve accomplished a hard task/project and take the time to enjoy that work. Just my 0.02 cents, i think you have to find your own balance but with the most important thing is to keep it in mind constantly.
Someone tweeted at me that the secret to work/life balance is harmonizing the two. I like the sentiment, and have been pondering.
https://twitter.com/triggan/status/953457226483666945