At the beginning of the month, I followed link from a retweet by Kelly Feller, whom Ed and I interviewed at BlogHer09, to a post by Rebecca Thorman on her blog Modite. The post was aimed at career women in the Midwest, and the call to tell stories of women in the workplace resonated with me. I’ll visit that subject in a future post.
Looking through past entries, I discovered Rebecca hosts a monthly goal meet-up for those interested in the career and life conversations on her blog. While I posted a set of learning goals, I’m hoping that having to interact with others about these goals will guilt trip me into accomplishing at least something.
November is a jam packed month for me between my job hunt being on full speed, attending PDC, Thanksgiving Break, and making up time off for all of it. Therefore, I’m going to keep my list for November’s Monthly Goal Meet-Up short.
- Get through the month without a single night of going to bed past 2am.
- Finish writing summary of programmers in Programmers at Work and write summaries of two interviews in my Robot Notebook.
- Work in longer spurts at my internship, using a timer. When the timer is counting down, no distractions. When the timer goes off, take a break.
By the way, my Robot Notebook is my amazing notebook I found at Border’s on sale for 75% off because of a single bent up page. I have decided that I will use it to journal about my geeky book reading, since if I don’t take notes, things are lost on me. Should’ve seen me at my most recent interview, scribbling like mad while other interviewees sat and watched the presenter without even a pad of paper in front of them. I’d remember nothing if I’d do that.
I’ve opened up 5 links because of this post!! I hope they’re good
I remember that one month after I got back from Australia that I actually got enough sleep and it was awesome. I like to think it had a positive effect on your sleeping habits as well, but I’m not sure. Either way hope the 2 am thing works out!!
Yup, you sleeping at reasonable hours helped me to sleep at semi-reasonable hours.
Okay, off to set the timer!
Good luck on your first month of goals! I hope the job search produces something for you. Also, I’m digging that robot notebook. What do you mean by geeky book reading? My wife and I are big readers; not sure if we’re geeks though (then again, I’ve read more than a couple of books involving Spider-Man…)
Oh, I mean uber-geek reading. As in reading books on programming and reading about programmers. I should probably make it a goal next month to read a normal book since I’ve read so few in the past few years that it’s embarrassing. I used to be a heavy reader, but that like my blog updating died when I hit college. Except my blog updating has gotten better! So, yes, next month I think I’ll make that a goal.
Found you through Modite.
As you are aiming to sleep before 2am, I am going to cross over 2am very soon right now! It’s 1.45am now.
Hope you will be able to finish writing your summaries.
Hi Ashley,
Thanks for visiting my site and encouraging me! I set timers as well and it works really well. I use “cool timer” which downloads to your desktop.
I don’t know if this will work for you but this is how I write with the timer.
I set the timer for 20 mins and write
set for 5 mins break
set for 30 mins write
5 break
40 mins write
15 break
one hour write.
At the end of this you have about 2.5 hours of solid work. I always set the timer to come back to work otherwise I get distracted by other things.
After the first 20 minutes (which I find the hardest) I am usually engaged with my writing again and the rest of the time flies.
I also put a note on my door- next break @ (time) so no-one interrupts because I work at home.
Good luck this month!
Heather
Charles:
I see that hour much too often. I’ve been a severe night owl my whole life, which doesn’t work well with having a job that wants you there during normal business hours. Plus I’d love to have free evenings if I can get myself to work at 8am. So tonight it begins!
Heather:
I didn’t have a specific plan, so I’ll try this tomorrow! I have downloaded some timer that’s capable to throwing up an application, which is helpful since that’s a more obvious interruption than a sound to me. Granted, it’d be sweet if I could only have it interrupt me on my breaks, since those are harder to get away from.
Thanks for visiting and encouraging! I love exploring blogs, and yours is infectiously cheerful!
I’m TOTALLY with you on the whole taking notes thing – I might as well skip classes if I don’t bring a notepad or my laptop! I think it has more to do with the act of recording it than with looking back on it later, though. I simply retain more information when I take the time and extra motor skill!
Have you ever found this goes for some everyday interactions and ideas as well? I’d feel dorky if I took notes while people talked with me, but I sometimes feel it would honestly help. :/
Anyway, good luck with your goals – I’ll be here in a few weeks to see the progress!
-IzzyB
Thanks! It’s interesting to hear the outside perspective, because cheerful is definitely not how I would’ve described my blog. However, this could be because back in the archives are posts from high school that I still don’t know how I feel about them being connected to my more recent posts. Cause, you know, high school is high school. Only thing I miss from that are the band competitions.
You know, it does go for everyday interactions. Now that I think about it, about half of my friends are the same way, so I hadn’t noted the fact we were taking notes in the day to day versus meetings, etc. Ed from above is my college roommate (aka forever roommate), and I knew I could always go to her for notes on pretty much everything.
I say go for it. In fact, when I talked to my mom about this, she actually gave me a high five for being a note taker like her. (This made me laugh, because she doesn’t often give such enthusiastic high fives.)
I’m SO JEALOUS OF YOUR ROBOT NOTEBOOK.
Good luck with your goals this month. I have you added to my RSS so I can root you on in your progress.
Desiree Kane
I love that notebook. And it’s really large! So I am going to have it around for quite a while.
Thanks for the good luck wishes!
Your goals are so precise – fabulous. The timer idea is a great one – I often do the same thing in my head – “okay, I’m going to work for the next two hours on pitching…” It usually works. And hope you’re not staying up too late! Thanks for participating.
Thanks Rebecca for coming and personally commenting! Thus far I’ve been asleep prior to 2am each night, so win there!
Thanks for the comment on my Nov. goals post! I think I’m going to try your idea of walking to two songs on my iPhone and running to one song. I hope it helps to keep me motivated!
I love your goal about timing your work at your internship. It’s great to set aside time to take a break, and I hope you find you’re more productive because of it!
Hopefully that method works for you! I do enjoy biking and when I use the indoor bike, I do enjoy the non-thinking pace, sprint, non-thinking pace, sprint. It makes the pushing myself easier cause I only have to worry about pushing myself during that sprint. And eventually, or at least eventually if I were to work out on a regular basis, that sprint could last longer. Baby steps, right?
Thus far I have failed at using the timer. I’m hoping after I get past a large, distracting event this Thursday and Friday, I can try again next week!
I’m aiming to get to bed by 10pm these days… errr notice that I’m writing this at 10:32pm. Ahhh how I miss the 2am silence
Good luck!