I’ve never actually written a “goals” post before. This year I figured why not give it a try and see how it goes. I’ve broken them down into two categories, personal goals and work goals. I also didn’t want to bite off too much, so I figured I would keep the list relatively short. Also, by publishing this list on my blog, anyone who reads this is allowed to ask me at anytime how I’m doing with them and too keep me accountable for these goals.

Personal Goals

Some of these goals may cross into the business side a little bit, but have more to do with stuff I want to do personally. Working for myself and working from home the personal and work can tend to blend together.

Become more of a morning person

This is something I’ve never been good at. Those of you who know me know how bad I am at going to bed on time. As funny as it is, I just don’t like going to bed. When I crawl in bed at night, I think about everything I could be getting done instead of sleeping. However, I’ve also found (as everyone as said and studies have show) I get way more stuff done if I get up and hour or two earlier than if I go to bed an hour or two later. So, for 2015, I want to start being in bed, lights out, tablet/Kindle down between 10:30 and 11pm and getting up between 6:00 and 6:15 am (the alarm goes off at 6:00). If I can get this down, I may even bump everything up by a 1/2 hour.

Read More

I used to read a lot. Lately I haven’t been doing nearly as much reading as I want. It’s been way to easy to turn on the TV, browse Facebook, play a game on the iPad, etc. I also used to read while I at lunch and this has become a thing of the past as well. I have a list(Kindle Books) and stack (Physical Books) I either want to to read or am in the middle of reading. Starting in 2015 its time to start picking them up and reading instead of being distracted by entertainment on a screen.

Put the Phone Away in the Evenings

This one is going to be a challenge. Again working for myself, my cell phone is both personal and work and when someone needs to get a hold of me, I’m the only one. I’ve also heard about and seen myself how our culture has developed a habit of picking up and looking at our phones VERY frequently and ignoring those around us. Just the other day I was in a living room with 3 other people sitting on chairs/couches. None of them were talking and interacting with each other, rather, all three of the were sitting there in their own world playing on their phones.
I’ve heard others talk about ways to do this. In 2015 I’m going to eliminate that habit from my own life by finding a good place to put my phone as soon as I come downstairs from working for the day. I can’t just leave it upstairs as family/friends have the phone number as well. I will turn up the volume so I can hear it, but only respond to phone calls between the time I finish work for the day and the kids go to bed. If I get a text or email I’m going to work towards not responding or even looking at it until later in the evening. If you need to get a hold of me for something in the evening and it’s that urgent, call me. If not, don’t expect any response until later in the evening.
I’m not sure how I’m going to accomplish this on the weekends yet as I do get texts from friends and family as well on the weekends about getting together…maybe just put the phone in the same place but make a concious effort to only check it every so ofter rather than every time it makes a sound.

Work Goals

The work goals are going to be shorter and a little more straight forward and direct. So don’t worry, you’ll be able to breeze through these much faster.

Increased Regularity in Blog Posts, Shift in Focus

My regularity in blog posts and slacked off of late. This is due to a couple of factors.

  1. Work. Working for myself and having one kid with another on the way has made life busy. My blog posts have suffered as that’s one of the first things I let go.
  2. SharePoint 2013 (my primary focus for work and my blog) has been out for a while. New blog posts have been harder to come up with.

I want to grow my blog more in 2015 and post on a regular basis. I’m also hoping to do this in a couple of ways:

  1. Blog more about Office 365 and Azure. This will tie into my next goal, but this is where Microsoft is going. My opinion, you either need to get on board with it or get off the train.
  2. Schedule a regular time in my week/calendar to write a blog post.
Only Use Client OS VMs, SharePoint VMs all in Azure

Like I said, this ties into my shift in blog posts. In the past (and currently) I have used VMs hosted on either my laptop or a server/desktop at home. I currently have a 15″ MacBook Pro and then have a Windows 10 VM, a SharePoint 2010 VM and a SharePoint 2013 VM running on it. Later this year I would love to switch to a smaller device, either a MacBook Air or maybe a Surface Pro 4 (assuming that’s the name and it’s coming). In order to do this, I need to run all my SharePoint VMs in the cloud. To test this out, while having the more powerful laptop, I’m going to try to avoid ever firing up my SharePoint VMs. The Windows 10 VM takes few enough resources I could run that on a MacBook Air. All my testing, a little development playing, demos, etc will all be done on VMs in Azure.

This can bring about some issues, primary, I’m now 100% reliant on Azure and a solid internet connection. For demo’s/presentations, I’m going to force myself to plan ahead more and try to actually pre-record the demo so I don’t need to rely on the internet being good. As far as Azure and a solid internet connection, that just continues to get better both with mobile internet/tethering and the availability of internet practically everywhere you go.

Launch new Intelligink website

I’ve been working on my public facing website for what feels like forever. Truth is, I’ve never really paid much attention to it. With the announcement about Office 365 public sites going away (current where my site is hosted) as well as some other things in the works, I’m putting a renewed focus and energy into re-launching my web site in early 2015. Stay tuned to my blog for more details on that when it happens.

Conclusion

That wraps it up, those are my 6 biggest goals for 2015. Three personal goals and three business goals. I’ll try to keep everyone updated as to how it’s going throughout the year and anyone reading this I would love if you would help keep me accountable to these goals in the coming year as well.

Happy New Year and a blessed 2015!