New resolutions
I've recently made some major life changes:
- I'm quit grad school
- I've gotten married to danithesquirrel
- I've started a new job at Johns Hopkins

Getting married and quitting grad school both deserve their own posts, so I'll save those for later. For now, I'd like to talk about resolutions and life changes. You see, whenever I make a major life career change, for approximately one month all my previous ruts are destroyed. Everything that I do and think seems to be new and exciting, and every behavior is open for re-evaluation. These periods are perfect times to install new behaviors and habits because I know they will stick. For example, the last major habit I installed using this method was GTD, and that has been a skill that has served me well for the last year and a half, at least.

Here's a list of new behaviors I'm starting at my new job:

Weekly Projects - One of the reasons I went back to grad school is that I felt I wasn't developing intellectually. However, in grad school I discovered that the people who are developing intellectually are doing things. That seems to be the big secret. Therefore, since my new job is very similar to the job that I left, I've resolved to spend 10 hours a week working on a weekly project every week. I've been telling people for years that if they want to be good programmers they should find an open source project and jump in with both feet. This time, I'm actually going to practice what I preach.

For the first couple of months, I'm planning on working on IT projects mostly because I feel those skills atrophied in grad school. This week's project is to add a translator to CiteULike for some journals that I often read. CiteULike is a wonderful service that helps researchers manage their bibliographies and keep track of what they are reading. If you do any sort of research, I highly recommend checking it out-- every person I've recommended it to has loved it.

After the week is up, I'll present a full write up of what I was able to accomplish and my conclusions from the experiment. By setting a fixed 10 hour time limit, I hope to improve my ability to work quickly and decisively on new projects.

Blogging - I realize now that I need to be an effective writer, and I miss having my life catalogued on a blog, so I plan on posting here once a day. I'll talk in another post about how I'm planning on reorganizing my blog.

Health - After looking at my wedding photos, I realize that I need to loose some weight. I've already told Dani that I want to budget how often we eat out, and I have some weekly projects in mind that should help us eat healthier as well. I also have some weekly projects in mind for things that will keep me exercising.

Another resolution I wanted to make is that I'm going to limit myself to 30 min a day journaling, and I'm already 5 min over. I better stop. Talk to you all tomorrow.


One of the things I like best about big life changes is that they give you an opportunity to break out of any ruts and get started