So yesterday I looked back on the half year gone. Today I’m going to look forward to the half year to come and set some goals for the next 6 months.
I’m doing this on the assumption that goals made public are more likely to be kept than goals told to no one. Even if no one’s going to hold me to the goals I set, the fact that I announced them to the world (or the small part of it that reads here) makes it more difficult to discard the goal.
So, what’s planned for the next 6 months?
The biggest thing coming up (other than the new job) is that I’m going to be presenting two Chalk and Talk sessions at TechEd South Africa. Both will be SQL Server focused, one on finding performance problems (hopefully before the users do) and the second on fixing those performance problems. Any readers who are going to be at TechEd, please drop by and say Hi.
I’m going to be applying for my MCT certification within a few months and I’m looking forward to doing some formal training. I’ve been doing some informal training at my office over the last few months and I have really enjoyed doing it.
Now, onto the goals for the remainder of the year:
- I intend to read at least 3 IT books over the next 6 months. At least one of them will be SQL-related
- I intend to blog once a week here, and once a month at Grounding
- Listen to at least 1-2 IT-related podcasts a week.
- I’m going to try to watch a webcast every fortnight. Limited download speed makes this a little difficult
- I will learn at least the basics of Windows Sharepoint and one other MS product that I currently know nothing about
- I am going to spend a lot more time on my Masters thesis. I intend to have the experiments designed and at least partially implemented by the end of the year.
That shouldn’t be too hard. Maybe.