Goals for 2023

This is the goal setting post for 2023. The previous ones were:

As with previous years, I’ll break these into three categories: career, personal, and community. There’s some blend with all of these, but these are goals that I want to use to engage and grow my life in interesting ways. To aim for mastery, autonomy, and purpose, as Daniel Pink wrote in Drive.

The idea here is to set goals for Q1 2023 and review in March. I’ll also do monthly reviews of these. The rest of this post should be repeated in all future posts.

Reading

I’m separating this out, as I’ll put a few things in here that span other areas.

For Q1, I’m aiming for 2 books outside of the fiction I enjoy. These are going to be in these areas:

marketing – title TBD. Something to help me better understand how to approach this part of my job. There have been recommendations in our Slack channels, so I’ll pick one.
Coaching – Again, a few recommendations in groups I frequent.This is important as I influence young people.

Both of these are items I’ll target for these reasons:

S – This is targeted, reading a book
M – I’ll finish or not

A- both
B – 1 done, 1 partial
C – 1 done
D – partial
F – not started

A – I read around 100 books a year, so 2 in a quarter isn’t too much.
R – Marketing is a part of my job and career at this point, so this is good. Coaching is something I do personally with kids and with customers for DevOps.
T – I have 3 months, until 31 Mar.

Career

My career has taken a strange turn in that I continue to do some technical work and consulting with clients and customers, but more of my effort is spent understanding marketing and sales. I pivoted slightly last year by reading The Trusted Sales Advisor,

I also need to do more work with other platforms, at least to become more comfortable with them. I thought I might do more in 2022, but ended up getting buried with community stuff.

For Q1, I’m doing to aim to do a couple things:

Set up a tracking system based on the book for my efforts with customers
Track and calculate my scores to help me better approach how I work with customers.
Review this with my boss and with someone in sales

This is not a lot, but it’s a good start. I can review this goal as:

S – This will include a way to track things, likely Excel, and then some formulas or reporting to help me see how I’m doing. I also need to fill this out after each call with a customer. I’ll send it to a couple people in sales for review in March from two people. setting a reminder now.
M – I will have a sheet to look at, and a record of calls. I also have a review reminder set.

A – All calls tracked, review complete, data used to change my work.
B – most calls tracked, review complete,
C – half calls tracked, only 1/2 reviews,
D – less than half calls tracked, no review,
F – no sheet set up

A – Building a simple tracking sheet ought to be easy. The formulas are given. We used to track calls, now I’m adding in 5 minutes to think about how things went. Getting people to meet with me should be achievable if I make the time.
R – Important for my job
T – I have a 31 Mar deadline.

Community

A portion of my job is community. It’s also a passion. I spend time here outside of work, I volunteer and go to UGs/events when I don’t have to, and I certainly do work with SQL Saturday outside of my job. In fact, I was fixing PRs and updating the site while on vacation in Portugal, mildly anoying my wife.

In terms of a goal here, I’m going to focus most on SQL Saturday and less on speaking for now. I likely will go to a few events, but I want to limit my efforts in Q1.

The goals here will be the following:

2 speaking engagements for community (SQL Sat Austin and SQL Bits are on my schedule)
Reach out to 10 SQL Sat groups that did not run an event in 2022 and motivate them for 2023. This should be at least 2 emails to each person/group.
Reach out to all 2022 organizers and ask about plans for 2023
Start coding a tool for converting schedules to HTML.
Hold office hours once in Q1
Send 3 monthly SQL Saturday updates to the community

In terms of the review, I see them this way.

S – These are fairly specific. I can track emails. I can’t quite track motivation, but that’s something I need to do to help grow SQL Saturday back to where it was. I also can start putting code in a repo, which is a big step.
M – For the review, I’ll say this:

A – 2 presentations complete, 10 emails to new organizers, 36 to older ones, at least 3 commits and a MVP of a tool, office hours, 3 updates
B – 2 presentations complete, 8 emails to new organizers, 30 to old, 2 commits, office hours, 2 updates
C – 2 presentations complete, 5-8 emails to new, 20 to old, 1 commit, office hours, 2 updates
D – 1 presentation, 3 emails to new, 10 to old, no commits, no office hours, 1 update
F – lower than D

A – This can be tough. Finding time for SQL Saturday comes a1nd goes, as does motivation. I should easily do the talks, and I can easily reach the emails by making time. Office Hours can be tough, and the monthly newsletter is something I’ve struggled with.
R – These are community efforts that should help others. They don’t directly help me, other than building some skills as a leader, but they will help others if I can get more events moving.
T – All bound by the 31 Mar deadline.

Personal

My personal goals are going to be a little shortchanged here. When I look at what’s above, that’s more than I probably should tackle, though some of them should be quick to get through with a short bit of time every week.

Coaching also ramps up, so I’m going to limit this to a couple things for Q1.

Use my Power BI report for stats
Update the Power BI report based on feedback from athletes
Build 6 wooden coasters – I haven’t made enough time for my hobby here, so I’m going to start small. We need more coasters (as noticed over the holidays), so I want to build 6. Same style, different.

These can be rated as follows:

S – Use means I gather stats. Updates are from feedback. Coasters are specific.
M – Have I entered stats on the sheet, did I respond to feedback, coasters.

A – All stats entered in sheet/report. Take all feedback and do something, 6 coasters
B – all stats entered, some feedback, 4 coasters
C – All stats entered, feedback not influencing report, 2 coasters
D – some stats entered, no feedback used, no coasters
F – failing at stats

A – These should be achievable. The coasters should be 2 short periods
R – The first two are relevant to my efforts coaching. The last is just for satisfaction and to remind me of hobbies.
T – 31 Mar.