Personal Refactoring

By ian

Anybody who spends a fair amount of time with me, knows that I have a habit of starting more projects than I can ever hope of finishing. In attempt to get things more under control, I’m doing a bit of refactoring on all of the ideas I’ve got floating around in order to focus myself more rather than spending all of my time bouncing from project to project. I’ve tried to create a few categories to group my projects into and focus on only one project in each category.

Category 1: Professional Development

I’ve had a whole bunch of ideas for a number of programming projects and career related activities. I’ve never really completed any of them because I’m always dividing my time too much. So, I’m going to focus on BarCamp Manchester until the event is successfully completed. I’m going to attempt to spend at least a few hours a week maintaining the site and helping to plan the event.

Category 2: Helping out a Friend

I’ve been slowly developing a site for a good friend of mine for her photo and framing business, but keep getting distracted. I’m going to drop all of my other friend projects for now until I get this done. I’ve realized that it’s not helping anybody by spreading myself too thin. Hopefully by tackling projects one at a time, I can be more help to my friends.

Category 3: Personal and Community Development

I mentioned this to one of my friends earlier and he was confused as to why I group personal and community development in the same category. I did this because throughout my life I’ve also felt that I’ve grown most by helping others. I’m still not 100% sure what I want to do, but I have a strong idea to try to help kids growing up in low-income families. I’d really like to combine this with my long term goal and provide an opportunity for kids to learn about climbing and mountaineering. It was an activity that my mom and I always did together and was an inexpensive way to have fun and experience nature.

Category 4: Long Term Goal

My long term goal is to climb some big peaks. I’m starting with some of the 4,000 footers in NH and would like to climb Mount Whitney and Mount Rainier in the next few years. If I enjoy those 2 trips, I want to move on to some of the 7 summits. My real goal is to complete RMI’s 6-day Rainier Expedition and based on my experience with that I will decide if I want to progress to larger peaks such as Denali and Aconcagua.

Well, that’s it for now. I just wanted to get this all down some place so I have a reminder of what I should be focusing on.