The Why & Overview
Becoming a Staff Engineer as a self-taught developer has been one of my greatest achievements. It has also been my hardest one. In particular, learning how to learn, stay on track, and accomplish goals that typically only come at the end of a boat of failing were quite the hurdles to get over.
I found creating yearly goals that only really saw quarterly focus as my best way of getting things done. This is normally done in a notebook. Of course, checking back in ever 3–6 months on your progress is important for making sure you are still on the trajectory to hit your targets and make any adjustments that are needed.
However, in the last year or so I have gotten off this system, and it has not been going well for me. I am constantly pulling myself in different directions, allowing myself to get a bit done all over the place, and accomplishing nothing I set out to do. The issue with my old system is that when you are in the middle of an ocean of desires and task you want to do, you have no tools to find your way to shore and get to work.
I decided this year to try a new system using some methods on how we did large quarterly planning on some projects. This blog post goes into the system step by step on how I got all my thoughts together and set out on ambitious goals that I can take one day at a time.
For the purposes of keeping my private goals private, all goals referenced and shown here are from a demo document I made with random goals I thought people would relate too.
Getting all our goals on the table
Our first step is just getting all the goals and things we want to accomplish on the table. Don’t worry about numbers and what you think would be achievable in just this year.
Our “epics” are just a quick wording of the goal we would like to achieve.
The next step is to trim this list down to what we think we could get done in a year. I like to think about what each goal might need, some things like “get healthy” could be as simple as spending time with a nutritionalist and setting time aside for the gym. Other goals like “Learn Arduino” could be more complex and time-consuming, so we might want to limit the amount of those goals on our board.
If you are not certain, leave them on for now; our next steps will help figure out time commitments, and we can see if we will be over-worked and if more need to be moved.
Moved where, you might ask. To our holding area for next year.
I love this table because it gives me a place to add my random “I would like to learn this” that pop into my head. I can set it aside and next year they can be in the running for how I would like to improve myself for the following year.
Not only that, but I find it helps to clear your working memory. Once I write down a desire or goal, I can drop it from my mind and be less distracted.
Creating a 10,000’ Overview
To create time estimates and our timeline, we need to think about the problem at hand. We now want to create a detail card for each of our goals we have not tabled. In this, you will want to spend time thinking about the over arching goal, what it will take to accomplish or what is required to do such a thing. For example, reading 40 books, you can calculate this as 3.33 books/month. Now we can ask how realistic this goal is for us, or if it should be changed.
The main goal of this step is to try to put into perspective what we would need to do to accomplish this goal. What limits we want to put on the goals; spend time thinking about what the success of this goal looks like.
Estimating Time Commitment and Order
Now we will work on ordering our project using the understanding of our goals and what it means to them to be achieved. I break this part down into 3 distinct steps.
Assumed Time Commitment (ATC)
Our ATC is important for figuring out how things stack up in the world of quick wins vs. marathons. You might ask how “Get Healthy” has less of a time commitment than creating a budget.
First thing, for some long term, passive, goals we might want to only consider the time it takes to create the system, or daily time requirement. Using our Overview of Steps (OoS) our budget goal requires doing an in-depth review of bank statements, building a budget, and finding/interviewing financial advisers. This is in comparison to the “get healthy” goal where we are going to find a nutritionalist, get a gym membership, and “take it one day at a time”.
When comparing the OoS for each goal while Getting Healthy will be a lifelong endeavor, it set up cost seems at least on the surface to be less than creating a budget.
What happens when getting healthy actually ends up taking more time than a budget? Nothing, we make our adjustments, but this process is not about being accurate, it’s about getting you unstuck a moving. We will be wrong on our estimates, just keep moving and work towards a better you.
Level of Desire (LoD)
The naming really tells us a lot about this. For this step, do not worry about ATC or the OoS; order the goals in order of what excites you most to get done to what sounds too most boring.
If a couple of items tie, flip a coin or whatever you need to do to not be blocked. This should be one of the quickest steps in this process. Let your heart take the lead on this step.
Estimated Time Commitment (ETC)
Let me reiterate what I have already said above. Do NOT let the fear of estimating the wrong time block you!
On this step, we want to take our knowledge from OoS and ATC to figure out how long goals might take to complete. I like to put them in just 4 buckets 1, 3, 6, 12 moths. If a goal is going to take 2 months, throw it in the quarter bucket. Most goals will take longer than you are expecting, so going one higher won’t hurt you.
This step really helps put things into perspective for us on if we are over worked. However, using our ATC table even having 3 goals that will take a full year we might see those goals will probably only take a small part of each week they just have to be worked on during the full year.
At this point, if you feel there is too much on the board, move things over to “tabled for next year.”
This is also a good area to let time limitations, something like “Make an App” is open-handed and at a large risk of scope creep. Here we decide to limit our time on this goal to one quarter. Whatever app we decide to make for this goal will need to be small enough to fit into this timeline. As they say, meetings will inflate to take up the full scheduled time. Goals are also similar, large, open-ended goals, with no completion date, have a habit of never getting done.
Let this tool be your leverage to keep goals down to earth and keep scope creep out of your personal growth. If at the end of making the app you have numerous things you would like to add, put in a “change order.” See if you might be able to make a mid-year goal change down the road, but this goal is set.
Visualizing our year
Our timeline is easy and quick to create thanks to our last step.
Here, we can use our LoD to help order goals that will take less than a year to create. I am a visual person, so having this also helps me see if I’m going to be overwhelmed at the number of things I am asking myself to get done.
This is also a great place to consider timing of goals. Something like “Setup Garden” should probably not take place in February if you live up north like I do.
Again, if at this point you feel you might have too much going on, table a/n item/s for next year.
Monthly Execution of Our Goals
Before the start of each month, you should create a new area where each goal of that month has a place to be worked on.
I like to create a sticky-note to-do list where the items I intend to get done that month for each goal are detailed. At the start of the month, this will not be a complete list. Items are continually updated any time I have a new to-do that needs to be done. If I don’t intend to get it done this month and the goal is a multi-month goal, I start the next month’s list and put the to-do in that new area.
For a longer-term goal, you might consider making your to-do list for the full time you estimated the project to take. This way you can plan how you see the next few months playing out and make sure you are working on enough each month to try to meet your estimated deadline.
You can also work on this in a to-do app like “reminders.” I prefer having it all in one place.
Things change
Things will not always go to plan. Maybe a goal ended up not working out this time around, and you decide it is best to table the goal for another time. In this case, I recommend keeping the data you already created for the goals. Just gray out every cell related to the goal, move the goal to “tabled for next year”, and I like to add a red sticky to the OoS sticky with an explanation of what happened.
This way, when I am reviewing things at the end of the year, I can reevaluate this goal and figure out if the next year is a good year to try this goal again.
Thanks for Reading
As we have talked about earlier in this post, this system is not perfect, things are estimated and assumptions will be made. That is the nature of goal setting. However, with a process in place, we can work on growth in a way that will help us see the accomplishment of many more goals than if we are working in an unorganized manner.
This is my first year giving this process a try. I’m sure things will grow and change in time. I hope a look into my system gives you ideas and a spark to aid in creating the “you”, you have always wanted to be.
Although there are many virtual planning boards out there, I created mine with “Freeform” Apple’s new software added to iOS/iPadOS 16.2 and macOS 13.1.
There is no way to really share a template outside just sharing a collaboration link. For now, this can be found here, if this link become problematic I might have to remove the document.