New Year’s Resolutions: Organize, Rethink, Focus, and Succeed

Time off has allowed me to re-establish my objectives. It gave me time to prepare for the upcoming year.

Neglect caused severe disorganization in my personal workspace. Disorganization at and around my desk is distracting enough to encourage me to find an alternate place for work. I am finding places like local coffee shops, which tend to host a lot of people, less distracting. Managing a development effort requires a lot of organization. Each developer’s workspace is a good place to start organizing a team. By dealing with organization at a lower level, I gain a better position in managing the organization of a team overall. Organizing my workspace now will set me on track for fulfilling one New Year’s resolution: maintain organization.

Aside from organization, the lessons that I received in 2005 have brought up problems that need resolution. I have found a fault within myself, which has hampered many development efforts. My problem is perfectionism. As a young inexperienced programmer, I strove for designing and implementing ideal software systems. Reaching for general solutions that are highly extensible and reusable increased the complexity of many software systems’ designs. Severe fixation on achieving an ideal implementation caused projects to be intractable.

I need to rethink my approach to software system design. There are several constraints that must be observed when developing software. Software quality must be maximized under the constraints set by time, requirements, and available talent. I will continually rethink my development processes instead of blindly moving along never-ending quests toward perfect systems. Recognizing the marginal utility gained with additional time used in a particular cycle will help me rethink the process. Minimizing my idealism will allow me to rethink and reconsider solutions that are less than optimal.

I have many interests that span the computing field. They include interactive computer graphics, artificial intelligence, network protocols, and system administration. Maintaining focus on the procurement of medium and large-scale Web 2.0 Applications is one resolution that I have set for myself. Every piece of knowledge that I choose to acquire shall be useful in the development of Internet applications. All experimentation with products and technologies shall aid in forming better decisions on the implementation of applications for the Internet. Because it is very important in becoming the best in a particular field, I shall remain resolute on maintaining focus.

Next year is special, because it is the first year for which I have made resolutions. It is also special, because it is the year that I set a resolution for myself to achieve success. Success for me includes success for others. I will receive success only after my team is successful in delivering success to our clients. I depend on the success of my team, and my team depends on me to succeed. This high degree of interdependence makes success important. Accomplishing success is my primary New Year’s resolution with all others that I have made to support it.

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