Thirty Days, or Backlog as a Hobby

When someone asks me what my hobbies are, my usual answer is something like "Well, programming I guess, I like cooking, oh yeah, I play a little bit of Ukulele too!", which overall isn't a very exciting or convincing answer. I have a ton of things I do a little bit of, and even more that I want to make progress on. How can I not only get better at things, and FEEL like I've gotten better at something, or anything?

I've had a couple discussions recently about how to make progress on goals, both professionally and personally. From a work perspective, techniques like SCRUM focus on setting achievable and atomic goals in a timeframe that can be comprehended. On a personal level, a coworker shared a story about spending 15 minutes a day on something to see improvement. I've even seen a TED talk about it:

Matt Cutts: Try something new for 30 days

In the end, I feel like all of these techniques boil down to three important things:

• Picking a resonable goal in an achievable amount of time (instead of "get in shape", "learn German")
• Commitment to something, whether its:
  • Effort Oriented, i.e. X minutes a day until Y date, or
  • Goal Oriented, i.e. Achieve X by Y date
• Measuring and reflection on what was achieved, for better or for worse

A few days ago, I decided to commit to picking a few bite sized 30 day goals, and sticking with them for 30 days. Conveniently, tomorrow is the first of August, so here we go. Expect the first goal announcement later today.