Prioritizing tasks/goals and then focusing on them is hard. At least it is for me. I recently went through a focus/goal setting session where I had to think about what things are important to me. Maybe it’s paying for your kids’ college tuition, so they aren’t saddled with debt on graduation. Maybe it’s to reach a certain salary or title. Maybe it’s spending more time with family. I went through all types prioritizing what mattered most to me. From professional, personal, health, spiritual, emotional, all the things/goals.
I know I can’t achieve all my goals at the same time, so once I had them written down, I sorted them by importance. I wanted to target the top 3 to 5 that I think I can move the needle on in the next 6 months to a year. Then for each, I defined sequential goals within them. As an example, if a goal was to be 50 pounds lighter, then those subgoals would be “lose 10 pounds,” “lose 20 pounds,” etc. Once I had all those subgoals defined, I thought about what actions I could take to achieve them. To continue with the example, to “lose 10 pounds,” I could exercise for a minimum of 30 minutes 6 days a week, and meal-prep breakfasts & lunches for all weekdays. Those “actions” turned into daily tasks for me to accomplish, knowing that if I do them, I should progress and hopefully achieve the subgoal.
This was the first week of being intentional to do each of my daily tasks and it was a rousing success. Only one goal wasn’t done at all this week. That goal? Washing the dishes each day. I’m still recovering from a bad cold (that my wife & I believe was actually a mild case of Covid) and she has prevented me from doing it because she doesn’t want my germs all over the dishes. So, maybe next week. 😁
It’s hard to stay focused on doing only those things that really matter to you. How do you make sure you’re doing things that are moving you or your project forward? How do you manage distractions or tasks that come up that don’t move you closer to those goals? Hit me up on Twitter (X) @michaeljolley or join the Build with Me Discord and let me know your tips/thoughts.
See you next week! Michael
permalinkInteresting Finds
- How to sabotage your salary negotiations efforts before you even start: It’s a tough job market out there, but you definitely don’t want to earn less than you should. This was a great read on how to not sabotage your negotiations.
- DevToys: If you’re a developer on a Windows machine, you need DevToys. It’s an app that provides so many tools for developers that consolidates all those things you Google for regularly, like cron parsers, tons of encoders/decoders, JSON/XML/etc. formatters, and hash, UUID, Lorem ipsum generators. That’s not all either.
- Bun is officially version 1.0: Don’t let the fact that the Bun logo looks more like an onion fool you, this Node.js & Deno replacement is amazing. Transpilers for TypeScript, JSX, and more are built in, as are bundlers & test libraries. Not to mention, build speeds are insanely more performant than Node & Deno.
- Turbo 8 is dropping TypeScript: Big news in the tech world this week when DHH announced that Turbo was dropping TypeScript. This has been a very controversial decision and time will tell if this hurts the Turbo community. One thing’s for sure, if you’re a TypeScript dev in that world, your work just got a little less nice.
- Cursor - The AI-first Code Editor: If you’re using VS Code, you may love Cursor. Cursor is a fork of VS Code with AI built in. That means all your settings, extensions, etc. transfer seamlessly, but now you can ask your IDE to write code for you, add tests for a function or ask where in your code “X” happens. It will be interesting to see how VS Code adapts to adopt some of this functionality
- GitHub Universe is back!: Coming in hot this November, it’s GitHub Universe. I always enjoy seeing what new things GitHub has in store for developers. I’m anticipating some enhancements to CoPilot, and perhaps upgrades to Codespaces.
- Node.js 20 is moving in the right direction: It’s clear that alternatives like Deno & Bun are causing Node.js to put more effort into developer experience. Node.js 20 has caught my eye in a big way with built-in .env file support.
- No more WordPad on Windows!?: Honestly, I don’t remember the last time I opened WordPad. If it’s on my Windows machine, I wouldn’t know it. I always choose NotePad. When’s the last time you used WordPad.
- FreeCodeCamp’s Prompt Engineering Course: Ania Kubow put together a great YouTube course on prompt engineering. If you’re interested in learning how to better prompt ChatGPT or other LLMs, this is a great starting point.
permalinkBuild with Me Weekly
This week in the Build with Me Community:
permalinkThankful Thursday Highlights
I should get a retainer today! Should fill in the gaps so I don’t have to cover my mouth when I speak.
— Mary Jo
Fans. Thankful for fans! We don’t have home AC units! 🥵
— Chris
I’m thankful I managed to complete my fifth trail half marathon without any major soreness.
— JWalter