Managing your Life the Agile Way in 2009
12 comments Latest by replica tiffany Wed, 17 Mar 2010 07:19:51 GMT
We’re just a few days away from 2009 and it’s that time when we all start looking back at the last year and set goals for the coming new year. I felt like sharing some of my thoughts on how I’m aiming to approach the new year.
Historically, I’ve never been a huge fan of New Years Resolutions because my attempts were always too big to successfully measure. The goals themselves weren’t poorly thought-out, it’s just that it’s really easy to make a list of personal targets, without putting a lot of emphasis on how you’re going to achieve them. The biggest trouble that I’ve had with goals is allocating enough mental energy for implementation planning. (if only I had someone to and wireframe my life…)
Due to this, New Years Resolutions haven’t been a huge success for me. I’ve found it much too easy to pass the buck onto the usual suspects, which consist of: lack of time, energy, too much work, general life changes, health, etc.
So, for 2009… I’m going to try something different by focusing on a set of best practices that I can use on a daily-basis. I suppose that my main goal is to not place too much emphasis on any specific targets and instead place the responsibility on myself to follow these best-practices and see what good (or bad) comes of it.
By rephrasing my internal conversation from, “What did I achieve this last year?” to “Am I doing things the best that I can?” I am confident that the answer will usually be, “not likely.” I do believe that through this subtle change in context, I’ll be better apt to self-evaluate how (and why) I am doing the things that I do and refactor accordingly. If we’re not consistently Refactoring ourselves (as we do with our code), we’re going to retain a lot inefficiencies in our personal and work lives, which make it difficult for us to quickly respond to changes and opportunities.
Our life (personal and work) is just another project that we manage. Much of methodologies that we spend learning about and adopting can easily be translated to these other areas of our lives.
So as I brace myself for 2009, I find myself asking, How can I lead a more Agile life?
I’d love to hear how you’re adopting best-practices inspired by Agile methodologies in your life and I promise to share mine over the coming year.
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Nice post – it makes me wonder how I can improve my life techniques in the coming year.
I personally have benefited from doing yoga daily. Sometimes with work or travel it seems impossible to fit in but it can be done. I used to be stiff in the morning and stiffer after sitting in front of my computer all day. Now I’m comfortable, refreshed and able to produce more at work because of my time on the mat.
Just my 2 cents :) Good luck in 2009!
Oh wouldn’t it be grand if we could wire-frame our lives, or even better;
sudo gem install organise_lifeI like the idea of changing your focus to do the best you can at the tasks that are currently on your plate. Otherwise it can be too easy so say things like “Oh, I won’t pay much attention to that because it’s boring…” etc .
Best of luck with 2009.
Although I’m not big on terms or specific agile processes, I have just begun organizing my todo list into a kind of backlog with time estimates and I make a weekly list where I fit tasks into my time slots. I break time slots into various categories: work, personal, ... and do the same with the backlog. My time slots are blocks: morning, afternoon, evening.
What I’ve quickly realized is most things take longer but by constantly breaking down the tasks I do see things getting done, however small.
Will let you know in 6 mos how this is working.
@Zack:
Yeah, exercising your body as a whole can go a long way to improving your quality of life. I could spend more time exercising without a doubt.
Funny you should bring up ‘life refactoring’ at a time when my current (rails based) project is dedicated to exactly that.. noomii could be considered a tool for scheduled code reviews. We’re trying to take the most easily applicable elements from the nascent field of positive psychology and mix it with personal accountability and lifecoaching in the form of an online tool. It’s still very new (we just launched in October) but people are already using it successfully.
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In October, Oprah Winfrey revealed a very pricey thank-you gift from Jessica Seinfeld, who had been on the show pitching her cookbook. The gift? Twenty-one pairs of shoes, many of which media outlets identified as Louboutins.
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Funny you should bring up ‘life refactoring’ at a time when my current project is dedicated to exactly that.. noomii could be considered a tool for scheduled code reviews. teeth whitening
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