Musings on law, tech, chess & other topics by a geek

I find that when I let people know what my goals are I am much more likely to reach them. My community of friends become more supportive of my efforts and reinforces the steps I am making to accomplishing the goals. With this post I am taking this idea of sharing goals to a more public level and asking for your help to keep me on track. I will be updating and revising this post at least once a month with progress and challenges that arise. Each post will contain 12 goals; three short term, three medium term, three long term and three other. Short term goals can be done in 10 or less days. Medium term is 10 to 30 days. Long term is 30 days to a year. While other goals have their own dates.

While I find goals very useful as a long term motivation, I also find that it can be difficult to accomplish longer term goals without a more concrete short term strategy. Two years ago, while working for CC my roommate Tim introduced me to an amazing system GTD. GTD recommends taking each goal and creating a next action item to make longer goals more manageable. I will be adding the the next steps to each item on the list.

Short term goals:
1. Visit Jigsaw Renaissances‘ new physical site
Next Action Item: Watch email Friday & Monday for a key holder to show up.

2. Launch New in IP – a video blog where I can can cover IP issues from a FC/Pirate view.
Next Action Item: Make first Vlog post on the site over takedowns.

3. Blog or Vlog (video blog) at least 5 times a week.
Next Action Item: post over chess goals tomorrow

Medium term goals:
1. Read a book for Fun! (I graduated from law school a year ago and have only read 2 books for fun since then. I use to read a fun book a month or even a week. I need to get back in the habit of having fun reading)
Next Action Item: Choose a book to read for fun and Read the 1st chapter.

2. Finish reading and review Confessions of a Public Speaker- Scott sent me a copy months ago and interviewed me during the writing. I have been meaning to finish this for too long as it is on one of my favorite topics.
Next Action Item: Read chapter 6&7

3. Vlog (video blog) about a personal topic – maybe health care, dyslexia, activism, tattoos or ….
Next Action Item: Choose a topic and outline the vlog post.

Long term goals:
1. Teach 2 more class – I loved teaching @ the iSchool last quarter and want to teach more.
Next Action Item: target three programs for class pitches.

2. Give an Ignite talk on Dyslexia. (i did this for NTEN last year to a small audience of less then 100 and got a great response. I this a topic I have a lot to say about and would love to share with a wider audience. Unfortunately I did not get video of that talk. PS if you know anyone with video of the 2009NTC Ignite talk please ping me!)
Next Action Item: Find out when the next Ignite session is.

3. File NPO paper work for FFIP. FFIP has been a volunteer project for 5 years now and it needs to take the next step into being an NPO so that it can provide more opportunities for the people that give time to the org.
Next Action Item: Identify and reach out to 3 possible board members

Other Goals
1. Publish a wikileaks paper. I am speaking for the third time on wikileaks later this month, I should really finish the paper and get it submitted to some law reviews.
Next Action Item: Contact my editor and get moving on a final draft.

2. Couch surf in PDX.
Next Action Item: Choose dates to go down and see people.

3. Make chess master title by June 15 2012. I have been out of competitive chess for about 5 years now. I quit when I started law school and miss it a lot. This year I started teach chess classes at Gwen’s School it reminded me of how great the game is.
Next Action Item: start a study plan and post it to the web.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and help my along these paths. Now off to start on the Action Items!

Disclosure: I have recently joined Powel’s partner program.  If you decide to buy GTD or Confessions of a Public Speaker using the links in this post I get paid  7.5 percent of the sale price.  I will be doing a short post about the partnership program and why I choose Powel’s Books in the near future.