Tag Archives: New Year

Making It Work in 2023

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We’re back to the first of the year once again. January 1, 2023 is a Sunday which feels somewhat subdued. That stands in contrast to the rest of the year that felt like a rollercoaster always one heartbeat away from careening out of control. As is the tradition, I’ll look at the things I wanted to spend more time working on in 2022:

  • More Analytical Content: I have to honestly give myself a no on this one, at least from a technical perspective. I did spend some time making analytical content for my Tomversations series. However, the real difference in analytical content came from my posts about leadership and more “soft skill” focused ideas. I’ve gotten more comments about those posts than anything in 2022 and I couldn’t be more proud.
  • Saying No to More Things: This is the part where I would insert an animated GIF of someone laughing manically. While I did make strides in telling people that I have way too much going on to take care of one extra thing the reality is that I took on more things that I probably should have. That’s something that I definitely do need to change but the real hard part isn’t saying No. It’s making it stick.
  • Getting In Front of Things: This one actually was one that I had the hardest time with. I was able to work on some of this in my Tech Field Day job but it was my blog that suffered the most. I wanted to start spending more time thinking about post topics earlier in the week so I wasn’t always posting on Fridays. The irony is that toward the end of the year I did manage to get some posts out on other days. I just did it because I was having severe writer’s block and I was late on several posts. In fact, I technically missed a post in 2022 for the first time in twelve years. I think it’s more a reflection on how important it is to keep your eye on the prize as you create content. I don’t have metrics like those on YouTube channels driving me to put out 2-3 videos a week. Instead I really have to make sure I’m aware of what needs to happen to keep the content coming out.

2022 was a year of getting things back to a version of normal but it also was a year of me trying to implement things that didn’t go the way I wanted. That seems to be the challenge for all good intentions. So let’s look at what I want to do in 2023 to keep myself from struggling the way that I did before.

  • Keeping Track of Things: I knew I was in for trouble when I stopped writing things down two weeks into the year. My plans for bullet journaling seemed to evaporate because I tried to make changes that didn’t stick. So I’m resetting it back to Square Zero. I’m writing everything down somewhere and I’m not going to forget it this time. I know where my notes are and I know what I need to do to keep myself on track. The difference between writing it down when I do it and just trying to remember to do it is very, very stark. So rather than thinking I have a good memory and forgetting that I don’t I’m not leaving anything up to chance.
  • Creating Evergreen Content: During my workouts this year I’ve spent more time listening to podcasts like Hidden Brain and Huberman Lab which focus on behavior and the brain. Why? Because I’m fascinated to learn why we think and do the things we do. When you couple that with my outside work in the Wood Badge leadership program I think I’m starting to see the value of creating content more around skills and leadership instead of just talking about the next iteration of wireless or SD-WAN. That doesn’t mean my technical writing is going to go away. It does mean that I’m going to try to sprinkle in more posts about mentoring, leadership, and creating a culture that will help you pay dividends unlike ATM, HD-DVD, and several other forgotten technologies.
  • Ensuring Intentionality: This one feels a bit nebulous but that’s because it’s hard to pin down what being intentional really means to everyone. I’ve used the world a bit more in the latter half of 2022 when discussing certain aspects of my job and it seems to have stuck with others. Intentionality to me means making sure that I’m focused on ensuring outcomes happen. A lack of intentionality is like gathering the ingredients for a cake, assembling them on a table, and then hoping that a cake somehow magically appears. You have to combine the ingredients in the proper amounts and make things happen to create a cake. Even with all the right conditions you still need to do the work to make things happen. And if you think that’s an easy thing to do take a look around in your office and tell me just how many people that you work with that aren’t intentional in what they do.

Tom’s Take

One of the things that I can look back on over the past few years is that my first of the year posts have reflected the challenges that I’ve faced. The shifting landscape of content has forced me to look at what I create. The challenges of a world that went into hibernation for a while have changed the way I look at how I get my work done. Even the growth that I’ve experienced over the years has shifted my thinking. I won’t be the next big YouTube star. My gift is in writing. And focusing on that as my starting point for the year to come is going to help me make things work.

Time For Improvement

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Welcome to 2020! First and foremost, no posts from me involving vision or eyesight or any other optometrist puns for this year. I promise 366 days free of anything having to do with eyeballs. That does mean a whole world of other puns that I’m going to be focusing on!

Now, let’s look back at 2019. The word that I could use to describe it was “hectic”. It felt like everything was in overdrive all year long. There were several times that I got to the end of the week and realized that I didn’t have any kind of post ready to go. I’m the kind of person that likes to write when the inspiration hits me. And instead I found myself scrambling to write up some thoughts. And that was something I told myself that I was going to get away from. So we’re going to call that one a miss and get back to trying to post on a day other than Friday.

That also means that, given all the other content that I’ve been working on with Gestalt IT that I’m going to have to schedule some time actually working on that content instead of hoping that some idea is going to fly out of the blue at 11:30pm the night before I’m supposed to put a post up. The good news is that also means that I’m going to be upping the amount of content that I’m consuming for inspiration. Since I spent a good chunk of they year going on a morning walk it meant that I had a lot more time to consume podcast episodes and wash those ideas around. I’m sure that means that I’m going to find the time and the motivation to keep turning out content.

Part of the reason for that is because of something that Stephen Foskett (@SFoskett) told me during a call this past year. He said that I’ve been consistently turning out content for the last 9 years on a weekly basis. I’m proud of that fact. Sure, there’s been a couple of times in the last year or two when I’ve missed and had to publish something on a Saturday or the Monday after. But overall I’m happy with the amount of content that I’ve been writing here. And because you all keep on reading it I’m going to keep writing it. There’s a lot of value in what I do here and I hope you all continue to value it too.

IA Writing

Last January I switched over to using IA Writer for my posts on my iPad. I wrote primarily on that platform all year long. I can say that It’s very handy to be able to grab your mobile device and hammer out a post. Given that I can do split screen and reference my hand-written notes from briefings it’s a huge advantage to keeping my thoughts organized and ready to put down on paper.

Between IA Writer for writing, Notability for taking notes during briefings, and Things to keep me on track for the posts that I need to cover I’ve gotten my workflow down to something that works for me. I’m going to keep tweaking it for sure but I’m happy that I can get information to a place where I can refer to it later and have reminders about what I need to cover. It makes everything seamless and consistent. There are still some things that I need to use Microsoft Word to write, but those are long-form projects. Overall, I’m going to keep refining my process to make it better and more appropriate for me.

Ultimately, that’s a big goal for me in 2020 and something that I’ve finally realized that I do regularly without conscious thought. If you’ve read any books on process or project management you’ve probably heard of kaizen, the Japanese concept of continuous improvement of processes. It’s something that drives companies like Toyota to get better at everything they do and never accept anything as “complete”.

I’ve read about kaizen before but I never really understood that it could mean any improvement before. I had it in my head that the process was about change all the time. It wasn’t until I sat down this year and analyzed what I was doing to find that I’m always trying to optimize what I do. It’s not about finding shortcuts for the sake of saving time. It’s about optimizing what I do to save effort and the investment of time. For me it’s not about spending 8 hours to write a script that will automate a one-time 30-minute task. It’s about breaking down the task and figuring out how many times I’ll do it and how I need to optimize the process to spend less time on it. If the answer is a script or an automation routine then I’m all for it. But the key is recognizing the kaizen process and putting a name to my behavior.

Tom’s Take

2020 is going to be busy. Tech Field Day is going to be busy. I’m going to be at a lot of events checking out what’s going on and how to make new things happen. I’m also going to be writing a lot. And when you factor in my roles outside of work with Wood Badge and a trip to Philmont, NM with my son for a high adventure trip with his scout troop you can see I’m going to be quite occupied even when I’m not writing. But I’m not going to remove anything from my process. As I said above, I’m going to kaizen everything and fit it all in. That might mean having a couple of posts queued up when I’m in the back country or taking some extra time after dinner to write. But 2020 is going to be a big year of optimizing my workflows and improving in every way.