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Resolutions for 2007?
JoeCommodore asks: "It's that time of year where many of us review our last year and look at ourselves in the mirror, checkbook balance, and/or social schedule (EPs, stats, and skills, for those who relate to RPGs) and make resolutions to improve ourselves. One of my resolutions is to stop my increasing diversionary tactics when working on my many projects at home. You know, instead of working on some problem problem I turn to the internet (Slashdot), games, snacks, and so on. Either I need to get better at controlling my diversion habits or turn them them into something positive. So what have you thought of doing for yourself in 2007?"
This year, rather than make specifics, I went with one thing: be more awesome.
Crazy, right? In the last year, I started doing everything I needed to do to have a great life. This year, I want to keep doing those things and stay consistent. And even try a few new things. No point in making concrete goals -- the goal is to be more awesome in everything that I do.
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Resolutions are meaningless. Oh, I'll get around to installing Linux and configuring X or whatever desktop environment that's flavor of the month and finally abandon Windows. That stack of culturally important books will be consumed by the end of the year. Sure I'll propose to my girlfriend of three years once I have enough money to support us. The check is in the mail. I'll see you in church.
Why not look at what actually got done during the year rather than make unreasonable expectations?
Reading through the current comments, I see financial suggestions, 'organise your time' suggestions, 'clear out unwanted stuff' suggestions, and the obligatory 'don't waste time posting to /.' jokes. And in Soviet Russia, resolutions make you!
Well, I have four slightly different resolutions to what has been suggested. They have been on the cards for a while now, but I figured I'd bite the bullet and actually give them a shot in 2007. With no further prelude, here they are:
At the moment I do waste *far* too much time on inconsequential diversions (hi,
I don't need to justify this (I have my own reasons for wanting to learn other languages), but I would strongly recommend taking up a foreign language. Barry Farber has a very good method for teaching yourself (and his words are quite motivating too) in a way that will meet your goals (eg mastery of a single language Vs casual chat in a few).
Again, I have my own reasons for learning to play music (guitar and keyboard); and I would similarly encourage people to try it - no matter what stage of life you are and no matter what experience you have.
In highlighting these resolutions my point is to suggest you do something that serves two purposes: 1) it should tax you - the brain loves a challenge (admittedly I might be preaching to the choir with that one); and 2) it should be quite different from what you do for a living. For example, if you are a software engineer / codemonkey by trade, I don't think you will gain much by making a resolution 'contribute more code to OSS projects' (though of course you should feel free to do so). Take up something more esoteric instead: painting, music, or a language.
Just my 2 bits
If all you have is a grenade, pretty soon every problem looks like a foxhole -- MightyYar
YES!
I was laid off five years ago on my 49th birthday and haven't been able to find a tech job since. My income dropped from over a $100K/year to under $20k (some years under $10k). After we were married (almost 30 years ago now) my wife and I started putting 10% of our gross income into various forms of savings. As we got raises we took part of the raise and put the rest in savings. When I was laid off we were putting nearly 30% of our combined gross into a mixture of pre and post tax savings. Over the last 30 years we have both had extended periods of unemployment and sometimes we did have to stop saving just to cover our locked in expenses. But... we own our cars, own our house, and are able to maintain a comfortable life style while I retrain and start a new career. What little debt we have is due to a decision to keep investments in place so long as the return on those investments is greater than the interest on our debt.
Save, save, save... you never know when you will need the money.
Stonewolf
P.S.
No matter what you may believe, you *can* live on 10% less than you currently make.
I'm not saying there's any error in calling "graphic novels" "comic books", especially since I would say that "graphic novel" is a subset of "comic books". In my opinion, the only error in such would be if one were specifically attempting to separate the sub-genre for some reason, so "graphic novel" would merely make more sense than "comic book".
Remember, open source is free as in speech, not free as in bear.
Since I haven't logged in this weekend, I hope that you find this... Please keep in mind that all debt is not all bad. Even the richest guys in the world have debt. It's BAD debt that you need to avoid (especially credit cards). I would even put car loans into that same category for the purpose that the car depreciates as soon as you drive off the lot. However, with a house if you get a loan for 200k at 5% intrest over 30 years in comparison to investing 200k in cash at 10-15% over the same time frame (general stock market trend) you will be much further off in the long run. That's not to mention the tax right-off on the intrest every year and the fact that the house is considered an asset, which will hopefully appreciate or keep its value.