Planning for 2010

Going into 2010 I've decided to do more planning. The number one thing I've learned in my professional career in the last three years is proper planning goes a long way. You just can't bring anything of size or merit together without a full idea of what your doing. I like to sum it up with the statement that you have to know what complete means for your project. You should also be clear about what the costs and benefits are. It's alright if the only benefit is fun!

This year I have made more progress than ever in some areas, and the consistant 'nothing' in others. I do have my subversion repository pretty well populated, and I have my personal wiki up (Confluence). What I don't have is anything really completed. This is a theme I have visited before. It lowers my value to employers that a lot of my personal projects have never received that final layer of polish. I'm very good at the planning, problem solving, execution and emergencies. But when it comes to putting the final details in place, I always seem to have wandered over to the next project already.

So moving forward, I want to set more clear goals for 2010. They need to be goals that can be broken down into smaller tasks that I can complete. So in an effort to be ready to go to GDC 2011 with a wonderful resume; I need 2010 to really count.

I'm getting married in August, with a long honeymoon. This will eat up a lot of the year, but we have also handled a lot of the planning already. We're way ahead. If I can stay ahead of my responsibilities, than I can have time for this. This is my passion and I finally feel I can throw myself at it. My debt is paid off and I have a great job (with a lot of offers for other jobs).

I just need a clear plan and realistic goals. I know for sure that I will be featuring more of my project work here. I want to make some posts and share some of what I'm doing. Be a little more relevant instead of just using this as a private notebook. This post will be followed not with my plan, but with my first post following that plan. The plan will go on my Wiki.