In January, I laid out some objectives for the first quarter of 2019. The first quarter is now complete, so let's look at whether I completed those objectives.
My objectives for the first quarter were divided into four (4) focus areas. Of these, I did quite poorly in one, and acceptably but not impressively in the other three.
The first area was applying for jobs and graduate school. I completed my graduate school application, though this took longer than I had really expected. (The trip to Texas in mid-February rather disrupted the process.) Preparing for the GRE was a significant factor there, but that too has been put behind me. Since completing that process, I've resumed near-daily job applications, which I hope to keep up into the second quarter.
The second area was my self-directed study, which I continued but largely failed to accelerate. I worked through a number of technical papers that had be cluttering my desktop, which is a relief. I did not, however, finish reading Rocket Propulsion Elements as I had hoped; about 150 pages still await me. My general reading schedule has picked up again since finishing First Man, and in the last week I found library resources available to me that will considerably improve the situation (see the last weekly review for Q1).
The third area was cleaning and organization, and here I have precious little success to report. I put a little time into this back in January, but since then have done almost nothing to sort and catalog my various physical possessions. This is looking like less of a priority as the odds of attending grad school increase, but I would still rather have everything in its place.
The final area was writing, where again I did alright but unimpressively. I managed to publish at least one proper blog post each month so far (including April already) but went little beyond this. I've also tried to write a little fiction again—I managed to outline a plot that didn't strain my own suspension of disbelief, but only wrote a few pages of the text itself. This is a rather recent development, mind you, so I may very well pick the project back up again in the coming days.
High-level take-aways from this quarter are oddly similar to last quarter: I need to allocate more time to achieving my goals. This is more possible than before, but still somewhat challenging.
I had some success experimenting with time-blocking, but this was largely exhausted on GRE preparations, so I should try that again to associate it with something more emotionally rewarding. Planning my day in advance lets me think about what I actually need to achieve (assuming everything goes well).
A related issue, which I noted last time, is over-extension. My Q1 Objectives had a narrower focus than the original set six months ago, but even so I felt underspecified in what I was actually supposed to be doing. Now, I've dealt with some lesser matters that won't be recurring should I chose to continue this experiment, but the general point stands: chose which goals actually matter and pursue those exclusively.
The final issue I've noticed is that my time horizon is too broad for meaningful planning even over a three month period. I may opt to start pursuing month-by-month objectives, either in stead of or in addition to this quarterly system.
