Bob McCune

Yes, 2007 is almost here. My greatest goal for the year is to simply be more productive. It seems that every year my list of tasks and responsibilities grows and it’s becoming more difficult to stay on top of everything. At any given moment I’ve got about 50 things that I need to do and at least 100 more that I’d like to do. Attempting to do everything ultimately leads to accomplishing very little. It’s time to introduce some new practices into my routine to help me juggle all of these tasks and still maintain my sanity.

To that end, I’m finally jumping on the GTD bandwagon. I’ve read David Allen’s Getting Things Done in the past, but only half-heartedly embraced his methods. Over the past few months I’ve been spending more time integrating tips from 43folders and Lifehacker into my routine, but think I need to follow a more structured methodology to truly achieve my goals. So I’m re-reading the GTD book and jumping in head first. I’m sure I’ll be blogging about my experiences with it over the year.

So, what are some of my specific goals for the year? Probably the biggest, from a professional standpoint, is to spend more time writing. I really intended to do more in 2006, but… well, see above. I’ve got a number of topics I’m considering and plan to get at least a couple done and published this year. I do have a goal of writing a book in the future, but that isn’t on the agenda for 2007.

I will spend some more time investigating JSF this year. From what I’ve seen, it’s still not the time to introduce it into my real work, but some of the changes in the Java EE spec and the introduction of a framework like Seam definitely makes it look more appealing. Spring MVC definitely provides a better fit for what I’m doing now and I’m looking forward to using some of the new features that have been introduced with version 2.0.

I’m going to continue spending some free time on the Semblance project. If you haven’t seen the project before, I’d definitely recommend checking it out. If you’re using Struts 1.x, it provides a very compelling add-on to enhance the value of your POJO model. It also offers a really nice XHTML templating framework that could be of use to a lot of projects. I hope to get my current project tasks completed and code checked soon and I’ll see what’s in store for 2007.

On the personal front, I definitely need to put a higher priority on my health. I don’t think my wife and kids are thrilled that I am resembling Kevin James from the King of Queens. The first major thing to drop from my diet is Mountain Dew… sweet, sweet Mountain Dew. If you own PepsiCo stock, you may want to get out now. I’ve also recently purchased a health club-quality Elliptical machine. I can’t promise that I’m going to use it every day, but at least I’ve taken away my last argument for not working out.

I’ll just finish by making a few predictions for 2007:

• The Minnesota Vikings will continue to suck.
• Rosie O’Donnell will still annoy me.
• The SNL D**k in a Box video will continue to crack me up.
• Apple will market something and I will have to buy two of it.
• Saddam Hussein will still be dead.

God bless and have a great 2007!