Khai Pham

Freelance .NET Core Developer

3 minute read

Starting my own developer blog and enhancing my github profile are examples of my personal goals that are long overdue. If you’re reading this, hooray for me, because this means I’ve made some progress because I haven’t blogged before :).

I find it difficult sometimes to be disciplined to put the time and effort to work on my personal software development goals. I say to myself, I’m going to do X or build Y but then in the end I don’t always achieve my goals because I prioritize other things over working on those goals.

So why did I not achieve my goals? Were my goals too vague or too big? Were there other goals or things that had more priority and were more relevant? Is there a lack of motivation to put in the effort ? Do I keep postponing because there is no dead line or accountability?

Well because I haven’t achieved those goals yet, it seems that I do need to change my approach and start reflecting on what I can do differently. One of the reasons why I’m starting this blog is not only to share knowledge, improve my technical communication writing skills or improve my self branding as a freelance developer, but it’s also to make myself accountable for my goals. By writing down my goals explicitly I can later reflect on it and make myself accountable for the results.

But there’s more needed than just making myself accountable to achieve my goals and that is to make sure that my goals are clear, structured and actionable. There’s a framework called SMART that ensures goals are realistic, measurable and time-bound which increases the likeihood of success.

This has worked well for me in the past but I haven’t applied it anymore for a long time since I was not required to do it anymore when I went freelancing, let’s put this into practise again.

Goal 1 - I want to start a developer blog and regularly publish content.

SPECIFIC

Create and launch a developer blog focused on tips and tricks in general, with a primary focus on .NET, software craftsmanship, and your opinions on software practices. Use the blog to share knowledge, improve technical communication skills and establish a personal brand as an outstanding skilled developer.

MEASURABLE

  • Publish 1 blog post every 2 months, resulting in a total of 6 blog posts by the end of the year.
  • Track performance such as views and shares.

ACHIEVEABLE

  • Spend 2-4 hours per week writing blogs and thinking about topics to write about.

RELEVANT

  • Aligns with my aspirations for personal growth ( sharing knowledge and technical communicative writing skills ) and personal brand development.

TIME-BOUND

  • New blog website needs to run before end of January and it needs to go live with one blog post.

Goal 2 - I want to build a strong github profile for personal branding and knowledge sharing

SPECIFIC

Enhance my GitHub profile by creating three public repositories showcasing your expertise in .NET and software craftsmanship. Focus on sharing high-quality code, documentation, and insights that demonstrate my skills and commitment to the developer community.

MEASURABLE

  • Create three public repositories, one repository should be an .NET open source project that can be used as a nuget package. The other two can be examples or also a nuget package if there are good ideas to build.
  • Track stars, forks and follower count on github.

ACHIEVEABLE

  • Dedicate 4 hours per week to open source contributions and building these repositories. Start with simple idea’s in and make use of my .NET experticse to make impactful contributions. RELEVANT
  • Building a strong GitHub profile aligns with your goals to enhance your public developer image, share knowledge, and establish yourself as a thought leader in the .NET and software craftsmanship community.

RELEVANT

  • Aligns with my aspirations for personal growth. I’ll able to share knowledge and build on my branding in the developer community.
  • It gives me a chance to play around with other technology and solve other problems.

TIME-BOUND

  • Before Q1 finish one public repository with nuget package.
  • Before Q3 finish second public repository.
  • Before end of year finish third public repository.

So here is what already happened if you’re reading this:

  • I have created my own developer blog website
  • and I have written my first blog post

I also setup my self 2 well defined goals for this year that will help me with personal growth and branding. Not bad for a start, let’s get back to this post later this year and reflect on the results. If this works well for me, probably I should start every year with writing a post for my personal development goals for the year.

Stay tuned for more, the next posts will focus more on tech!

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