This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Ruby Buzz by Robby Russell. Original Post: Managing your Life the Agile Way in 2009 Feed Title: Robby on Rails Feed URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/RobbyOnRails Feed Description: Ruby on Rails development, consulting, and hosting from the trenches... Latest Ruby Buzz Posts Latest Ruby Buzz Posts by Robby Russell Latest Posts From Robby on Rails

We’re just a few days away from 2009 and it’s that time when we all start looking back at the last year and set goals for the coming new year. I felt like sharing some of my thoughts going forward on how I’m planning to approach the new year and hope that you’ll share yours.

Historically, I’ve never been a huge fan of New Years Resolutions because my attempts were always too big to successfully measure. The goals themselves weren’t inherently poorly thought-out, it’s just that it’s really easy to make a list of personal targets, without putting a lot of thought about how you’re going to achieve those. It’s often too easy to forget about your goals or to allocate enough time to really think about how to get from A to B. So, New Years Resolutions haven’t been a huge hit for me and it’s been too easy for me to pass the buck towards the usual suspects (lack of time, energy, too much work, general life changes, health, etc.)

So, for 2009… I’m going to try something different by focusing on a set of best practices that I can use on a daily-basis. I suppose that my main goal is to not place too much emphasis on any specific targets and instead place the responsibility on myself to follow these best-practices and see what good (or bad) comes of it.

Rephrasing my internal conversation from, “What did I achieve this last year?” to “Am I doing things the best that I can?” I am confident that the answer will usually be, “not likely.” I do believe that through this subtle change in context, I’ll be better apt to self-evaluate how (and why) I am doing the things that I do and refactor accordingly. If we’re not consistently Refactoring ourselves (as we do with our code), we’re going to retain a lot inefficiencies in our personal and work lives, which make it difficult for us to quickly respond to changes and opportunities.

Our life (personal and work) is just another project that we manage. Much of methodologies that we spend learning about and adopting can easily be translated to these other areas of our lives.

So as I brace myself for 2009, I find myself asking, “how can I lead a more Agile life?”

I’d love to hear how you’re adopting best-practices inspired by Agile methodologies in your life and I promise to share mine over the coming year.