Taking a page from Will Larson's blog and his year in review postings I decided to start tracking my own goals. I haven't decided on the actual timelines for these goals but based on what I am putting here today these 12 month to 6 year goals.

• Obtain a Doctor of Engineering (in progress): I just graduated a Master of Science and it has inspired me to go on and obtain a doctorate. Doing a PhD while working turned out to be a difficult path to navigate. In researching PhD options for working professionals I came across D.Eng which is designed for working professionals and focuses on applied research. I have applications into John's Hopkins and University of Michigan with an intention of starting in the summer or fall of 2025.
• Write more (in progress): This blog is one of a few examples of my efforts to just write more. I do a fair amount of writing during my day-to-day work but this is intended to hone my creative and research writing. My goal for 2025 is have something officially published whether that be a journal article or trade magazine. I'm not counting the book chapter I recently co-authored as that has been a few years in the making and just got published this year.
• Accelerate my Leadership Development (in progress): My career goal at this point is to pursue executive leadership. This goal is about increasing my focus on my personal leadership development through more reading or formal education with a focus on executive leadership.
• Improve public speaking (in progress): This is an area I feel I still could use a lot of work in. My goal here is to speak at a minimum of 2 conferences per year.
• Code more (in progress): When I moved into leadership in 2015 I went completely "hands off" from systems administration and coding. This goal is about learning new languages and modern infrastructure by working on small personal projects or working directly with the engineering team at my day job. I have been toying with the idea of "closing an open source bug a month" personal challenge, 2025 seems like a good year to actually do this.

Looking forward to writing my 2025 year in review!