Landmarking (2025)

The concept of a temporal landmark is something that we all intuitively understand, but rarely effectively use. The term itself was something I had never actually heard of until reading “When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing” by Daniel H. Pink. The book itself is a great read, and no big revelation, but temporal landmarks can be Mondays, end-of-months, birthdays, decades, or really anything to demarcate the passage of time. Used effectively, they can establish fresh starts, create periods to track progress and be a great tool for staying motivated.

One exercise I value is the idea that at year-end, I don’t make “resolutions”, but I like to do a look-back at what went well, what didn’t, and then set achievable goals going into the next year. This is much more effective than broad, non-specific platitudes. I think that since starting this practice, I’ve been able to make transformative changes and meet goals that several years ago I wouldn’t have thought feasible.

Looking Back

For a variety of reasons I won’t get into, I didn’t perform this exercise last year so I don’t have a meets/did not meets comparison against goals.

When I look back at this year, all I can think about is that this is the year I lost my father. There isn’t enough I can say about my dad and his impact on my life that I could articulate in a few sentences. His guidance, empathy and determination truly defined the textbook example of what a father should be, and I can’t understate how lucky I was to grow up with him as a role model and a dad.

One of the things I always remembered about my dad growing up was that he was always studying. I remember being present for his college graduation. I also remember him years later, converting his closet into a study room and locking himself in for hours a day to study for his professional engineer exam. I write a bit of studying, personal development, and have talked about tackling certifications but my dad had always shown me what working hard looked like, and he was able to do that while never sacrificing time with his family.

I could go on and on, there’s so much positive I can say about my father and what he meant…

…

In the early part of the year I was fortunate to be selected for some special projects for work that were stretch opportunities. I was able to put into practice many of the networking and automation skills I had learned, which was such an affirmation that the time I had been investing in my own development was well used. In fact to be able to look back at where this journey started about 5 years ago to now is just incredibly astonishing.

I was also able to pass two certification exams, the DEVASC 200-901 to achieve the Cisco Certified DevNet Associate, as well as the ENAUTO 300-435 to round out my Cisco Certified Network Professional, which is something I’ve been trying to achieve for years.

I also met most of my financial goals I had set out for myself this year, and I do think that I did a much better job of maintaining a more positive work-life balance, which is something I have struggled with in the past.

Looking Forward

And that brings me to my priorities I’ve set for this coming year. The overarching theme for this year is more of refinement rather than a complete change of behavior.

Get Organized

I’ve always felt as though I’m an organized person but in reality when I assess my workflows, I have the equivalent of drawers of post-it notes stashed digitally across numerous apps and my e-mail platforms are a mess. I’ve always admired people who have methodologies and systems of color-coding and organizing.

To attempt to rectify these shortcomings, I need to do the following:

• Establish a source-of-truth tasks app to ensure that I track to-do’s that are important
• Find a way to keep notes and record-keep in a long-term sustainable way.

Get Healthy

Now, I know this isn’t a S.M.A.R.T. goal on the surface, but this is in service of a larger change. The late 30’s really seems like this crossroad where you can tell who makes an effort to take care of themselves, and who does not. As much as possible, I’d like to put off lifetime medications as much as possible, and it sometimes feels as though the Standard American Diet works against that goal as much as possible. To that end, my goals are as follows:

• Shift to 50% Whole Food Plant Based Meals
• Limit non-social restaurant-fast food meals to once bi-weekly.
• Leverage the above goal to track progress and create data.

Professional Goals

Lastly as always I need to have a few professional deliverables as well. The idea here is to establish a personal brand as well as tangibly drive my career forward:

• Establish and maintain a social media presence.
• Progress into a new role by EOY 2025.
• Complete the AWS Advanced Networking Speciality by 05/2025.