I just finished reading an inspiring blog post from 37signals’ Jared White. They had a company meeting where they asked everyone (1) What do you want to get better at? and (2) What do you want to learn? Jared had to say this…
I want to be a better teacher. I feel like I’ve been guilty of “drive-by teaching” over the last year or so. Someone will show their work and I’ll see an opportunity to make it better. But instead of spending time with that person to teach them what I see and how to make it better, I’ll drop some quick comments in Campfire (or IM or email) and then just move on. Things like “That sentence is a bit wordy – let’s try it this way” or “I think there are too many horizontal lines going on here… Can you remove some?” It’s not that the comments aren’t useful, it’s that I drop them and move on. That’s not teaching, that’s just critiquing and suggesting and that’s not going to help people get better. Teaching is about encouraging understanding — and patience. I want to be a better teacher. I’m going to be working on that this year.
I want to learn Rails. I’m surrounded with some of the best Rails programmers in the world, yet I’m mostly clueless when it comes to Rails. That’s gotta change. It’s time to get a good basic understanding of Rails. I’ve always enjoyed what little programming I’ve done. Be it back in the day with FileMaker (that’s barely programming, but it let me make programs I wanted), or what little PHP I knew. It’s a constant frustration for me that I can’t make my designs work on my own. I can design it, but I just don’t have the knowledge to hook it up. I also believe learning Rails will make me a better designer. First step: I signed up for the Getting Started with Ruby on Rails tutorial at Windy City Rails. I’m really looking forward to it.
Those are my two things. What are yours?
I thought about this and decided to write down my two things. I might start to make this a monthly or weekly ritual.
1. I want to get better at patience. I want to be more patient at work, with family, with friends. Often times (or all the time) I want to control things and move ahead without stopping or without building in time to reflect … to be patient. I will find myself expecting the kids to understand or to do things quickly which is pretty silly considering neither of them are even 3 yet. So I desire to be more patient. To stop, wait, rest and enjoy the journey.
Patience is the state of endurance under difficult circumstances, which can mean persevering in the face of delay or provocation without acting on annoyance/anger in a negative way; or exhibiting forbearance when under strain, especially when faced with longer-term difficulties. It is also used to refer to the character trait of being steadfast.Or which you can wait for things.
I’ve actually been “working” on this for a while … and I’m convinced it’s a lifetime journey. On a side note, I was fascinated (but not shocked) to find out all the major world religions greatly value patience.
2. I want to learn more about alcoholism. For those that don’t know me I come from a predominantly Irish blood line. Do I need to say more? 
Seriously, my life has been directly and indirectly affected by alcoholism. Because of this I’m quite sensitive when I witness people going through struggles with alcohol addiction. However, I’ve never really studied it outside of my personal experiences. So to start to learn more I’ve downloaded The Big Book to the Kindle and I’m going to start reading it. Once I finish I’m going to pick up another book on the 12 steps and then 1-2 well respected books on addiction (causes, breaking the chain, etc). Let me know if you have any suggested readings.
If you have some time please feel free to share your thoughts … what do you want to get better at? what do you want to learn?
**McFaddenPlace.com update: I’ve started a new category on McFadden Place titled “Mike’s Story”. This category will be filled with things that pertain to My Story and the Story I want to be telling. More to come on this subject but in the meantime I can say that three core books have been the catalyst to this journey. They are
Found a great place in Denver – 
Music typically plays a good role in my day. When cranking through work in the morning I enjoy my 
Wednesday I was running late all day so I had to make up my own Work Out of the Day and do it from home