A Good Moment

Today I had the pleasant experience of telling a friend - who clearly doesn't read this blog! - that the Agile book which I'd apparently last mentioned to him many months ago when it was still just a kernel of an idea in my head was not only written, but was also in the process of going through some draft revisions. He was visibly surprised - and, I think, impressed! - to hear that it had gone that far, as I'm sure he probably thought that I'd abandoned the whole notion without ever doing anything about it.

That subsequently lead us into a discussion about setting goals, and how I've tended in recent years to only set goals that are completely under my control. As an example of what I mean, if my goal with this Agile book had been to sell 50,000 copies, that would clearly be a very difficult target for me to know that I could hit going into the exercise. Even if I wrote the absolute best Agile book that I had it in me to produce, it might still only sell 100 copies. There's just not a whole lot that I could do to make that higher number a reality, if there simply weren't enough people interested in buying it. Instead, the kind of goal that I prefer is the one where it's all up to me to accomplish something that's theoretically within my grasp. That first year of biking, when I tracked my trips and wanted to bike to work at least 100 times, was all on me to take from dream to reality. Similarly, with this book idea, it's all about actually writing it, and being happy with the results myself, that I'm always focused on.

Maybe that means that I'm a cop-out for not aiming ridiculously high, but I like goals that are achievable while still requiring me to stretch in some direction that interests me. After all, that's what Life's all about, right?