I’m a veteran PHP developer with over 5 years of experience under my belt, but this day in age versatility and a wide range of skills is what keeps you fresh and desirable in the marketplace. This year I have a number of professional goals that I’d like to achieve. They include the following:

  • Build a site using the Ruby on Rails Framework - I’d like to build something, anything on RoR just so I have that as a tool in arsenal. I’m not a huge fan of the way the RoR framework works, but I owe it to myself to at least give it a shot.
  • Learn a PHP Framework - I want to learn the Zend Framework as well as CakePHP just to make sure I’m not missing something major here. I probably should have looked into these things a few years back, but I digress.
  • Build a useful desktop application - I’ve recently spent a lot of time doing desktop development for my employer and I am really getting excited about some of the things that are coming down the pipe for the .NET Framework and I’d like to spend a little more time in the desktop world this year.

I recently read a blog post over on Mark Cuban’s blog that was talking about productivity and I was inspired so much that I decided to go ahead and set a few goals for myself. The post was also very inspiring as it reminded me that productivity and success are not measured in how much time you spend at work, but how many of your goals you complete.

I think far too often people confuse the mere act of being at the office for getting work done. The reality is that I do this too and we should really ask ourselves “How do you know if you are getting things done if you haven’t set any goals?”