Tony Adams

I’m taking steps and feeling fine!

I set myself some challenges over the new year to get organized and stop fluffing around; I’m making good progress.

I’m a fan of lists and am using them to try and get it together and move on some things that I’ve been sitting on for way too long.

1. For the big things that seem to hang around forever, I’ve listed them and broken them into small, manageable steps. I’ve loaded those steps into my google calendar with reminders popping up so I can just focus on one step at a time.

2. For my blogging, I wrote down everything I do on a daily/weekly/ad hoc and time boxed it. Importantly, I asked a friend to critique the list. She now checks in on me to see now I’m doing. I’ve seen around 30 mins/day drop off the list just through this regular, systematic approach.

3. For exercise, I joined a wonderful online community at tribesports.com. So much encouragement, motivation and advice from around the world that it’s impossible not to be excited.

I’m using IT to help get me moving:
– google calendar for reminders
– Remember The Milk for my online task list, synced across phone, iPad and desktop. Free!
– spreadsheets to track my blog routine and checklist
– MapMyFitness.com to log my exercise statistics that I can then play with.
– Tribesports.com for encouragement, motivation and challenges.

I’m a work in progress and still on the journey but I’m happy to at least be heading in the right direction. Woot woot!!

Hmmm…I’ve been thinking about the professional doctorate as an alternative to the PhD – mainly because it doesn’t have such a big research component and is aligned to my profession. BUT there are pros and cons.

Pro – it’s aligned to my work, directly applicable, smaller research component.
Cons – more expensive, makes me an expert in one field only, doesn’t make me an expert in research which has a much wider reach.

Overall, I’ve decided to stay away from the professional doctorate – if I decide to lecture or tutor down the track, I will need a PhD to demonstrate proficiency in research.
What do others think? Have you had similar thoughts?

Oh God…please…help me to stop procrastinating. It will be the doggone death of me! Just point me towards the program and sign me the heck up!