10 years ago I stopped writing goals and that was a mistake.
Well, maybe it was not a real mistake.
Having retired 10 years ago and thought I did not have to have a Plan or Goals.
What really happened was there was always tomorrow to do whatever did not get accomplished today. I had a very flexible plan in my head with only some of it written, and both versions were fluid.
My past business life with goals
Most of my professional business life I have had Goals. I, my team, and my manager jointly created my Goals. The goals process created yearly Goals and Quarterly Goals. The same process up and down the organization. We reviewed the goals in 1–1, team meeting, and group meeting. Regular check-ins were used to measured progress against the goal. Our yearly compensation package was directly tied to Goals. It was a pay for our performance organization, that simple.
Every employer preached Goals. I preached Goals. They paid me and my direct reports all based on our accomplished Goals. There was a process, time-frames, deadline, feedback, with money and stock doled out according to accomplishments.
I know that in the last 10 years the Business Goals process has not has changed much. The process may have changed slightly but not the overall philosophy is pay for accomplishments.
What the last ten years without goals was like for me
I have mostly been volunteering for the during the last ten years. And that is why I stopped setting goals.
First Volunteering experiment
I was an Information Technology Professional prior to retiring. I spent the last years working in Desktop Support and Building Metric Systems for the Information Technology Group.
Desktop support was something I both knew from the technology perspective and managed a large graphically dispersed team. I was proud to be both a manager who managed, and a manager who could perform the job.
Knowing how to provide support for desktop computing was both a blessing and a curse.
To this day I’m the go-to person in my community for some of the most difficult computer issues for both businesses and personal friends, not to mention family.
My first volunteer experience was at a non-profit that recycled computers and electronics. The place was 70 minutes away and I would drive there once a week at first. I quickly learned about and setup remote desktop software, so I could support people remotely and reduce driving time and lengthy phone calls. This reduced my travel to once a month or even less. I volunteered there for about three years. I supported one windows server and about 15 workstations.
The President of the Non-Profit generously donated computers for my next volunteer project, a local youth club.
After three years of volunteering in the remote non-profit, most through the use of remote tools, I stopped volunteering there because they were able to attract local retired people that took over my responsibilities.
I am still friends with the Non-Profit President and meet up for lunch from time to time.
Second Volunteering experiment
My second volunteer effort was at a local youth club. I installed the donated computers from the computer recycle volunteering. I setup the youth club with 3 newer computers and printers. I have since purchased refurbished computers two additional times over the years. The last time was last year when they received Windows 10 computers, and they all got new 1 TB drives.
I believe that a hard drive will only last for 5 years. Since the single most likely item to fail is the hard drive from spinning around and around. So you guessed it I replace the hard drive, I do that for myself and suggest others do the same thing.
Introduce Computer and Electronics Recycling to community
My first volunteering experience with the recycling electronics and computers not-profit gave me an idea of starting remote collection site for the local community. I contacted a non-profit that was a center that help disadvantaged people. They agreed to be a drop off point for recycled electronics and computers. The remote Recycling Non-profit would come regularly to pick up pallets of recyclables. This prevented the recyclables from going into the landfill.
The local non-profit ran into financial troubles and was closed.
That did not stop me as I found a local Computer company that agreed to be the new location for drop off. This was a plus for the business and the local community. This business is still to this day the drop off point for the local community.
New learning
I registered my first domain in 1998, followed by many more since that time. I have taught myself HTML to build a website which were not very elaborate but it was my shingle hung out on the internet back then. My domains have moved from one hosting company to another hosting company several times over the years. I’ve been with the same hosting company now for 12–14 years.
In my spare time I looked into another option for building websites for both myself and others, mostly non-profits.
I had a small VPS (Virtual Private Server) back in the early 2000, and self-managed it, but support was there when I need it.
I started to building sites with Blogger because it was free. I learned a lot mostly from trial-and-error process, a googling for answers. I was a fast learner and soon could fix most issues as I learned. I setup 5 websites on Blogger.com
After experimenting with Blogger and I decided to move on to WordPress in 2013, I’ve learned a ton about WordPress. In 2013 it was version 3.x of WordPress. Today WordPress is on version 5.2.1. I can comfortable fix most WordPress issues from PHP, configuration files, and MySQL, and again those that I can it’s googling it, or call hosting support.
Today I’m using shared hosting with a cPanel. This provides me with someone who has more experience managing the actual server and I can do what I have to with the cPanel.
I like the architectural structure of WordPress; because it was a set of files and a MySQL database, with PHP delivering up the goods on the web-server side.
I have trained and encouraged others to learn and use WordPress who then have helped local business create a web presence, this has been an exciting experience for me.
Helped a local business start a new service
Several years ago I convinced a local computer business to offer a monthly subscription service to local businesses.
Previously another local company had a similar service several business that were complaining about the service. We offered 6 business our alternative service.
The first service we offered was a monthly subscription service per computer that comprised remote support, virus protection, and computer backup.
The second service was building, hosting, and updating websites.
We are shutting down both services effective 12–31–2019 because I do NOT want to continue doing what I can do and do what I want to do.
Starting my next phase of life with goals
I have just recently discovered what I want to do. I have started the planning process and am working on setting Goals
More in my next article.
Stay tuned.
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Originally published at http://rs2021.eightysixhundred.com/blog.
