It’s already time for my first review of the Groundhog Day Resolutions that I made back in February. The month has passed by very quickly but I have been able to make some progress on both of my major resolutions for this year and start to think about some of the other tasks I need to commit to in order to make these a success.

Do more of what I enjoy/is a positive influence and less of what I don’t enjoy/is a negative influence.

As I noted back in February this is likely to be a tough cycle to break as all work feels as if it should be welcome during a recession. Nevertheless I have had opportunity to talk with a couple of existing clients where the work I was doing did not seem to be a positive experience for me and had become unenjoyable.

It’s a little early to tell whether these discussions will result in an improved working method and being provided with more interesting tasks but further discussions are planned in April — once the current push on the project is completed.

My other major step forward in this area has been to continue with my push to outsource some of the more time consuming areas of my design and development workload. I really enjoy working in some of these areas however it has become clear that I can get other people to do these tasks more quickly and to pretty much the same required level of competence – so I have made a decision to step back and take up a position reviewing and fine tuning the work whilst somebody else does the bulk of the development. I think this is a positive step as it enables me to take a more focused view on managing the delivery of the project on time and on budget as well as improving my management skills for the longer term – which can only be a positive thing.

The most difficult part of outsourcing a job you can do yourself is the feeling that somehow you can do this more quickly or cheaper by doing it yourself – work a few extra hours here or there and avoid the need to pay somebody else. However by sticking with the outsourcing route I’ve started to find myself with increasingly more time to work on generating new business and dedicate resources to the jobs that other people can’t do for me. There are plenty of times where I’ve thought about cancelling the outsourcing arrangements to save the pennies but I’m confident that continuing with this initiative will be an increasingly worthwhile exercise.

The time I have regained has also enabled me to start planning an exciting new initiative – not quite ready to talk about it in public just yet but will hopefully be able to within a month.

Design and implement a balanced long term work/life strategy by the end of 2009.

My second GHD resolution was again a pretty big one and again I have started to make some progress. In our e-commerce business in particular we are making positive steps towards streamlining operations so that we can spend as much time as possible on pushing the business forward rather than the everyday tasks which take up an disproportionate amount of our time. I don’t have much concrete progress to report on this resolution other than the fact that things are moving in the right direction.

That wraps up my first review of my GHD resolutions – the next review is due on April 4th when I expect to have made some pretty solid progress in both of the areas listed above. As always I am interested to here from other people who are in a similar position or working towards similar goals – comments are open.

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