Epic Life Quests

It is easy to get caught up in the daily details of life and not take the time to reflect on longer term goals and accomplishments.

Inspired by Brent Ozar and Steve Kamb, these Epic Life Quests are intended to help me reflect on my accomplishments and help me stay focused on the things that are important.

Each level contains five achievements and once all are completed I can “level up” to the next five. Follow along and let me know if you create any epic life quests of your own.

Level 2 (currently working on)

• Blog weekly for 6 months straight — Last year I began blogging more than any previous year, but I didn’t always stick to a schedule. My biggest problem was I didn’t know what I wanted to write about so choosing topics was difficult and frustrating. After looking back at what posts were the most well-received, I’ve decided to focus the first half of 2017 to mostly technical and professional development type topics.
• Speak at a technical conference — I’ve been presenting technical content in small user group type settings for years but this year I want to try my hand at some larger audiences. Completed January 2017 at the GroupBy conference.
• Vacation in Hawaii — Our vacations in 2016 focused on places we could reach by car so that we could save some money for a larger trip. This will be the bigger trip. After visiting Hawaii, I will have visited 36 states + Washington D.C (airports don’t count!).
• Work on mental mindfulness— practice meditation to improve focus, patience, manage stress, be happier. I want to average at least 5 days/week for 3 months to reach this goal.
• Always be reading at least one book — Although I read 40+ books in 2016, there were stretches of weeks at a time where I was not reading anything. For 6 months I don’t want to go more than 3 days without having picked a book to have available to read.

Level 1 Quests (completed before 2017)

Here are some of my achievements before I started this page on January 1, 2017.

• Set up an environment for programming regularly at home — completed 2016
• Start using GitHubt for my coding projects — completed 2016
• Built a hardware project that gets regular use (not just proof of concept) — completed 2016
• Buy a house — completed 2015
• Get into backpacking — completed 2015
• Take a car trip in Europe with Renee — completed 2015
• Learn to read books for pleasure — completed 2014