Accountability is productivity

As I settle in to do my Weekly Review today, I’m planning my projects for the year–and you are going to help me.

Of all the productivity tricks I’ve learned, one of my favorites is to tell folks about what I’m doing — being accountable to family, friends and coworkers keeps me going. This works great for my job, since our Chancellor is big on accountability and assessment. Here are my work projects for FY2009, which will be completed by June 30, 2009 (and yes, I like capitalizing things to Make Them Look Official):

Implement a Library Instruction Assessment tool. Now that the tool is designed, I’m working on tweaking it to make it more automated.
Repeat the Library Website Usability Study from FY2008. We got some great data this last year, which informed our redesign. Now I want to see if the redesign worked — can the users find stuff more easily?
Create a Desk Statistics Database. We have done pretty well with keeping pen-and-paper statistics up to now, but a database would allow for much easier number-crunching than doing hand calculations and spreadsheet inputs.
Design and implement a Reference Interaction User Satisfaction Survey. Are we nice and friendly? Did the users find what they were looking for? Did we follow up to make sure that they got all that they needed? How can we rawk a little bit harder?

My big project in my personal life is that I’ve taken the 100 Thing Challenge: by the end of the year, I will have reduced my personal belongings down to 100 things. I’ve tweaked the rules a little to match my own goals, but I’ve already begun. Most of my books, CDs and DVDs have been donated to the library, and I’m working on getting rid of clothes and excess furniture. As my house gets more and more spacious, I’m feeling better.

The kicker is that I have not told the General Public because 1) I did not want to “fail” by not being successful by my goal date and 2) I did not want to be negatively judged for getting rid of stuff. But I always tell people to be willing to fail big to win big, so here we go! And even though my inner packrat/archiver is occasionally screaming at me for getting rid of “something that might be useful some day,” I feel better with each load of stuff that leaves my house.

So there you go folks: four work goals and one (big) personal one. I’ll keep you updated!

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