What Are Your Back to School Resolutions?

Maybe I'm weird, but I always liked "Back to School".

I didn't always *like* school itself, but come fall, I  would get excited when it was time to go back.

For me, back to school represented a fresh start. A new grade, new classes, new books, and school supplies. After a summer of hanging out, relaxing, and riding my bike, back to school was a time to buckle down, get serious, and do some work.

When I was in primary school and even into college, I never made New Year's resolutions. Maybe it was because I was in the Northeast. When New Year's came around, I was already midway through the school year, and there was usually a ton of snow on the ground. Not the best conditions for making optimistic proclamations.

No, back to school is the time to make resolutions for me.

After I finished college, my first couple of years working felt like a grind. Though I enjoyed doing real architecture, I longed for the rhythms of the school year. I missed the build-up toward back to school, the clean slate on the first day, the intense focus on classes and projects, and finally, the well-deserved break at the end of the semester.

Sure, working on projects gave me some of that focus and direction. But when a project ended, it was on to the next one, and the next one, and the next one. There wasn't that break afterward like there was in school. Unless I saved up some vacation time, it was back to work the next day. Granted, I was pretty useless, but I was there in body, if not spirit.

So this year, I'm going to do something different. I will organize my work to match the rhythms of the school year.  This means back-to-school resolutions, a focused 10-week push through the fall and spring, and some time off to recharge. Having two school-aged boys (and one toddler) certainly helps, as this is how their year is organized.

Now, I realize this won't work for all my projects. I can't expect my clients to accommodate this schedule. But this structure will help me organize my time and marshal my resources. I have some projects I want to work on that aren't client-related and some new things I want to learn, so this school-year structure works perfectly in these cases.

So what are my back-to-school resolutions for this fall? Here they are:

• Develop a regular writing habit and post a new article on ArchSmarter every week.
• Publish a new course on how to use Revit more productively.
• Launch the next version of the ArchSmarter website
• Plan an online BIM conference
• Set up and develop the ArchSmarter community.
• Learn how to program websites using Ruby.
• Read 12 books.
• Exercise 3 times a week.

I will approach these resolutions like a class, with assignments and deadlines. At the end of the semester, I'll even give myself a report card. Will I pass or fail? Stay tuned to find out!

So how about you? What do you think of back-to-school resolutions? What do you want to do and learn this fall? Leave a comment below!