Jeremy Phillips

It’s December, which means I have been spending quite a bit of time thinking about what I’ve accomplished in the past year and what I hope to accomplish next year. My list of accomplishments is fairly short but significant.

1)      Left Azaleos of my own accord |  I can’t say much about why (I’m still under an NDA and I’m generally a nice guy) but suffice it to say this choice was a Very Good Thing for me.

2)      Dipped my toe back into the waters of being an independent consultant | My original plan after leaving Azaleos was to go back to being an independent consultant, and I did for a short time. About 1.5 months to be exact; mid-April to early June. I only ended up traveling for one week but found it fun and exciting. I still run Cohesive Logic but honestly have not done a great deal of business there in the past few months.

3)      Took most of June off | I really needed this. I hardly ever even logged into a computer for almost exactly a month.

4)      Started at Microsoft | I’m not a full time employee (not a particular desire of mine) but I’ve been working on some fun projects supporting the largest Exchange 2010 implementation in the world since July 1^st. It’s good experience and has helped me mentally ‘reset’ to prepare for goals I’m laying out for the next few years.

5)      Watched my kids grow up some more | They are pretty cool little people, rapidly turning into young adults. I’m impressed by how well rounded they are and am constantly amazed at the sheer number of good decisions they make on their own. This tells me we’re doing something right in the parenting arena, which is always a good feeling.

Thinking about 2010 and beyond, I have a bit of a quandary as the path I want to take professionally is at odds with the path I want to take in my personal life. The easy answer, and one that I have heard continually, is “put your personal life ahead of your professional life”. Some people can do this but unfortunately I cannot be happy in my personal life if I’m not working towards the goals I have set for my professional life, and the goals I have for my professional life have a direct impact on my personal life. I have come to the conclusion that, for me at least, those two parts of my life are inextricably linked; I can’t prioritize one over the other without sacrificing my own happiness. I would much rather achieve 80% of my goals in both arenas than succeed at one and fail at the other.

How do I see this working? I was talking to a friend/mentor of mine once upon a time and asked him how he maintained balance in his life. His answer was quite simple but I didn’t really understand it at the time. “My personal life goes up, business goes down. So then I focus on business to bring it back up and my personal life goes down. Rinse and repeat.” Since then I’ve started thinking of the different parts of my life like biorhythms and the more I contemplate the idea, the more I realize that this is the approach I will have to take to achieve all my goals. Different parts of my life will be flourishing at different times, I just have to figure out a way for them all to stay in balance over time like the picture below. Luckily I have an understanding wife and great kids who always support me in the decisions I make.

I was going to type up my goals for 2010 but I’m not 100% complete with them at the moment so will reserve those for a later post in early January. Thanks for reading!

Photo by JadeXJustice

In December of 2007 I was feeling burned out and decided to leave the consulting world to get a Real Job^TM. It didn’t take me long to find a contract at Microsoft as a Partner Technical Consultant but I only lasted four months there before I left to accept a position at Azaleos, a Managed Service Provider located in Seattle. I started the position as a Sr. Messaging Engineer and by January of 2009 I had been promoted twice and ended up as Director of Operations with 22 direct reports.

However I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m just not cut out to work for someone else so effective Monday April 20^th I will be offering my services through Cohesive Logic LLC, a technical services firm focused on Active Directory, Exchange, SharePoint & Office Communications Server. It’s been a great run and I’ll be leaving behind some very smart people that I have really enjoyed working with. Can’t say I’ll miss working in a cube though…

As I’ll be traveling again I will have much more time to update this blog so I plan on increasing my writing skills (a.k.a. learning to write all over again) by posting here more frequently. I’ll also be reinstating View From Here, which is something I greatly enjoyed.

I’ll try to keep the content fresh and interesting, so do me a favor and subscribe to my feed and keep me company on my travels by leaving comments! :)

An interesting posting is up over at Brazen Careerist entitled “Three things to learn from the crashing careers of the super-rich“. Personally I think the advice can be used at any point in time, not just when investment bankers are losing their jobs.

The article breaks down to three main points and I have somewhat salient comments on all three.

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This is something I can definitely identify with…

I am going to change the world.

Really… I am.  I can be anything I want to be.  A CEO, an Entertainer, an Olympic Gold Medalist; whatever I work towards I can acheive.

I was 5 years old when I first said that, and society reaffirmed me, you told me “yes, you can be whatever you want to be, you’re special.”  But now, because I’m in my early twenties, if I say those words, I’m cocky and arrogant.

Read the whole entry here: [ LINK ]

Just read a very good blog entry by Matthew Moran on the choices he has made in his career and finances to achieve a better quality of life. I completely agree with his statement that “Time & Options are the quality of life barometers I wish to use.”

Personally though, I am taking a different path to achieve the same goals. When I left the consulting world to get a ‘real job’ in December of last year I took a tremendous pay cut – over 55% – and am slowly working to get back to where I was in remuneration for my time and expertise. However, this has given me back the two things that I was dearly missing – Time & Quality of Life. There are some people I know who are willing to make the sacrifice of time now to achieve a better quality of life in the future and while I respect their decision I tried it, found it wasn’t working and am now taking a different path.

If you have been questioning your quality of life lately, I would suggest taking two minutes out of your day and reading Mr. Moran’s blog entry. Start thinking about what choices you are making now and how they will affect you twenty years from now, you may be surprised at some of the realizations you come to. :)