I wanted to share my updates on my goals now that we are two and half months into 2025.

Goal #1 Improve Communication Skills

I joined Toastmasters in March 2025. I started participating in public speaking immediately. Toastmasters encourages people to start developing their speaking skills is by participating in this concept called Table Topics. At each meeting, a person can randomly select 5 to 10 people to answer a random question. The questions are random to help participants to develop impromptu and extemporaneous speech delivery. The speech duration can be from one to two and one-half minute long.

My experience with the Table Topics was scary at first since you didn’t know what the person was going to ask. Some people ask hard questions, and some are easier to answer. But overall, I felt that it really helps boost confidence in speaking since you develop skills to slow down, think, and practice a smooth delivery instead of fumbling about trying to answer. However, I am still fumbling out on the harder questions.

I like Table Topics because I feel I am making progress and getting practice each week, and it is a system based vs. motivation based. I just do go to the meeting each week and practice.

Toastmasters Ice Breaker

Next thing I am working on is my Toastmasters Ice Breaker. The speech has been written and now I must practice.

Goal #2 Building Rails Applications

I built a few quick prototypes of rails applications over the past two months.

One being a test ground for various Rails functionalities and patterns, i.e. as a way to help learn by messing around with various Rails concepts to see how they behave and function without worrying about breaking any rail applications.

The other project I was working on was a deferred revenue application that would help assist Accountants to manage their deferred revenue. The first prototype has built in amortization schedules and balance reporting. I was hoping to design some system to make it easier to manage deferred revenue that is amortized over many years. I do these manually, and it is so repetitive and annoying to do and manage. It didn’t take me too long to code this. One thing I noticed was that I am a lot better with Rails associations, so now I have a clearer mental model of the database and how it should operate. I watch the SQL queries to ensure transactions are flowing through the database efficiently and in one single transaction vs. 10 different update insertions.

Java vs. Rails

I was working with Java on a first projects that I could use, but the mental load to begin programming, the startup for me to be productive, is really slow it takes me like an hour to get back into things. But I don’t seem to have the same mental setup time in Rails. I don’t know if that is a skill issue or not.

Goal #3 Exercise

Oops, I haven’t been exercising much other than moving massive quantities of snow from my driveway. There has been a lot of snow during this winter.

I still haven’t purchased those weights and committed to lifting them each day. Perhaps, I need to rethink this. Or commit to purchasing the weights.