Failure to meet goals

What a failure. I did not meet the goals stated for the previous week. Not even close. But I have had some successes, though. I conducted four interviews, with another set for tomorrow. I have 1 scheduled for next week with two other interviews very likely. I got good news on two other publications, one that I did not know I was a part of. I have plenty of work to do in addition to this dissertation stuff, but I insist on completing this one. I also got invited to a very, very nice conference in Napa, CA that will do wonders for my professional contacts in the next line of research. Wonders, I tell you.

But I have not finalized my coding scheme or coded more interviews. THAT is disgusting.

I am not making new goals for the upcoming week other than to work as hard as I can!

Anything else is clearly unacceptable.

** EDIT: 5/3/2008: Image removed.

This Week's Goals

My Goals for this week (January 15-21) are as follows:

Bottom line is that I need to catch up with the pace of my data collection/cleanup/analysis and a little bit on my writing. Thus, the goals are broken down into those steps, along with a few 'other' items.

Data Collection -
1. Conduct 3 interviews by the end of the week (2 are scheduled)
2. Try to make contact with some of the newly released executives of Site 2 (JBoss) - and schedule a few new interviews if possible
3. Send 8-9 more interviews to SW, including the new interviews. The first 5 should go out on Monday, not including 1 additional one for CF (if she has made progress on the other one)

Data Cleanup -
4. Correct the transcriptions on 2 interviews (e.g. Richard 1, Richard 2) - I may want to wait on this until finishing the current batch of analysis below

Data Analysis -
5. Hand-code 3 more interviews
6. Enter hand-codes for 5 interviews into Atlas

Writing -
7. Write summaries for (at least) 5 interviews
8. Write up more notes on Explanatory Case Analysis (from Yin, Maxwell, Michael Friedman 1974)

Other -
9. ISDSA Meeting on Tuesday (Agenda out by Monday night - meet with Renee on Monday)
10. PAM questionnaire complete by Wednesday night
11. Conversation with Christina, Marlene re:post data on infusion pump survey (and what is the value for me at this point??)
This will require a heavy, heavy week of work, but I'm just the man for the job. Noone else will do it for me. Now let's compare this week's progress by next Sunday night.

Weekly Goals

If I am going to succeed in this dissertation endeavor, I will have to make regular progress toward getting finished. To that end, I will need to meet regular weekly goals, which I will record here for my own benefit.

Writing: I need to write at least 5 hours per week on the existing chapter revisions, data analysis writeups, or other parts as they arise.

Data Collection (including transcription and cleanup): I will need to do about 20-25 hours per week on these parts, especially for the next 60 days.

Data Analysis (including coding, summarizing, memos, and other parts): Until the data collection is done, I will need to spend about 20 hrs per week here, doubling as the collection is done.

If I don't finish by May (which will be a minor inconvenience), August is a very real possibility...but I STILL need to be busy as hell.