I believe as we learn more about ourselves and the world, it is good to develop a mission for living life. Having a mission, gives a sense of purpose. Without it, it is hard to know where we put our time on.

In the front-page of this website, I posted my current mission in life, which i estimate, to be my focus until i am about 50 yrs old (i’m 37, at the time of this writing).

They are as follows:

• Understand how teams in software companies thrive, grow, and create software.
• Create content and tools that help teams in companies within Asia (markets: PH, SG, JP, AU, IND, MY), who are creating software, to develop and sustain.
• Strengthen and be with my family, as my kids go through the most transformative years of their life (14 to 28).
• Expand my boundaries, gain new perspectives of how i understand my life, others, everyone, and see more of the world.
• Improve my skills in: creative/essay writing, sleeping, awareness of self and others, focus and mindfulness, and public speaking.

For a while now, i kept this list internally, in my mind, as my guiding roadmap. Perhaps, i might have mentioned it to my wife and close friends. However, now, i decided to publish it here in my website, which i consider as my main online identity, for everyone to see.

Why? I like the idea of being up-front and transparent of what i want to achieve in my life. As i meet new people, and as people want to learn more about me (perhaps, someone who’s starting to work with me, or wanting to do a project together), there is an easy place to see it. Of course, this is just a static content, which can offer only a small view about me. But, it’s a start.

I believe in nurturing trust and strengthening relationships, one must be transparent, and open to feedback and criticism. By talking about my mission here, i am creating an opening for new and different things to come. I understand the risk that others might troll or attack me for this, and i welcome it, up to some tolerable point (i don’t know the boundary yet).

Anyway, going back to my mission, there are still a few more that are related or are part of the ones i listed above:

• Take part or shepherd a community of people (perhaps, as a learning circle) involved in creating software around Asia. Particularly, Cebu and SG as is where i am closely linked at the moment.
• Offer my coaching services to founders and technology leaders within the communities i am part of.
• Write one article, either on my website or at Next Level, once a week.
• Develop and deploy, a few (3 perhaps?) public workshops in the areas of forming teams and creating software.
• Of course, travel to new places. Current bucket list: Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia, Netherlands, France, Borneo.

In future posts, i’ll try to give a back story of these intentions, since i did a fair bit of analysis and learning, to come up with them.

I realized, as i have grown older, many more opportunities have come my way. Sure, there are constraints, such as the difficulty of being away from my family, however, there are ways to work-around or minimize their effect. With each opportunity, i have to evaluate which ones i will spend my time on. Given that it is finite and fixed, i have to be critical of which are meaningful to me and to the ones i care about.

Alrighty, here they are. I am hoping to revisit this list, on a regular basis, and update as i live this life.