[runjake]

Let me translate for you. I suspect he's saying, as a teacher, that he wants to be hire-able as a web programmer by the end of his school year (aka job cycle).

But aside from that, this is just basic goal setting, and I find nothing wrong with setting goals of "i want to be x by y". There may be setbacks and failures, but the goals can be recalibrated based on those failures.

[implicit_none]

Actually both of these approaches make sense to me - I had read something on HN in the past asserting that deadlines dramatically increased the productivity of a particular startup compared to feature goals (as in: "We're launching version 2 on Jan 1. with whatever we can get done before then" vs. "we're going to incorporate XYZ in version 2, and we'll launch it when we do")- so up to this point I've been considering June as a hard deadline. "I need to get as much as I can get done by June" as opposed to "I need to go and collect XYZ skills". Probably the correct approach is being aware of XYZ skills and collect those first, but always having a looming job-jump deadline. Thanks to both of you for your advice!