Productivity
🙂
I relieved some tension from my daily task management sessions by removing some micromanagement from the procedure. I use an interval timer to lead me through it like I do with other routines. But task management isn’t regular enough for consistent time limits on each step or even a consistent order, so I’ve made the procedure more general while still using a timer to keep things moving.
Even though I’ve moved into an implementation stage in this productivity system update, I’m still collecting ideas for improvements. Last week it was by listening to my notes on this project starting from last April to pick up on any ideas I’d forgotten about. It’s also been enlightening to review the notes in my schedule tracker on the reasons my actual times have diverged from my planned times.
This week I’m pausing the productivity project to vote in my primary, which will take some research on the candidates. But if I have time after that, I’ll work on tidying my tasks and emails to fit them into my new Kanban approach.
Programming
😎
Howard Podeswa’s Agile Guide to Business Analysis and Planning will be a key resource for my software development notes. Its depth, breadth, and organization put it almost on the level of a Steve McConnell book, although it’s lighter on empirical studies. I bought it to get a better idea of Agile’s application outside the programming team, but in addition it incorporated all the other Agile frameworks I’ve been learning about, another cohesive overview of the kind I look for. It’s also intensely practical and includes a lot of checklists I would’ve tried to make myself.
Fiction
😎
Elantris is a fun first step into Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere universe. I knew practically nothing going in except that I liked Sanderson’s contribution to The Wheel of Time and I was looking forward to another universe of stories. Elantris wasn’t as serious and literary as the books I was expecting it to be like, but I got used to the style and settled into the political intrigue, which I was also not expecting. If you read it, make sure you read the back matter too for the “end credits” scenes.
It’s tempting to continue with Cosmere right away with the Mistborn books, but I’m thinking I’ll wander through the other authors I’m following. I also want to vary my audiobooks enough that I don’t get them confused. So I’m switching to science fiction with the next book in Iain Banks’ Culture series, The Player of Games.
