Productivity
😌
I finally finished recreating the Bulletproof Workspace in my Notion workspace. It took about three times as long as I was expecting. But now I know even more about Notion, and that puts me in a great position to do my planning over the next couple of weeks. I want to look at the various pieces of my life management system and how I can use Notion’s features to do the same things but hopefully better.
Programming
😎
The Art of Agile Development by James Shore and Shane Warden will probably be the first book I study when I get back to my software development notes. It covers pretty much all the key areas, and it goes into enough detail to support some specific planning on my personal tools and procedures. This book is a lot like Howard Podeswa’s Agile Guide to Business Analysis and Planning. I think of them as book-length flowcharts in prose form. But Podeswa looks at Agile from outside the developer team, so it was nice to see someone on the programmer side taking the same comprehensive, nuanced, practical approach.
Skill development
🙂
Mindset by Carol Dweck got me to look at the ways I limit myself. The book largely consists of impressive examples of people embodying the philosophy she’s promoting, the philosophy of embracing failure for the purpose of growth and of encouraging others to do the same. It gives me a bunch of stories to mine someday for experiments to try. And it got me thinking about ways I’ve developed a growth mindset over the years and areas where I’m still in a fixed mindset. I began considering that I might be able to substantially raise the skill ceilings I’ve tacitly set for myself, such as in music.
Regardless of her work’s controversy, Angela Duckworth’s Grit left me with an appealing vision for personal development. It’s the idea that persistently and thoughtfully developing work around a benevolent passion over a long period can form the basis for a profound influence on the world. I’m somewhat less interested in how exactly that works out in specific statistical measures, although I know that’s important.
Music
😎
I found Blake Robinson’s orchestrated Chrono Trigger arrangement, and it was like the soundtrack bloomed before my ears. Chrono Trigger was my first RPG, and it’s still one of my favorite soundtracks, but its audio quality reflects the limitations of its 16-bit console. That style has its own charm, but the Blake Robinson album showed me orchestral arrangements can add a new dimension. Literally. I found myself imagining scenes from the game in HD 3D. His arrangement brought out aspects of the music that had always blended into the background for me. And it even showed me the appeal of tracks I’d never cared for, such as “Tyrano’s Lair,” which stuck in my head.
