Productivity
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Inspired by another listen to David Andersonās book Kanban, I worked on making my evening schedule more consistent. The exploratory, knowledge-centered projects Iām involved with are more complex and variable than the manufacturing assembly lines addressed by The Goal (which I read recently) and its Theory of Constraints, and the Kanban approach adapts TOC and similar frameworks to these messier environments.
One of the priorities of Kanban is to achieve a predictable delivery cadence, and I realized Iād never achieve a consistent flow in my projects if I didnāt protect my project time, so I started collecting techniques and focusing my efforts. Primarily I set particular times as ābedtimesā for the activities of that time block so I could start my project time block and my actual bedtime on time, and I kept those times in mind as I progressed through my various routines.
A deep dive into applying Kanban to my projects will be part of my next productivity iteration in a couple of weeks.
Blogging throughout the week is off to a promising start. I added a daily blogging session as a follow-up to my daily admin time to comment on any topic that had come up that day or made progress. Spreading out the blogging over the week on purpose did lower the stress of writing ā¦ until I got to Sunday and realized I had a few more topics to cover. But this pile-up led to some ideas for improvement this weekāaiming to write only one topic per day and to finish all my notes by Sunday so all I have to do is revise and post.
Learning
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I set up the FLEx project for my mnemonic language, began studying the concepts in the FLEx āIntroduction to Lexicographyā article, and began filling in the names for my new set of PAO initials.
The language file has nothing in it except some metadata from the setup wizard, but itās ready to receive words when Iām ready to enter them. I still havenāt settled on a name for the language, but my working names have been Thinkunem (which is Thinkumnem without the confusing silent m) and TML (for Thinkulum Mnemonic Language), which echoes the kind of acronymic names we use in programming (HTML, CSS, JSON, etc.).
The lexicography article will help me keep language features in mind to make use of, which is far from straightforward given the highly idiomatic nature of the language, so Iāll have to think about what counts as a lexeme, a morpheme, a root, an affix, etc.
I was hoping to finish the PAO names so I can use them in my math relearning, but since Iām switching to the math project this week, Iāll be limited to working on the names a few minutes here and there till I get back to the memory project. In the meantime my alphabet is at least helping me chunk numbers into somewhat memorable nonsense words, like LIARORA for the date of this weeknote (with my new letter R for 2 instead of N).
Math
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This week Iāll start a two-week iteration on my math relearning project with some exploratory planning on reviewing algebra. My main aim for this iteration is to get a sense for what I can accomplish when I get back into the project, probably in late August or early September, after another productivity iteration and my fall housekeeping and maybe a bit more on memory. Iāll be applying some of the recent lessons Iāve learned from work about learning a subject area more efficiently.
Nature
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Iāve written off one of my regular walking spots due to flooding. There are two paths from the parking lot into the woods, both passing by ponds that Iām not sure have any outlets. The ponds have risen enough over the past few weeks that one half of one of them is completely covered, and the other is developing a big enough puddle that people have created stepping stones out of debris, which slipped under me this time and splashed me with muddy pond water. Iāll check back in a month and see if the paths are clear enough for regular walks again.
Current events
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Iām keeping an eye on the aftermath of the Trump rally shooting. I learned about it Saturday evening from a Citizen app alert. Iām glad the former president is okay and has come out of the experience with a message of unity. Iām sorry for the audience member who diedāa hero protecting his family, but at a high cost for himself, his family, and Iām sure many others in his sphere. The shooterās motives havenāt been clear, but what should be clear is that violence isnāt how we strive to do politics in this country.
