Math
🧐
I continued the setup of my math relearning project while working through the first two sections of the prealgebra review chapter. I experimented with a more streamlined approach to note-taking aimed at keeping myself from doing way more than necessary. The approach involves (1) quickly reading through the section to gauge what I need to learn and to gain a sense of how the pieces fit into their context and then (2) revisiting the parts that need attention.
On the actual math content, I fell down a rabbit hole on how to model negative divisors, since my textbook modeled all the arithmetic operations but division, the most complicated one.
For the next few weeks math will take a back seat to my productivity system and seasonal housekeeping.
Productivity
🤔
I took a bunch of notes on Personal Kanban to prepare for the next iteration on my productivity system, which starts this week. In this book, Jim Benson and Tonianne DeMaria Barry take the manufacturing-inspired business management framework of Kanban and turn it into a lightweight personal productivity framework, and I’m using it as a starting point for overhauling some of my Notion system. The biggest changes I see so far relate to (a) rethinking iterations as the way to organize my project work and (b) refining the way I funnel tasks into my workflow.
Nature
😮
My walks last week had some edge. Saturday night as I stepped out, I was met with an erratic, extra flappy creature swooping over the parking lot with suspiciously spikey wings—a bat! Or so it seemed to me. I’ve read there are quite a few bat species in my area. It had a couple of friends with it too, zooming back and forth. It made the start of my walk rather tense, since so many bats carry rabies, but not scary enough to overcome my compulsion to film.
Also on Friday I came across a wasp hunting a spider.
A bat flew into my apartment once. I was glad it left!
I had a wasp in my bathroom once, but a bat would be scarier. It could be kinda fun, though, if I knew it was disease free and not prone to biting people.