Weeknote for 9/15/2024

Productivity

🙂

Waking up at a consistent earlier time is turning out to be a great addition to my routine. It somehow makes my whole day feel more stable and energized. I think it’s because it gives my day a predictable, reliable start (6 am, if you’re wondering) and gives me an extra chunk of time to get something done before the “real” day starts.

Whatever I work on in that period tends to tumble around in my mind throughout the day and pick up more ideas and embed itself in my future planning, so it makes my project work feel more reliable too. And if my evening crowds out time for projects, at least the morning gives me some time.

I’m still a night owl, so getting myself to bed earlier is still a struggle, but I’m also seeing that a consistent wake up time gives my sleep schedule adjustments a bit of an anchor. If I need more sleep, my early mornings push it to happen at night when I’m too tired to stay up. That’s how it’s working out so far anyway.

I worked through some complicated questions on my Kanban setup.

Last week’s progress:

1. I decided what to do with the confusing statuses I’d been assigning to my projects and tasks. This was mainly “Ongoing,” plus the questionable time scope setting of “Long-term.” Sorting those out gave me the strategy that when I’m working through a tangled issue, I should separate its threads early on, before it utterly confounds me. In this case the threads were not only about the concepts that make up Ongoing and Long-term but also the different questions that go into how I’d use each of those concepts when I’m operating the system.
2. I decided how to hide container tasks in the management views. Since I normally don’t need to see them, they’re just confusing clutter on the board … except in some cases when I do. So I worked out the slightly complex filter for hiding them only when they’d get in the way. During this work I practiced noticing my confusion early and listing out the issues, and it did help.

Coming up:

1. I’m finishing some work I started on managing tasks that have children, a branch of their own on the task family tree.
2. I’m hoping to add the helpful timeline views for seeing where I’ve been and what’s coming up.
3. I also want to start updating my daily admin session views so they’re finally useful after all this time and the very sight of them stops annoying me.

Walks

😎

An experimental walk at the hospital turned out better than I’d hoped. Tuesday my usual lunchtime walk was preempted by a meeting, so after work I took the opportunity to take a nostalgic walk I’d been planning at the hospital where I used to get my infusions for ulcerative colitis. I had two agendas: (1) get a better idea of the layout of the infusion department and (2) absorb the hospital ambience.

I’m cursed with both a need to understand my memories and a weak spatial awareness, so the circuitous route the nurse had led me through in and out of the infusion room had left me wondering, Where was I? The floor plans I’d found on evacuation maps and online only partially helped, since I couldn’t identify the room itself on them. Walking the empty hallway again—somewhat anxiously because I didn’t know what security would think of my non-medical reason for being there—helped me match the doorways to the best map I had, and then I found another evacuation map on the wall, which I hastily photographed before making my escape. Examining it later, the mental details finally snapped into place, and I was able to see the infusion room and how it related to everything around it. As often happens when I see a map, the layout turned out to be less complicated than my impression of it, with the overall route a simple loop.

I didn’t get to absorb much hospital ambience, because the route I used to take through the hospital for my infusions went through the inpatient center, and on arriving this time I saw a sign that asked visitors to register at the front desk, and I knew I’d have a hard time explaining my visit. So I walked around the outside of the complex, which I’d been halfway expecting to do anyway. But on my way back, I did stop by the reception desk and asked if the cafeteria was open to the public, since I might want to eat there sometime. She said yes and that people from outside the hospital walked around in the building all the time, which was the best news of the day. To me a well-funded hospital is a symbol of professionalism, scientific progress, and intricate, large-scale systems, and I like having access to an environment where I can absorb that vibe.

Later I asked ChatGPT for other indoor places open to the public for walking, and it gave me a long list that included airports, museums, and stadiums, so the wheels are turning and I might make that my winter walking project, a new set of walking spots to explore.

Nature

🙂

I spied a crayfish and some big tadpoles at the lake near work, where the water has been clearer lately. I remember my friends talking about finding crawdads in the creek as a regular pastime when I was growing up, but I never spent enough time in nature to run across them. As I was filming them, a retired man came over to say hello, and we chatted about the lake a few minutes. He had thought I was fishing and was going to ask what I was catching. He mentioned something I’d suspected, that the only big fish in that lake were carp.

 

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I had a close encounter with a hawk. I’ve been waiting for months to get a closer look at any of the hawks I see flying in the distance around here, and finally one swooped down to oblige. The guy shooting hoops in the court right by the light pole was inexplicably uninterested in the bird.

 

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As a bonus, have some adorable painted turtles.

 

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