Weeknote for 8/21/2022

Posted on August 21, 2022 by Andy

Productivity

🙂

Last week I struggled with importing my Evernote notes into Notion, but I settled into a groove on transferring my Nirvana tasks. I still have a few more days of work on that, but I’m going to finish integrating Nirvana before I try again with Evernote.

Programming

😎

An Introduction to Relational Database Theory by Hugh Darwen revealed to me the hidden predicate logic that underlies relational databases. It dovetailed nicely with the insight I’ve gleaned from both my productivity system and my recent programming at work, that finding simple, consistent ways of slicing a task can dramatically enhance your power to work with it.

Coffee

🙂

Barissimo Adventure Blend Ground Coffee: 4/5. Brewing it tastily was no problem this time, so whatever was happening last time, I’d say this is another good everyday coffee.

Personal development

😎

Give and Take by Adam Grant was a satisfying tour through the intricacies of generosity. It got me to examine my own reciprocity style and where I’d like to move it in “otherish” directions, a style that emphasizes giving without leading to burnout or victimization.

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Weeknote for 8/14/2022

Posted on August 16, 2022 by Andy

Productivity

🙂

Last week I replicated my Nirvana setup in Notion as a starting point for my task management. This week I’ll work on moving my Evernote setup to Notion, which will transfer over both a bunch of content notes and some more pieces of my project management.

Personal development

🤔

Daring Greatly reintroduced me to Brené Brown’s work on shame resilience. It alerted me to the need both to learn these skills before I venture into shame-prone situations and to learn ways to communicate and persuade that foster others’ resilience and avoid triggering shame.

TV

😎

I finished season 3 of The Orville, and the show keeps getting better. Charly’s and Topa’s storylines stood out to me, especially watching what Topa’s situation brought out in the other characters.

Music

🙂

I’ve been adding to my old dubstep playlist. I hadn’t touched it in several years, but a few weeks ago I stumbled back onto it as an energy source to help me get moving when I’m tired.

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Weeknote for 8/7/2022

Posted on August 8, 2022 by Andy

Productivity

🙂

I began looking at ways to implement my productivity system in Notion. I chose three processes from the system to focus on, and I began describing the first one, task management, which I currently do in Nirvana. This week I’ll finish describing how that process works and explore how I might create a Notion version of it.

Programming

🙂

Patterns of Software by Richard P. Gabriel took me on a welcome side trip through programming philosophy. It’s a loose collection of essays on a cluster of themes centered around the author’s career in software development. I was interested because it seemed like a unique and thoughtful big-picture look at patterns in software development. And other than maybe the long autobiography toward the end, the book didn’t disappoint.

It started off with a bang with a foreword by Christopher Alexander, the patterns architect himself. After that the book gave me a better picture of Alexandrian patterns and reinforced my sense they were deep water worth exploring. I was especially struck by the point that patterns are about promoting a certain quality of vitality and not just generically solving common problems. Another essay drew some intriguing and useful parallels between natural language and software design. Later essays made arguments about programmer productivity and product success that I found rather depressing at first, but on a second reading I saw them less as an attack on me personally and more as a look at systemic issues in the software industry and at the nature of design and the market. Gabriel even persuaded me I should study poetry for the lessons it can teach on writing prose. It’s a book worth revisiting.

Music

🙂

I’ve been making a playlist of reflective muted piano music. It’s a style I run across occasionally, notably in Thomas Newman soundtracks, but outside of those it’s not easy to find examples. So I’m collecting them. It’s great background music for writing. And some of it will get added to my playlist for contemplative dusk walks.

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Weeknote for 7/31/2022

Posted on August 4, 2022 by Andy

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.

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Weeknote for 7/24/2022

Posted on July 29, 2022 by Andy

Productivity

🙂

I am this close to having my Notion workspace in a usable state. Last week I set up 90% of the Bulletproof Workspace. This week I’ll add the finishing touches, and then I’ll start adapting it to my system. I’m looking forward to implementing in Notion the features of my system I’ve been conducting in Nirvana, Evernote, and Google Sheets. Bulletproof is available as a template for $150. But implementing it myself taught me important features of Notion, notably database templates, relations, and rollups. I still need to learn about formulas to complete the setup.

Some of Bulletproof applies more obviously to a business than to an individual’s personal life. For example, I might get used to referring to the organizations I deal with as “brands,” but it’s hard to see how I’d have sales stages for most of them. But it’ll be interesting to see if I can adapt Bulletproof to my life-as-a-business approach. I’m especially curious about finding possible objectives and key results to track.

People skills

🙂

Conversation Analysis: An Introduction by Jack Sidnell reminded me how much I value the tool of close reading. The book covers the history, methods, and basic findings of its field by walking the reader through many examples. As I see it, conversation analysis is the equivalent of a close reading in literary criticism, which is an intensive analysis of a text that examines each word or phrase and interprets its meaning and how it fits into the whole piece.

Conversation analysis treats this method as scientific observation that can reveal how conversation works. It treats conversation as machinery that people use together to accomplish certain actions using mechanisms that conversation analysts call practices. There are practices for greeting someone, exchanging names, taking turns, making offers, acknowledging irony, starting a story, repairing conversational problems, ending a conversation, and more.

Close reading is half my MO for grappling with any complicated issue. If I can get a basic model of conversation and a method for closely reading it, I can use conversation’s hidden machinery to understand and engineer solutions to problems in conversational situations that I can’t solve intuitively yet, that leave me stuck in my ruts. My sense is that studying this book would put me well on my way.

Food

🤔

Barissimo Adventure Blend Ground Coffee: 3/5. I had a rocky start with this one. It seemed hard to control the sourness. Then it somehow evened out, so I don’t know what to make of that. But I accidentally bought another bag, so I’m giving it another chance.

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Weeknote for 7/17/2022

Posted on July 20, 2022 by Andy

Productivity

😎

I’m ready to set up the Bulletproof Workspace in Notion. Last week I finished examining the Bulletproof Workspace guide. I turned it into a big checklist to help me set up all the pieces. This week I’ll create the workspace in Notion and start customizing it. Bulletproof is designed to be a basic and highly flexible framework for managing an organization’s information and projects. That’s what I need for adapting Notion to my semi-organized system without feeling immediately lost in all the possible setups, since Notion itself is even more flexible than the Bulletproof template.

At work I spent the week adding improvements to my practice of work journaling. It continues to be an incredible tool for my productivity and state of mind while working through complicated knowledge tasks. I think of it as a harness, and over the week it gained new straps to secure more aspects of my work. I used this in conjunction with TDD (which I refuse to admit was actually fun), and I confirmed that pondering the work is the necessary 0th step of the TDD cycle.

Programming

🙂

Object-Oriented Reengineering Patterns by Serge Demeyer, Stéphane Ducasse, and Oscar Nierstrasz is a wide-ranging guide to understanding and updating your legacy systems. The only other book I know about for this is Michael Feathers’ excellent Working Effectively with Legacy Code. OORP is written in the form of patterns, which I find helpful for getting a handle on the content. The book expands on Feathers by covering not only testing and refactoring but also the organizational aspects of legacy code, such as communicating with the original engineers and preparing the organization for the new software version. It also goes in depth on ways to analyze the legacy code.

The Art of Readable Code by Dustin Boswell and Trevor Foucher has a lot of practical advice, yet also not enough. It has an extensive and helpful section on naming things, which is one of the hardest parts of programming. And I’ve already started using some of its advice on comments. For example, write them as if you’re explaining the code to a new member of your team. The book is briefer on some of its other topics. For example, when it cautions against constructs that can make the flow of control harder to follow, it lists some very common ones, like threads and exceptions. It would be great to see an in-depth treatment of writing code that minimizes these. But overall the book is very worth the time.

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Weeknote for 7/10/2022

Posted on July 14, 2022 by Andy

Productivity

🙂

I began setting up the Bulletproof Workspace in Notion. After that’s done, I’ll try adapting Bulletproof for Kanban. I’ve settled on using Notion instead of Org for the new version of my productivity system. It seems easier to learn and to use, and the scripting I was thinking of doing in Org is probably better done in other ways. Looking through the ways people use Notion, I think it has potential as the kind of low-code platform that will fit many of my needs.

Programming

🙂

Practical Object-Oriented Design by Sandi Metz showcases the author’s patient teacherliness. It didn’t quite have the magic of watching her “Nothing Is Something” talk. But I did come away feeling I had a better sense of the SOLID principles. As usual I’m looking forward to studying the book more closely. I’m especially interested in her take on static vs. dynamic typing, since that’s a debate I haven’t fully wrapped my mind around.

People skills

🙂

Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen is a deep dive into the dynamics that enable successful conversations of this type. This book reminded me that people study people skills academically, and that gives me more resources to look into. This one came out of the Harvard Negotiation Project. It also highlighted that the many emotional and social skills interact. You’ll have more trouble navigating difficult conversations if you haven’t had certain conversations with yourself.

Thanks for the Feedback by Stone and Heen takes a close look at a specific kind of difficult conversation. I worried it would simply rehash parts of their other book, but it turns out there’s a lot more to say about feedback specifically. It made me realize feedback pervades life, so it pays to have these skills ready to practice at all times.

Active Listening Techniques by Nixaly Leonardo surveys many important communication skills with some applications to specific situations. The first few tools had me thinking the advice would be too cursory compared to the Harvard Negotiation Project books. But later tools were more satisfying, so I’m including it in my books to study when I get to the studying stage of the project. It also gave me some historical context for these communication techniques. I didn’t know active listening came from Carl Rogers, for example.

TV

🙂

Season 4 of Stranger Things was much more gripping for me than the earlier ones. I actually found it stressful, but in a good way. But explaining why would involve too many spoilers, so I will let you find out for yourself! I’m looking forward to the next season.

Season 1 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds ended, and it continues to be good. I might even like it better than Discovery, but that’s probably recency bias. The season finale was especially good. It had extra heft and brought in more of the TOS aesthetic.

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Weeknote for 7/3/2022

Posted on July 4, 2022 by Andy

Productivity

🙂

I made a solid start on setting up my Notion pages for Kanban. I’m using a board view similar to this example. My idea is to base my swimlanes on the areas of my life that I give regular time blocks in my schedule, so things like administration (task management and other paperwork), housekeeping, food management (planning, shopping, and cooking), and, of course, my substantive projects. This week I’ll continue my Notion setup.

People skills

🤔

How to Win Friends and Influence People gives me some thought provoking principles and lots of examples to analyze. The edition I listened to was published this year, a revision of the first edition by the author’s daughter. Her aim was to make only the minimum changes needed to match modern sensibilities.

The book was more concrete and motivating than I expected, and I can see how it became so popular. This part toward the end stuck in my mind: “If you and I will inspire the people with whom we come in contact by giving them a realization of the hidden treasures they possess, we can do far more than change people. We can literally transform them.” It’ll be interesting to compare the advice from different authors on conversation and influence to uncover any conflicting perspectives, which will help me decide on my own approach.

Programming

🤔

In Designing the Requirements, Chris Britton draws from other engineering disciplines to improve the software requirements process. His approach reflects my view that requirements, design, construction, and testing are tightly integrated. I’m not as confident as he is that improving the requirements process and returning to up-front design will minimize the changes you face later in development. But I think his framework is worth looking into, especially since I’m always interested in the engineering aspects of software development.

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Weeknote for 6/26/2022

Posted on June 29, 2022 by Andy

Elections

😐

I researched my primary races and voted. I like to base my votes on some degree of principle, but since I don’t understand the issues or candidates in much detail, I end up relying on proxies, like newspaper endorsements. My favorite is the Illinois State Bar Association’s judicial evaluations. Very clear and objective looking.

This time some of the candidates were impossible to find online, which made them easy to rule out. In my book, if you want to be a public servant, you have to communicate with the public. These days that means leaving a record of yourself on the web in the form of a website or at least media interviews.

Productivity

😐

I’m reorganizing my email and task management around Kanban. This system update project is teaching me that even if your problems would be solved by implementing your grand vision, you can still make a lot of progress by making smaller changes. I’m hoping this Kanban workflow will be an example. But it will at least be an experiment.

Food

🙂

Maxwell House Colombian Ground Coffee: 4/5. It’s a decent everyday coffee with only some occasional sourness, and I stopped noticing the inconsistency after a while.

My opinion of oolong tea has risen. I’ve been getting through my box of it by drinking it at work. Some teas get bitter as they cool. The oolong from Twinings tends to stay mild, so I’ve been content with it as my everyday plain tea. Next I want to see how green tea compares.

People skills

🙂

I’ve started a reading project on people skills. I’ve had this on the backburner for years, and the catalyst to finally start it was Software Estimation‘s discussion of principled negotiation, largely drawn from the well-known book Getting to Yes. I have a reading order for the first few books in my head, so I’ll follow that and then see where things go.

Conversationally Speaking is a nice intro to a central people skill. I found this back in college and picked it as the best general conversation book I’d found. The advice seemed on point and the examples not too stilted. It covers the core dimensions of conversation as well as some key trouble spots.

The Art of Civilized Conversation focuses on etiquette. I picked this up a few years ago just because I liked the idea. One helpful feature is its outline of a conversation’s natural flow. Keeping to this flow lets the interpersonal boundaries shift naturally. You’re not invading people’s space with strong feelings just after you’ve been introduced.

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Weeknote for 6/19/2022

Posted on June 19, 2022 by Andy

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.

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