Things I think about things, I think
We needed some moisture in the air, and we got it.
I took Z to the OMSI today. We ate thai food from Portland’s best, Kati. I found a great article on serverless user authentication, which is helpful for both the work I’m doing on my personal project and a new project I’m designing at work. I inched closer towards the next stage of my web app before falling asleep on the couch.
That’s it. Goodnight.
I’ve lived in Portland for about a year and a half, and it was today that I first visited a proper Burgerville. Burgerville is a northwest fast food chain that’s well known for their above average fast food and divine shakes. I had a veggie burger (hold the mayo) and a small chocolate hazelnut shake. I can recommend both if you’re craving a fast food fix, which I rarely am.
I made some subtle progress on my linguistic project. I’m trying to leverage some of the tenets of Extreme Programming, in particular YAGNI, which stands for “You [ain’t] gonna need it.” Stop thinking about all the features you will need to make a project awesome, and just go with the minimum to get you to the earliest completion. It’s going well enough, especially as I use Trello to hold onto the ideas I want to later address.
Hunkering down on a blocker that I have working with AWS Lambda. The uncompressed file size limit is 50MB, but people have had success uploading from S3 and reaching 250MB. I don’t know if you can rely on that, though.
I’m trying to not make this the most boring blog ever, even though I kinda know it is. Really, the purpose for me is to just write something every day. For that selfish reason, I’m succeeding.
Here are a couple rhymes to think about:
European Gorilla / Korean Flotilla
Stellar Communication / Propeller Configuration
Gothic Elites / Catastrophic Defeats
If you are ever lonely, just bring a sharpie marker to the post office. Suddenly you’re every package mailer’s best friend.
Took Z to school today because Monica had an early meeting. He was not into this change in his routine, so I pretended that I had no idea how to drop him off. He walked me through everything and I think he had a good time.
I just fell asleep on the couch. What a mistake. I await an hour of lying awake in bed for a few hours.
Started using Trello today to organize my personal time. It’s a great web app.
A usual Sunday spent gathering sticks with Zavian at the playground. It’s been pretty windy here, and there were plenty of sticks to gather. We worked with another kid, Jack, to line up all of these sticks in a long row. Later, when we returned to the playground in the afternoon, another kid used those sticks to build a little house.
I wasn’t productive today, but I learned that Trello has its own email-to-board system that I thought was exclusive to Evernote. I’m happy to avoid Evernote altogether, as its steep subscription fee and privacy issues were off-putting. Trello is free, which is truly a gift. I hope to use it as a cornerstone of my life organization project.
I worked out tonight, and Monica and I did 20 minutes of yoga.
We spent the day prepping for a party in which only half the folks showed. We did have a decent, laid-back conversation with the folks who came.
I’ve been working this weekend to try and figure out how to organize myself in a productive manner. I’m trying not to spend money on anything, as I always think that’s a terrible way to start anything, but evernote’s email to note functionality seems pretty useful. It’s only available on their premium plans, and I’m not sure I’m ready for the $7+ a month commitment. There’s probably something similar I could to in gmail with its labeling, but it would be pretty manual. I’ll sleep on it.
Also, I need to get back to studying for the aws certification test. I will put in at least an hour tomorrow on that.
I need to stop emailing these journal entries to me and just write them on the blog already.
I gap my first productivity session today. It was useful. We went over the idea of providing structure to my personal life in something of the same way we organize work to do. Some things that stood out:
Starting habits is hard. Try easing into a new routine by setting a schedule for something and just showing up. After that start, add one useful activity to those sessions. Keep adding things each week until the sessions are useful.
Generate task queues that you maintain: now, next, and later. The idea is that you should only deal with a request or piece of info once. Put in in that queue as quickly as possible, and handle it when you get to it.
The tool you use to organize yourself should be as useful and low maintenance as possible. She values Evernote for its email functionality. I wonder if I could do that directly in my email box.
When you get to the advanced stage, you can create queues for people (with things you need to address and notes from them) or places and tomes (what to do when on a train).
Yesterday, I spent $130 getting my screen and battery replaced on my iPhone. It’s like my phone is brand new again, despite being 4 years old. To celebrate this achievement, I accidentally spilled water into the headphone jack, shorting it out today. Woof.
I ate dinner alone at Yoko Sushi today. It’s a cozy neighborhood restaurant that serves phenomenal sushi. The mascot is a puffer fish with a sumo bun. I can dig it.
I postponed my AWS cloud solutions architect exam for a couple weeks. It is free to reschedule, and I need more time before I am sufficiently confident I will pass.
I walked to Hawthorne to get my iPhone screen and battery replaced today. It’s like I have a new phone, despite the fact it’s probably four or so years old. Once Apple stopped throttling old phones, it’s been a lot easier to keep an old one around.
I slept for three hours on the floor downstairs, and I just got up to take out the garbage and brush my teeth. Time to lie in bed half awake for the next couple hours.
It’s a new year and again, it’s totally not time to make a change in your life because you shouldn’t wait for a specific date to make a change, just make the damn change already. And still, I find myself reflecting at the new year and trying to improve myself. At the end of last year, I placed the winning bid in a charity auction for 6 hours of hands-on productivity coaching by a manager at my work. My first half hour of this coaching starts on Friday, and she send me a book to help begin this journey.
I’ve been reluctant to embrace self-help books in the past. There was a period in my early twenties when I read a few, trying to isolate in those pages what I needed to do in my life. Of course, that answer was no where in those books. Still, maybe it’s that I didn’t give their advice as much devotion as they deserved.
I can’t change the past, but I’m pledging to take these current productivity lessons and books seriously. I’ll go in with an open mind, and I’ll be sure to update you on my progress in the coming months.