sacha chua :: living an awesome life

It’s Monday!

Mondays are getting easier and easier for me. My Sunday ritual of
reviewing the past week and planning the next one is really paying
off. I love knowing what I want and need to do and when I’m going to
do it, and I love working on those things while feeling great about
all that went well last week.

Last week, my major accomplishment was getting the qualitative section of
my thesis off the ground. I organized and summarized all the quotes from
my usability study. I’ve also scrubbed it of all IBM references, so it
should be good to go. I sent a link to the first draft to my research
supervisor. I’m still waiting for feedback from him, but I can work on the
rest of the thesis while waiting. I was surprised to discover that the
section comes to around 50 double-spaced pages. I’m looking forward to
editing it down ruthlessly! =)

I also made a little more progress on my job search. I mailed the
employment application for one position and I scheduled interest
interviews with two others. I feel uncomfortable not being able to
properly estimate my completion date, but the range of estimates (thesis
completed end of July, defense in August or September?) will narrow as I
get closer and as I learn more.

I gave a short demo of Emacs at a recent IT event. The demo was
sparsely attended, but it was fun hanging out with the other speakers
and with new people in the audience. I have another speaking
engagement coming up: Open Cities, at which I’ll talk about open
source and participation. The main thing I realized at the EnergizeIT
event I spoke at last Saturday was that I should spend more time
hacking on cool and interesting things. People out there are making
really amazing systems! I’m going to set aside more time to prototype
stuff, and I have a few crazy ideas I want to implement.

I’m happy with my exercise. I went for three short runs and
spent around 15-20 minutes in my target zone. A friend lent me his
heart rate monitor and I’ve really enjoyed being able to measure
myself. It’s nice to know that I can push myself further, and it’s
also nice to know when I should relax! I love measuring things. What
gets measured gets managed, after all. I probably won’t do krav for a
while because I can’t make the most of it getting fatigued so quickly,
but I might pick it up again when I’m fitter. (How do I measure that?)

I’m happy with last week’s balance between self, others, and work. My
weekdays were for working on my thesis and running around on errands.
I got a lot of work done and I don’t think I wasted a lot of time. It
was nice to get home and put aside my thesis so that I could work on
my own projects and spend time with people who are important to me. I
read two business books (_Outside Innovation_ and _Selling is
Everyone’s Business_) and two books on life and relationships. I’ve
been getting up early to write. I love being able to write private
notes in my Planner before I need to do anything else.

I met a few interesting new people last week. I had a few wonderful
conversations, too. I really appreciate the breadth of the things W
and I can talk about. I also really appreciate the insights that Ian
shared with me about business and sales.

I’m looking forward to another week like the last one, or maybe even
better. I plan to draft the quantitative section over the next few
days, and have brought my textbook and thesis binder to work. I’ll
soon have everything I need for the paperwork to extend my study
permit, too. I’ve got good questions for my interest interviews, and I
look forward to grilling people to find out more about their work
environment and their team.

My personal goals include doing more exercise – maybe 110% of my goals
last week, to be tracked on Facebook? – and writing one or two good
blog entries. My people goals include catching up with friends and
getting to know new people over a walk or a beverage—three already
scheduled this week, and one scheduled for two weeks from now!

Happy Monday! What do you do to switch yourself into weekday mode?

Random Emacs symbol: Buffer-menu-files-only – Variable: Non-nil if the current buffer-menu lists only file buffers.