sacha chua living an awesome life

Last month, I wrote:

April will be more about slowing down and following up, I think. But this is good.

It took me a while to sort out a good workflow for processing the videos from the Emacs Conference, but I was glad I did so, even though there were a few miscommunications along the way. I got back into the swing of consulting and sketchnoting too, so that was great. =)

It’s almost a third of the way through May already! I’m looking forward to more consulting, sketchnoting, and illustrating. The weather’s warmed up, so friends are starting to organize more get-togethers. Then there’s planting the front and back garden, studying Japanese (my goal for May: 500 lines in my spaced-repetition deck), and drawing some more… May’s shaping up to be terrific.

• Emacs
  • Brainstorming ways to help build the Emacs community
  • Emacs Conference 2013 Sketchnotes (also, PDF!)
  • Emacs Conference 2013 videos
  • Emacs chat intro
  • How to present using Org-mode in Emacs
• Improvement
  • Analyzing my London trip decisions: What worked well? What can I improve?
  • Understanding my procrastination
  • Things I’m learning about sharing other people’s knowledge, or why you should show me what you’ve been meaning to teach others
  • Things I learned from sketchnoting the FITC design conference
  • Practice Perfect: Calling your shots
• Drawing
  • Visual book review: The Culture Blueprint (Robert Richman)
  • How I read books and do visual book reviews
  • How I use Evernote to support my sketchnoting practice
• Life
  • Time enough for friends
  • Towards wonderful new normals
  • Building bridges to geekiness
  • Weekend cooking
  • Impatient for spring
  • Crossing worlds
  • Squishing my excuses: idea edition
  • Why and how I’m (re)learning Japanese
  • Sunday
  • How I got started in investing
• Quantified Self
  • Quantified Self: a year of grocery data
• Reviews
  • Weekly review: Week ending March 29, 2013
  • Weekly review: Week ending April 5, 2013
  • Weekly review: Week ending April 12, 2013
  • Weekly review: Week ending April 19, 2013
  • Weekly review: Week ending April 26, 2013
  • Monthly review: March 2013

Last month, I wrote:

March: Some graphic recording, a keynote for the Emacs conference on March 30, and more writing and drawing and thinking. More biking too, I hope. And more planning and experimenting…

It was an amazing month! Lots of Emacs and Quantified Self hacking (and finally getting to meet all these Emacs geeks!), lots of drawing, lots of writing, lots of learning… =D

April will be more about slowing down and following up, I think. But this is good.

• Drawing
  • Building my visual vocabulary: Breaking down other people’s sketchnotes into component parts
  • Visual book review: To Sell is Human (Daniel Pink)
  • Sketchnotes: Building my visual vocabulary
  • The Sketchnote Challenge: Those Algorithms That Govern Our Lives (Kevin Slavin)
• Emacs
  • Emacs Chat with Avdi Grimm (Org-mode, Ruby, etc.)
  • Got Emacs questions? Let’s try Emacs tutoring / pair programming!
  • Learn Emacs Lisp by reading Emacs Lisp
  • Emacs chat: Thomas Kjeldahl Nilsson
  • Emacs Chat: Carsten Dominik
  • Emacs: Use function keys for custom keyboard shortcuts
  • Getting ready for the Emacs Conference
  • After Emacs Conf 2013; ideas for Sunday and Monday
• Self-improvement
  • Passion and uncertainty
  • Hacking my way around networking
  • Identifying my reactions to stress
  • Deliberate performance
  • Less Wrong meetup notes: Goal factoring, fight-or-flight, and comfort zones
  • Managing uncertainty
  • Taking advantage of a bad cold
  • Listening to the clues about what’s working well: writing
  • Debugging my brain: typos (write-os?) in my sketchnotes
• Quantified Self
  • Quantified Awesome feedback
  • Quantified Self Toronto: Where the Time Went
  • Quantified Self time-tracking: Choosing your buckets
• Weekly/monthly reviews
  • Weekly review: Week ending March 1, 2013
  • Weekly review: Week ending March 8, 2013
  • Weekly review: Week ending March 15, 2013
  • Weekly review: Week ending March 22, 2013
  • Monthly review: February 2013

Based on my analysis, I decided to sign up for hacklab.to, a coworking space tucked into Kensington Market here in Toronto. I dropped by on Wednesday and Friday last week.

Let me check how I’m doing against my success criteria. In nine months, what do I want to happen, and how am I making progress?

• I know more about other geeks in Toronto thanks to ambient conversations and helping each other out.
  • I chatted with Chim about his job interviews, with Justin about biking and electronics, with Eric about friendship, and with Nick and Adam about duct tape
  • Working on getting better by remembering people’s faces, names, and interests
• I’m better at asking people for help when I get stuck, and at setting myself tougher challenges knowing that people can help
  • Haven’t tried this yet
  • Maybe business questions and referrals to accountants?
• I’ve dug into some of the more difficult things that are easier to learn with other people who can help me. For example: web development, mobile development, electronics
  • Haven’t tried this yet, just settling in and getting some writing done
  • Maybe Arduino?
• I’ve gotten better at sketching ideas, asking other people for feedback, and fleshing out the ones that get people interested
  • Haven’t tried it yet
  • Hmm, what can I build that people here might find useful?
• I’ve improved serendipity (test different laptop cues to talk? talk to people about what they’re working on?)
  • Started making conversation about people’s projects
  • Laptop drawing is useful; maybe swap in a new one next week
• I go to HackLab 1-2 times a week, and sometimes more often if the weather is great.
  • Did so!
  • Easier if I commit to the idea of being here and I use Justin’s heuristic of buying transit passes during the winter months
• I’m good at managing my focus (do not disturb / yes, talk to me)
  • Pretty good so far, but I haven’t tested it by working on anything that required a lot of concentration.
  • Server hum is slightly distracting, but I can use my headphones or play music.
• I’m good at talking to new people and hanging out with the regulars
  • Progress!
  • Flashcards and memory will probably help.

I also survived my initial run-in with the alarm, so that’s another milestone passed – I now know how to properly let myself in. It’s probably a good idea to practice arming the alarm and letting myself out, which would be another milestone.

Last month, I wrote:

What could January look like? I’d like to:

• create lots of value for my consulting clients
• start the marketing and sales process going for upcoming events – hope I’m not too late for the events in March!
• delegate more: add a new person to my virtual team
• maintain my twice-weekly fitness/self-defence class schedule

I hit the ground running with a couple of much-appreciated tweaks and tools for my consulting clients.

I’ve decided to scale back a little on selling sketchnoting services for conferences because I’m also curious about developing other business models. Still, it’s great to have a few events lined up! I’d like to practise graphic recording, and am looking forward to ordering some equipment.

Patricia has been a great addition to my virtual team. I should send them more work. I’ve been a little remiss.

Fitness class has been less regular as of late, but at least I keep going even though I sometimes get really anxious.

In February, I’d like to do a lot more coding and a lot more drawing. We’ll see how it works out!

• Sketchnotes
  • Visual book review: Blue Ocean Strategy–W. Chan Kim, Renée Mauborgne
  • Sketching twelve business ideas
  • Visual book review: The Art of Pricing: How to Find the Hidden Profits to Grow Your Business–Rafi Mohammed
  • Sketchnote: ENT101 Lived It Lecture–Kunal Gupta, Polar Mobile
  • Sketchnote about mindmapping: Rock the Monkey: Visual Facilitation Skills and Brain-based Learning–Chuck Frey
  • Visual book review: Cool Time: A Hands-on Plan for Managing Work and Balancing Time–Steve Prentice
  • Imagining an index of sketchnotes
  • Reflections on sketchnoting TEDxOCADU
• Plans
  • Looking back and looking forward
  • Web app idea: Stamp mix calculator
  • Imagining the next five years and planning 2013
  • Planning by the numbers: Checking the length of my runway
  • An embarrassing failure is the result of a series of unfortunate decisions, and that’s a good thing
  • Planning my code/development learning
• Business
  • Business experience report: Amending my T2 corporate tax return
  • In which I do the same thing again and again
  • Accelerating my business learning: setting a goal for a new business every month
  • Experiment notes: Accounting, sales, and marketing–all the other parts of a business
• Emacs
  • Emacs Org: Display projects with a few subtasks in the agenda view
  • Emacs Org: Task-related keyboard shortcuts for the agenda
• Life
  • Cooking: Warm lentil salad with sausages
  • Reading old letters and relearning how to write
  • The smugometer
  • Quantified Awesome: Taking inventory of stuff in closets and drawers
  • Figuring out my guidelines for time
  • It’s my dad’s 65th birthday today
  • Helping people learn more about programming
  • Things I value unequally
  • First thoughts on Windows 8
• Reviews
  • Monthly review: December 2012
  • Weekly review: Week ending January 4, 2013
  • Weekly review: Week ending January 11, 2013
  • Weekly review: Week ending January 18, 2013
  • Weekly review: Week ending January 25, 2013

Last monthly review, I wrote:

What might December look like? I want December to be a time to:

• celebrate and share the things I’ve learned in the past year
• lay the groundwork for more awesomeness in 2013
• reach out to people and help them out

To help my consulting clients prepare for the transition and also to help me ease into other kinds of businesses, I’d arranged to take all of December off from my consulting engagement much like I’d taken September off. During my regular consulting months, I kept 1-2 days a week free to nudge these other businesses along, but I wanted to experiment with full-time focus on building other businesses such as this conference sketchnoting idea. I’d still be available by bat signal in case they needed urgent help or questions answered, and I promised to check in every so often.

You’d figure that having three extra days to work on my business combined with the typical holiday slow-down would leave me with empty space to fill. I got tons more done than I expected. I sketchnoted the Lean Startup Day conference livestream hosted at MaRS (professionally!), to much delight and retweeting. I came up with a company name, designed my own logo, registered the domain and created a website, and worked on my marketing and sales plans. There’s something about focus, steady progress, and momentum. Despite the holiday closure of many of the events I regularly go to, I sketched a lot anyway.

W- took some time off work during the holidays. He usually works really hard, so I decided not to waste the opportunity. I blocked off time around my existing appointments and asked my assistant to postpone other arrangements until after the holidays. We spent our time trying new recipes, organizing the house, building a habit of exercise, and getting ready for the next year. I’ve been going to krav maga self-defence and fitness classes once a week for more than a month now, and I’m ratcheting it up to twice a week.

One of the other things I experimented with in terms of time was to use my mornings for coding and a little writing. It felt great to sit down and tweak my Emacs configuration for extra productivity, add small improvements to my Quantified Awesome, or tinker around with WordPress on my websites and blogs. I saved the afternoon for meetings, planning, and drawing. I’ll be back to a 3-day consulting schedule in January and February, so I’ll need to see if I can find the same balance on Mondays and Fridays or whether business-related work will take up all my brainspace. If so, then I’ll know that from March onwards, I should focus on building a flexible business instead of taking on full-time contracts that may distract me from what I want to learn and do.

What could January look like? I’d like to:

• create lots of value for my consulting clients
• start the marketing and sales process going for upcoming events – hope I’m not too late for the events in March!
• delegate more: add a new person to my virtual team
• maintain my twice-weekly fitness/self-defence class schedule

Post index for the past two months, newest on top

• Sketches
  • Visual book review: Running Lean–Ash Maurya
  • 2012 as a sketch
  • Tips for growing as a sketchnoter
  • My digital sketchnoting workflow
  • Sketchnotes: #ENT101 Meet the Enterpreneurs: Social Innovation – Izzy Camillieri, IZ Adaptive; Kaela Bree, AussieX; Dessy Daskalav, Greengage Mobile
  • Visual book review: The Sketchnote Handbook–Mike Rohde
  • Visual book notes: Best Practices Are Stupid: 40 ways to Out-Innovate the Competition–Stephen M. Shapiro
  • Sketchnotes: The Very Versatile Drip–Mathew Sweezey (Pardot)
  • Sketchnotes: ENT101 Business Plan and Other Communication Tools–Veronika Litinski
  • Sketchnotes: Visual Problem-solving–Dan Roam (DAN ROAM!)
  • Sketchnotes: Lean Startup Day
  • Sketchnotes: Angel Hack Toronto pitches!
• Business
  • Experience report: Designing my logo
  • Experience report: Naming my company!
  • Understanding how I’m changing as a speaker
  • Imagining sketchnotes as a business
  • One to three, that’s all
  • Experiment pre-mortem: Imagining and dealing with causes of failure
  • Investing time into building sketchnotes as a business
  • Sketchnote reflection: conference intensity
  • Business update: Tax update
  • Networking with notes – and sketchnotes, in particular
• Delegation
  • Delegation: Being clear about what you value
  • Delegation: How I hire and manage my virtual team
  • Poach my assistants, they’re awesome
  • Delegation update: Scheduling!
• Emacs
  • Emacs Org: Display a subset of tasks by context
  • Emacs: Strike through headlines for DONE tasks in Org
• Life / etc.
  • Stocking up on chicken stock stock stock
  • Blog analysis for 2012: ~133,000 words so far
  • Decision: No Illustrator CS6 for now
  • Quantified Self: Learning from a year of time data and planning what to tweak in 2013
  • Decision review: Art class (includes sketches)
• Reviews
  • Weekly review: Week ending December 28, 2012
  • Weekly review: Week ending December 21, 2012
  • Weekly review: Week ending December 14, 2012
  • Weekly review: Week ending December 7, 2012
  • Weekly review: Week ending November 30, 2012
  • Monthly reviews: October and November 2012
  • Year in review: 2012

I’d sketch this, but Adobe Illustrator CS6 keeps crashing on me and I’m tired of fighting with my computer today. Next time!

This year was about experiments. After building up my “opportunity fund,” I turned over my projects at IBM and left to start a 5-year experiment exploring what you can learn and build if you have the time and space to do so. I want to learn how to build businesses, and I want to share what I’m learning along the way.

Here’s how the year went!

January: Set things in motion for my next experiment by sending in my notice at IBM. Mapped out what I had learned. Started transitioning projects. Favourite post: Getting ready for my next experiment.

February: Made the leap! Set up a business mailbox, incorporated, and registered for HST. Favourite post: Thinking about how to experiment with business and what I might want to do

March: My first full month as a business owner! I immediately had consulting clients, which helped me hit the ground running. I drew a lot, too. (Monthly review) Favourite post: What I want from visual notetaking; imagining wild success

April: It was a lot of fun enjoying the benefits of a flexible schedule, paricularly in terms of biking. I also spent some time building my writing and drawing skills. (Monthly review)Favourite post: Why I’m temporarily unhireable

May: More client work than I expected! Sketched lots of presentations and events, too. Biked all month. Switched from community-supported agriculture to buying our own vegetables again. (Monthly review) Favourite post: Thinking about the next mini-experiment

June: Experimented with digital self-publishing by putting together a PDF of my favourite blog posts over the past ten years. (Monthly review) Favourite post: Experiment! Stories from My Twenties PDF

July: Lots of gardening and biking. Bought an Android tablet. Went strawberry-picking with the Hattoris! (Monthly review) Favourite post: Trusting myself with making time

August: Celebrated my 29th birthday! Bought a new phone, switched to a data plan. Hosted a get-together. Wrapped up consulting in preparation for a temporary break. (Monthly review) Favourite post: Thinking about what wild success at 29 looks like

September: Went to Palo Alto for the Quantified Self conference. Spent time with my parents, sister, and brother-in-law. Went to Disneyland with them! (Monthly review) Favourite post: Weekly review: Week ending September 21, 2012

October: Back to consulting. September 30 was my fiscal year end, so I spent time figuring out my books and filing taxes. Lots and lots of sketchnotes from conferences, too. (Monthly review) Favourite post: Celebrating my fiscal year end; planning how to improve

November: Gave another presentation. Started helping out with Awesome Foundation Toronto. More sketchnotes from conferences and events! (Monthly review) Favourite post: Made my largest sketchnote ever! Painting the MaRS Lean Startup Day banner

December: Took another break from consulting in order to focus on building the business. Worked on laying the groundwork for marketing and sales. Came up with a name for my company: Experivis! Favourite post: Imagining sketchnotes as a business

PLANS FOR NEXT YEAR

I want to really dig into this idea of building conference/presentation sketchnotes as a business. It’s a good way to learn sales and marketing skills.

Life-wise, I’m looking forward to making exercise part of my routines, and to spending more time with W-. The biggest thing I have to learn, I think, is to keep moving forward even though the temptation is to get stuck in limbo; to somehow have a multiplicity of plans layered onto different possibilities, and to keep myself fueled and excited by them.

As part of my resolution to spend more on learning, I went for one-on-one art classes in a nearby studio (Pamela Dodds’).

My first exercise was to draw shoes with lots of soft lines. The teacher said to focus on drawing each line in relation to each other instead of thinking about the whole shape. That makes it easier to defamiliarize yourself and draw what you see, instead of this preconceived notion of a shoe. I ended up making this shoe a little shorter than it actually was, but it was recognizably a shoe, hooray!

My homework was to draw more shoes.

Since I’m curious about translating abstract concepts to concrete images and vice versa, my teacher also suggested that I draw different kinds of shoes and the ideas associated with them.

The second class focused on negative space and chairs. On the left, you can see the chair I drew in class. On the right, here’s a chair that Leia (one of our cats) often likes sleeping in.

The third class was about lines, angles, and proportions. I started by drawing the scissors, then drawing the detergent bottle, and then finally by drawing the overlapping shapes of the coffee mugs.

At home, I practised by drawing the salt-and-pepper shakers, and by drawing the mouse.

My last session was one about faces and proportions (see above). Both of these were drawn from (rather odd-looking) mannequins. I like the profile likeness, although it was a little difficult getting the hang of the chin.

I’ve read many art education books such as Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain and Drawing by Seeing, so that sped up the teaching and gave us a shorthand for discussions. For me, the art classes were more of a meditative space where I could deliberately practise techniques, with feedback from a teacher who could warn me when I was getting too close to the paper (and thus shifting my viewpoint) or who could figure out where I was a little bit off in terms of proportions.

It’s a very different style of drawing compared to sketchnotes. I’m usually just focused on getting the gist of an idea across in a very simple, iconic form. In terms of getting better at sketchnoting, I’ll focus on broading my visual vocabulary by sketching different terms of concepts instead of focusing on drawing more realistic images. Still, it was fun discovering that even though I hadn’t been practising much “proper” drawing, I was getting better at seeing things!

Decision review: Good decision to experiment with art class, although I’ll keep looking around for other classes and I’ll keep practising on my own.