sacha chua living an awesome life

W- and I spent all of Monday shoveling three tons of gravel and limestone screenings. The backyard is slowly taking shape. Whee! I like spending time with W-, and it’s good to get stuff done.

I’ve been experimenting with keeping my weekly plans pretty loose, putting down only my commitments instead of including optional tasks that I end up postponing anyway. I give myself plenty of space in my schedule, and then I work on whatever projects I’m interested in. My Emacs Org text file keeps a lot of TODOs and ideas to work on, and there are always things to learn. My interests tend to go in phases. These days, I lean more towards writing and coding than drawing visual book reviews, so my book backlog is piling up. C’est la vie!

Blog posts

• Sketchnotes, life – Weekly review: Week ending June 7, 2013
• Unstructured time, shaping your wants, and giving yourself permission
• So that’s what three tons of stuff looks like…
• Animating things in Emacs
• Sketchnotes: How to Live an Amazing Life (C.C. Chapman, Third Tuesday Toronto)
• Getting started with blogging when no one’s reading
• Quantified Awesome: Analyzing time data–the questions I ask and how I answer them
• Priming the idea pump

Accomplished this week

• Business
  • Earn
    • Earn: Consulting – E1 – Monday
    • Earn: Consulting – E1 – Thursday
    • Sketchnote B event – Tuesday
    • Revise illustration for M
  • Connect
    • Sketchnote Chris Chapman’s talk on how to live an amazing life
    • Hang out with Bernie Michalik and Aaron Kim
    • Meet Denise Balkissoon and discuss Quantified Self
  • Build
    • Quantified Awesome
      • Properly filter review by parent ID
      • Add total number of entries to record category view
      • Add day, month, and week columns to CSV for easy summary
      • Get cucumber tests to work
    • Start exploring Scrivener as a way of planning blog posts
• Relationships
  • Help put in gravel
  • Hang out with Gabriel Mansour
  • Talk to Eric Boyd about timetracking
  • Chat with Mom
• Life
  • Listen to http://quantifiedself.com/2013/05/jared-chung-on-tracking-time/
  • Go through more Japanese flashcards
  • Get lots of biking time!

Plans for next week

• Business
  • Earn
    • [ ] Earn: Consulting – E1 – Thursday
    • [ ] Earn: Consulting – E1 – Tuesday
    • [ ] Earn: Consulting – E1 – Help on Saturday
  • Build
    • [ ] Sketchnote a book
    • [ ] Sort out receipt for cheques
    • [ ] Set up electronic link between main account and savings account
  • Connect
    • [ ] Prepare for presentation on Evernote and visual thinking
    • [ ] Give presentation on Evernote and visual thinking
    • [ ] Hang out with people and chat about blogging
• Relationships
  • [ ] Do another strength training workout
  • [ ] Hang out with Emma
  • [X] Help put in limestone screenings
• Life
  • … we’ll see!

Time review

• Business: 36.0 hours (Earn: 19.2, E1: 12.1, Connect: 8.6, Build: 8.3)
• Discretionary: 33.3 hours (Social: 5.8, Productive: 6.9, Writing: 5.5)
• Personal: 25.1 hours (Routines: 11.1)
• Sleep: 63.4 hours – average of 9.1 hours per day
• Unpaid work: 11.2 hours (Cook: 5.3)

Blog posts

• Drawing, blogging, and semi-retirement: Weekly review: Week ending May 31, 2013
• Good influences in partnerships
• Monthly review: May 2013
• Announcing this 2012 Sketchnotes collection! (free/PWYC)
• Using Google’s In-Page Analytics to understand how people use a site
• Turn your unfair advantages into more unfair advantages

Lots of coding, meeting people, and writing about life. =) And lots of illustration, too – new client! It’s fun to draw, and I’m becoming more and more comfortable with my evolving style.

After doing a lot of research, I finally decided on some things that are coming up ahead. We’ll see how it works out over the next year. I’m gradually getting used to making bigger decisions. This is good!

I’m making steady progress learning Japanese. I regularly review my AnkiDroid flashcards over breakfast and before going to bed. The listening decks are much easier for me to work with than the straight vocabulary decks, and they’re more fun too.

W- and I have been working on our backyard. We ordered 2.5 tonnes of gravel and 0.5 tonnes of limestone screenings, which will be delivered tomorrow. We’re taking the day off to shovel and compact gravel, which should be an interesting experience. I have a sketchnoting gig on Tuesday morning, so I have to make sure that I’m not too tired.

This week will be pretty busy with meetings and other commitments. I want to spend my extra time tweaking the way I plan and work so that I can make better progress on my projects and on my SOMEDAY/MAYBE list. The projects I’m doing well on (writing, drawing, coding, learning Japanese, gardening) are the ones that I tend to work on every day or so. There are some projects that I tend to postpone (Learn You an Emacs for Great Good?)–maybe I don’t care about them strongly enough yet, and that’s okay. I wonder if it’s because my main projects are the kinds of things that will absorb as much time and attention as I want to throw at them, and I like open-ended exploration instead of setting myself goals like “Draw a hundred faces.” Hmm. It might be fun to experiment with that other approach.

I also noticed that I’m not reading as much now. I’m not particularly energized by the books I’ve been getting out of the library or from publishers/publicists looking for visual book reviews, although I still flip through them looking for interesting nuggets. Something to reflect on and dig into. I wonder if I go through these cycles, and what I replace reading nonfiction with…

We were planning to visit the Philippines in August to celebrate my birthday with family, but for various reasons, we’ll probably postpone the trip to December instead. So August might be more of a staycation or focused month for personal projects. It’s tempting to make it the same as a regular work month (two days a week of consulting, and then other things), but it’s important to play with longer chunks of time too. So I’m gearing up to make the most of that time – maybe I’ll use it for lots of coding!

Accomplished this week

• Business
  • Earn
    • E1
      • Earn: Consulting – E1 – Thursday
      • Earn: Consulting – E1 – Monday
    • B
      • Review context for B
      • Sketch initial images
      • Revise image and send final
      • Send presentation links to MC
      • Send bio, picture, and invoice
      • Discuss requirements for B meeting
      • Set up standard agreement and send it to B
    • M
      • Revise handout based on Alejandra’s feedback
  • Build
    • Fix time review issues
    • Ask CRA about one-time payroll or bonus – Set up code coverage tools
    • Get all the existing tests to pass again
    • Confirm that CRA quarterly installments are the right size
    • Fix HST on previous restaurant transactions
    • Apply lessons from E-books the Smart Way
  • Connect
    • Follow up with David Achkar and Hao Zheng re. timetracking
    • Follow up after time-tracking conversation
    • Chat with Mike about Emacs
• Relationships
  • Discuss P with R
  • Scan letters
  • Do another strength training workout
  • Reply to Mike’s letter
• Life
  • Declutter

Plans for next week

• Business
  • Earn
    • [ ] Earn: Consulting – E1 – Thursday
    • [ ] Sketchnote B event – Tuesday
  • Build
    • [ ] Sketchnote Chris Chapman’s talk on how to live an amazing life
    • [ ] Sketchnote a book
    • [X] Listen to http://quantifiedself.com/2013/05/jared-chung-on-tracking-time/
  • Connect
    • [ ] Meet Shelley Archibald
    • [ ] Talk to Eric Boyd about timetracking
• Relationships
  • [ ] Help put in gravel
  • [ ] Hang out with Gabriel Mansour
  • [ ] Do another strength training workout
• Life
  • [ ] Sort out my project planning process

Time review

• Business: 45.1 hours (Earn: 20.5 (E1: 15.5), Connect: 5.0, Build: 19.7)
• Discretionary: 32.9 hours (Social: 1.2, Productive: 12.0 (Writing: 7.0, Emacs: 1.6), Play: 3.6)
• Personal: 19.1 hours (Routines: 8.5)
• Sleep: 62.8 hours – average of 9.0 hours per day
• Unpaid work: 9.3 hours (Commuting: 1.8, Cook: 2.1, Tidy: 1.7)

Good week for drawing and writing! I put together a collection of my sketchnotes, drew notes at a workshop (that we printed right then and there), and wrote a lot about what I was learning along the way. Looking forward to more drawing next week, and more experiments too! (Latest experiment: using MapLib’s simple Google Maps API interface to provide a zoomable, pannable view of the one-page guide to learning Emacs… =) This is promising! )

Blog posts

• Home improvements, drawing, blogging; Weekly review: Week ending May 24, 2013
• Things I’m learning about semi-retirement
• How I set up Autodesk Sketchbook Pro for sketchnoting
• Thinking about a pro-bono policy; being deliberate about what I do for free, discount, or barter
• How I draw presentations
• Sketchnote: Visual Thinking (Patricia Kambitsch)
• On blogging and platforms, and experimenting with Google Hangout

Accomplished this week

• Business
  • Earn
    • Earn: Consulting – E1 – Tuesday
    • Earn: Consulting – E1 – Thursday
    • Follow up with Geoff and Gillian regarding June 11 event
    • Talk to GN about B sketchnotes
    • Sketch overview of M presentation
  • Build
    • Add mailing list subscription to my blog sidebar
    • Finish the labels for my sketchnotes
    • Experiment with Leanpub
    • Follow up on HST from FluentBrain invoice
    • Organize my 2012 sketchnotes by topic
  • Connect
    • [#A] Assist with sketchnoting workshop
    • Write about platforms and chat with Thomas
    • Sketchnote Awesome Foundation Toronto pitch night
    • Co-host Visual Thinkers meetup
    • Reach out to Mike Rohde regarding event
    • Post Visual Thinkers Toronto notes
    • Add Visual Thinkers Toronto sign-ups to mailing list
    • Post notes from Quantified Self Toronto
    • Follow up with Quantified Self Toronto people
    • [#C] Process Quantified Self Toronto audio
• Relationships
  • Research I vs U
  • Thank Mom for champorado, puto, and scarf
  • Do laundry
  • Reply to Mel’s letter
  • Make pizza
  • Make chicken tikka masala
• Life
  • Draw platforms
  • Play some more FF?
  • Return books to the Japan Foundation library

Plans for next week

• Business
  • Earn
    • [ ] Earn: Consulting – E1 – Monday
    • [ ] Earn: Consulting – E1 – Thursday
    • [ ] Discuss requirements for B meeting
    • [ ] Revise handout based on Alejandra’s feedback
    • [ ] Set up standard agreement and send it to B
  • Build
    • [ ] Sketchnote Customer CEO
    • [ ] Interface for goals
    • [ ] Figure out org2blog publishing using Org 8
  • Connect
    • [ ] Meet Shelley Archibald
    • [ ] Follow up with David Achkar and Hao Zheng re. timetracking
• Relationships
  • [ ] Discuss P with R
  • [ ] Scan letters
  • [ ] Reply to Mike’s letter
  • [ ] Do another strength training workout
• Life
  • [X] Declutter

Time review

• Business: 50.3 hours (Earn: 18.4, E1: 16.3, Connect: 12.1, Build: 19.8)
• Discretionary: 27.3 hours (Social: 2.8, Productive: 9.6, Writing: 4.6, Emacs: 0.1, Play: 0.4)
• Personal: 21.8 hours (Routines: 10.6)
• Sleep: 59.0 hours – average of 8.4 hours per day
• Unpaid work: 9.6 hours (Cook: 5.3, Tidy: 0.3)

We’ve been working on repairing the deck and the patio, so the backyard is a mess. Good to spend time helping W-, though. =)

It’s getting easier and easier to focus on my own projects instead of saying yes to requests that come my way. I’m learning!

Blog posts

• Emacs, drawing, and blogging: Week ending May 17, 2013
• Slice of life: Home improvements
• Emacs Chat: Bastien Guerry
• How I use Feedburner to give people the option of different blog update frequencies
• First impressions of Artrage 4
• Visual book review: The Visual Marketing Revolution (Stephanie Diamond)
• How to make a hand-drawn highlighted web page header

Accomplished this week

• Business
  • Earn
    • Earn: Consulting – E1 – Tuesday
    • Earn: Consulting – E1 – Thursday
  • Connect
    • Co-host Quantified Self
    • Talk to Bastien Guerry about Emacs
  • Build
    • Sketchnote a book
    • Choose a topic to package
• Relationships
  • Help with home improvements
• Life
  • Declutter
  • Garden
    • Plant zucchini, more bitter melon, bok choi, and lettuce
    • Plant lavender
    • Add compost and move bok choi

Plans for next week

• Business
  • Earn
    • [ ] Earn: Consulting – E1 – Tuesday
    • [ ] Earn: Consulting – E1 – Thursday
    • [ ] Assist with sketchnoting workshop
    • [ ] Talk to GN about B sketchnotes
    • [ ] Sketch how to make a deputation
  • Connect
    • [ ] Process Quantified Self Toronto audio
    • [ ] Co-host Visual Thinkers meetup
    • [ ] Follow up with Quantified Self Toronto people
  • Build
    • [ ] Listen to a QS video and classify it
    • [ ] Fix HST on previous restaurant transactions
    • [ ] Sketchnote a book
    • [ ] Interface for goals
• Relationships
  • [ ] Reply to Mike’s letter
  • [ ] Reply to Mel’s letter
• Life
  • [ ] Return books to the Japan Foundation library
  • [ ] [#C] Study for the Canadian citizenship test
  • [ ] Play some more FF?
  • [ ] Figure out org2blog publishing using Org 8

Time review

• Business: 42.1 hours (Earn: 15.4, E1: 14.9, Connect: 9.3, Build: 17.4)
• Discretionary: 39.4 hours (Social: 3.5, Productive: 8.0, Writing: 2.4, Emacs: 2.4)
• Personal: 23.2 hours (Routines: 14.2)
• Sleep: 53.9 hours – average of 7.7 hours per day
• Unpaid work: 9.5 hours (Commuting: 3.3, Cook: 2.4, Tidy: 1.7)

I spent four hours on Friday drawing this beginners’ one-page guide to Emacs, and people really liked it. =) It’ll be awesome to make more things like that! Also, amazing amazing amazing comments from people helping me figure out all sorts of stuff. Thanks! =D

Blog posts

• Weekly review: Week ending May 10, 2013
• Cherry blossoms in High Park, and playing with digital watercolour in Artrage 4
• Stepping sideways into Alternate Universe Sacha
• Learning update May 2013
• From cats to keystrokes
• Poll: How often would you like to receive e-mail updates? Also, quantifying my blog posting history
• Thinking about what I want to do and where I want to go with this blog
• How to Learn Emacs: A Hand-drawn One-pager for Beginners

Accomplished this week

• Business
  • Earn
    • Earn: Consulting – E1 – Thursday
    • Earn: Consulting – E1 – Tuesday
    • Earn: Consulting – E1 –
    • Sketchnote GIST tech conference
  • Build
    • Practise drawing for two hours
    • Set up virtual box
    • Learn about Vagrant, Chef, and Puppet
    • Add polls to my site
    • Add brief bio to my blog sidebar
    • Learn at Toronto Comic Arts Festival
    • Upgrade my Linode
  • Connect
    • Talk to Matt about what he can help me with
    • Talk to Shawn about sketchnoting FITC
    • Talk to ZoomToLearn about illustration
• Relationships
  • Get together with W-’s family
• Life
  • Collect 50 sentences for my Japanese-English deck
  • Set up my Ankidroid
  • Have dental new patient exam
  • Take notes on “Strategies for Reading Japanese”
  • Fix library renew script

Plans for next week

• Business
  • Earn
    • [ ] Earn: Consulting – E1 – Thursday
    • [ ] Earn: Consulting – E1 – Tuesday
  • Build
    • [ ] Sketchnote a book
    • [ ] Choose a topic to package
    • [ ] Set up clean development environment for Quantified Awesome
    • [ ] Build interface for goals
  • Connect
    • [ ] Talk to Bastien Guerry about Emacs
• Relationships
  • [X] Help W- with setting up the post
  • [ ] Help out with Linden visit to Hacklab?
• Life
  • [ ] Play some more FF?
  • [ ] Return books to the Japan Foundation library
  • [ ] Plant zucchini, more bitter melon, bok choi, and lettuce

Time review

• Business: 53.3 hours (Earn: 18.6, E1: 15.6, Connect: 5.9, Build: 28.7)
• Discretionary: 30.7 hours (Social: 0.7, Productive: 14.6, Writing: 5.7, Emacs: 4.1)
• Personal: 20.6 hours (Routines: 8.4)
• Sleep: 54.0 hours – average of 7.7 hours per day
• Unpaid work: 9.5 hours (Cook: 5.1, Tidy: 0.5)

Blog posts

• Weekly review: Week ending May 3, 2013
• Thinking about movies
• Sketchnoting: Finding a balance of details and diagrams, and calibrating your writing to time
• Hacking my motivation for workouts
• Quantifying my habit of writing, and things I’ve learned along the way
• Use the weekly review to give yourself permission to do things you want to do
• Monthly review: April 2013

Accomplished this week

• Business
  • Earn
    • Earn: Consulting – E1 – Tuesday
    • Earn: Consulting – E1 – Do some consulting this Wednesday
    • Earn: Consulting – E1 – Thursday
    • Discuss curriculum sketches and workshops with M
    • Start drafting a curriculum sketch for M
    • Send invoice
  • Connect
    • Help Cena Mayo with Emacs
    • Join ALU Lisp meeting
    • Attend Toronto Agile Support Group
  • Build
    • Accounting
      • Set up accounting thing
      • Ask accountant about QST
      • Send Interac transfer to accountant
      • Check out and send accountant’s copy of my Quickbooks records
      • Apply accounting changes
      • [#A] Call Revenu Quebec – Waiting for call back
    • System administration
      • Copy my home directory
      • Copy all the files for my website
      • Copy ~/all_dbs.sql
• Relationships
  • Family
    • Upload database
    • Recreate basic WordPress
    • Synchronize e-mails
  • Go to HackLab open house
  • Host tea party
• Life
  • Japanese
    • Register for a Japan Foundation library card
    • Study a Japanese song
    • Learn new Japanese song
    • Read a volume of manga
  • Gardening
    • Buy tomato plants from corner store
    • Plant tomatoes and other vegetables
    • Add compost and topsoil to grass and backyard
  • Set up dentist appointment
  • Game: Make progress toward endgame
  • See cherry blossoms
  • Draw for the fun of it
  • Declutter
  • Fill up my TFSA and RRSP

Plans for next week

• Business
  • Earn
    • [ ] Earn: Consulting – E1 – Tuesday
    • [ ] Earn: Consulting – E1 – Thursday
    • [ ] Talk to Shawn about sketchnoting FITC
    • [ ] Sketchnote GIST tech conference
  • Build
    • [ ] Practise drawing for two hours
    • [ ] Sketchnote a book
    • [ ] Interface for goals
    • [ ] Figure out org2blog publishing using Org 8
    • [ ] Set up virtual box
  • Connect
    • [ ] Talk to Matt about what he can help me with
• Relationships
  • [ ] Get together with W-’s family
• Life
  • [ ] Collect 50 sentences for my Japanese-English deck
  • [ ] Take notes on “Strategies for Reading Japanese”
  • [ ] Plant lavender
  • [ ] Have dental new patient exam

Time review

• Business: 35.8 hours (Earn: 18.2, E1: 18.2, Connect: 3.1, Build: 14.5)
• Discretionary: 43.6 hours (Social: 8.6, Productive: 15.5, Writing: 3.7, Emacs: 2.6, Play: 3.4)
• Personal: 20.9 hours (Routines: 11.3)
• Sleep: 54.1 hours – average of 7.7 hours per day
• Unpaid work: 13.7 hours (Commuting: 1.5, Cook: 4.6, Tidy: 1.9)

So much writing, yay! That felt wonderful. It was great to follow my curiosity and write about what i’m learning. Mmm, more of this next week…

Blog posts

• Weekly review: Week ending April 26, 2013
• Sunday
• Quantified Self: a year of grocery data
• How I got started in investing
• Learning how to deal with mild panic
• Sketchnote: Solving Wicked Problems with Dialogue Mapping (Chris Chapman, Toronto Agile Support Group)
• Keeping in touch
• Visual book review: Red Thread Thinking: Weaving Together Connections for Brilliant Ideas and Profitable Innovation (Debra Kaye with Karen Kelly)

Accomplished this week

• Business
  • Earn
    • Consulting – E1 – Tuesday
    • Consulting – E1 – Thursday
  • Build
    • See about setting up Quickbooks review
    • Pick up package from store
  • Connect
    • Talk to Jo’Ann about sketchnotes
    • Talk to Patrick Finucane about sketches
    • Sketchnote Hackernest/Girls in Toronto talks
    • Co-host Visual Thinkers Toronto meetup
• Relationships
  • Measure cushions
  • Have coffee with Evan Willms
  • Send letter to Mike
  • Send letter to Clair
• Life
  • Buy seeds
  • Get my PCFinancial savings account out of dormancy
  • Have a massage
  • Declutter
  • Checked my finances

Plans for next week

• Business
  • Earn
    • [ ] Earn: Consulting – E1 – Tuesday
    • [ ] Earn: Consulting – E1 – Thursday
    • [ ] Discuss curriculum sketches and workshops with M
    • [ ] Start drafting a curriculum sketch for M
    • [ ] Call Ministry Quebec
  • Connect
    • [ ] Join ALU Lisp meeting
  • Build
    • [ ] Set up accounting thing
    • [ ] Sketchnote a book
    • [ ] Interface for goals
• Relationships
  • [ ] Host tea party
  • [ ] Drop by HackLab.to on Monday
  • [ ] Go to HackLab open house
  • [ ] Drop by HackLab.to on Friday
  • [ ] Make second test cover for cushion
• Life
  • Japanese
    • [ ] Register for a Japan Foundation library card
    • [ ] Learn new Japanese song
    • [ ] See cherry blossoms
    • [ ] Read a volume of manga
  • Garden
    • [ ] Plant tomatoes and other vegetables
    • [ ] Add compost and topsoil to grass and backyard
  • Other
    • [ ] Draw for the fun of it
    • [ ] Declutter
    • [ ] Game: Complete another three missions
    • [ ] Figure out org2blog publishing using Org 8

Time review

• Business: 29.2 hours (Earn: 13.2, Connect: 7.5, Build: 8.5)
• Discretionary: 46.1 hours (Social: 3.7, Productive: 25.0, Writing: 13.8, Emacs: 0.8, Play: 3.0)
• Personal: 24.8 hours (Routines: 13.9)
• Sleep: 58.1 hours – average of 8.3 hours per day
• Unpaid work: 9.8 hours (Cook: 4.8, Tidy: 0.4)