What do I want to learn in 2012?

Posted: Dec 15, 2011 - Modified: Dec 18, 2012

Update: Detailed outline / updates available on Dropbox

Want to help me with anything on this list? Please feel free to contact me at sacha@sachachua.com . What can I help you learn? I’m sure I’ll learn tons along the way, too!

Plan

Life

Self-tracking / personal informatics: Learn with Quantified Awesome
- [ ] Android development
  - Goal: custom Android app for tracking and reporting, so that I can keep an eye on my goals and collect/analyze more data
  - Estimate: 80 hours
  - DONE Set up my development environment again
    CLOSED: 2011-12-16 Fri 18:54
    - State “DONE” from “TODO” 2011-12-16 Fri 18:54
  - DONE Get Quantified Awesome to show up on my Android
    CLOSED: 2011-12-16 Fri 18:54
    - State “DONE” from “TODO” 2011-12-16 Fri 18:54
  - DONE Accept a file from Tap Log Records
    CLOSED: 2011-12-16 Fri 20:34
    - State “DONE” from “TODO” 2011-12-16 Fri 20:34
```
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.SEND" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
<data android:mimeType="*/*" />
</intent-filter>
```
  - TODO Display a value from the file from Tap Log Records
  - TODO Parse the CSV and display a number
  - TODO Display the total work time
  - TODO Display the total work time this week
  - TODO Display yesterday’s statistics for sleep and discretionary time
  - TODO Synchronize with server
  - TODO Build simple text input
  - TODO Synchronize text input with server
  - TODO Build customizable categories, one level
  - TODO Build CSV export
  - TODO Build second level of categories
  - TODO Build arbitrary tree structure
  - TODO Add other forms of input – images?
- [ ] Goal tracking
  - Goal: Visual way to keep track of how much I work each week, how much I sleep, how much time I spend on focused learning, etc.; also, customizable questions to help me change my behaviour
  - Estimate: 16 hours
- [ ] Visualization
  - [ ] Time
    - Goal: Overall view of how I spent my time in a month or in a year, so that I can shift my time patterns
    - Estimate: 16 hours
  - [ ] Goals
    - Goal: See goal tracking
    - Estimate: 16 hours
  - [ ] Use
    - Goal: Identify things worth spending money or time on based on past use and satisfaction
    - Estimate: 16 hours
- [ ] Behavioural change
  - Goal: Get better and better at life by structuring each month as an experiment
  - Estimate: 48 hours
- [ ] Applying automated testing to life
  - Goal: Stop more things from falling through the cracks by developing automated tests (ex: checking balances, etc.)
  - Estimate: 16 hours
- [ ] Accommodating other people’s patterns
  - Goal: Build systems that other people can use so that I can help them and so that I can learn from how they live
  - Estimate: 80 hours

Tools: Learn by doing
- [ ] Take advantage of improvements in Emacs and Org-mode
  - Goal: Make the most of the tools I use
  - Estimate: 16 hours
- [ ] Learn how to make the most of Org-mode outlines – maybe use this for knowledge representation?
  - Goal: Get to know Emacs Org Mode thoroughly so that I can use it to organize and publish what I know
  - Estimate: 8 hours
- [ ] Other tools that can take advantage of extra CPU and memory
  - Goal: Find apps or packages that can help me work even more effectively
  - Estimate: 26 hours
- [ ] Org and synchronization between multiple computers
  - Goal: Get this sorted out so that I don’t accidentally lose any information
  - Estimate: 4 hours
- [ ] [#C] Web service integration
  - Goal: Interact with Quantified Awesome from Emacs so that I can meld Org and QA
  - Estimate: 16 hours

Writing: Learn by doing and reading
- [ ] Writing about life and things I’m learning
  - Goal: Write notes and pointers to memories so that I can remember and share stories
  - Current: 0.9 hours a day
  - Estimate: 80 hours, part of discretionary buffer time as well
- [ ] Writing family stories
  - Goal: Help capture and share some of our family stories
  - Estimate: 40 hours
- [ ] Organizing stories
  - Goal: Build a system for collaboratively working on and organizing stories
  - Estimate: 40 hours
- [ ] Organizing notes
  - Goal: Make it easy for me (and possibly other people) to browse my notes by topic or explore a knowledge map
  - Estimate: 40 hours
- [ ] Putting together an e-book that will be useful to at least one other person
  - Goal: Learn how to package information so that I can scale up
  - Estimate: 80 hours

Visual: Learn by doing and by being inspired by other people
Lowered priority on this to make space for other interests; should see if I can find someone else to do the IBM comic series
- [ ] Drawing with more colours
- [ ] Illustrating life, tips
- [ ] Taking, organizing, and sharing more pictures

Delegation / elimination: Learn by doing
Lowered priority on this to make space for other interests; may still look into delegating, but am okay with taking longer to accomplish my plans (maturation is handy!)
- [ ] Delegating some chores?
- [ ] Simplifying stuff and routines

Relationships

Not estimated because this is part of social time

[ ] Planning and decision-making: Learn by making decisions

[ ] Cultivating relationships with family: Learn by reaching out

[ ] Cultivating connections online: Learn by reaching out

[ ] Making time for friends: Learn by reaching out

[ ] Local tech events: Learn by finding out about events and attending them

Shared interests
- [ ] Once-a-month cooking: Learn by doing
- [ ] Dealing with community-supported agriculture: Learn by doing
- [ ] Tutoring: Learn by doing and reading

Development

Rails: Learn with Quantified Awesome
- Goal: I want to learn more about Rails because I want to get better at building systems to support the way I want to live, and because I enjoy using it.
- [ ] Rails 3.1: I want to take advantage of new features while building Quantified Awesome
  - Goal: Use Quantified Awesome to answer my questions about how I spend my time, what I use, and how I want to grow
  - Estimate: 80 hours
- [ ] Mongo and other data stores
  - Goal: Work with data that does not easily fit SQL data models
  - Estimate: 20 hours
- [ ] APIs: I want to integrate my web apps with lots of other tools, and allow for integration
  - Goal: Add a native Android app and an Emacs interface; possibly integrate Twitter, my blog, and other websites for more data / questions
  - Estimate: 80 hours
- [ ] Performance tuning: I want to make sure my systems can handle the requests I want it to.
  Not estimated because this is part of work
- [ ] Security testing: I want to be more confident in the applications I build.
  Not estimated because this is part of work

Testing
- [ ] 100% test coverage: Learn with Quantified Awesome, work projects
  - Goal: Get used to building more slowly and reliably
  - Estimate: 40 hours; rest included in development
- [ ] Selenium and other front-end tests: Learn with work projects
  Not estimated because this is part of work
- [ ] Behaviour-driven development: Learn with work projects, Quantified Awesome
  - Goal: Learn how to express behaviour clearly and concisely so that I can specify my own apps
  - Estimate: 8 hours; rest included in development

Launching
- [ ] Testing ideas: Learn with Quantified Awesome
  - Goal: Test ideas and see which ones might be useful to people; build networks
  - Estimate: 40 hours
- [ ] Launching with minimal or no defects: Learn with work projects
  Not estimated because this is part of work
- [ ] Launching personal projects: Learn with Quantified Awesome
  - Goal: Make life better for at least one other person
  - Estimate: 80 hours

Drupal
Not estimated because this is part of work
- [ ] Installation profiles and code packaging: Learn with work projects
- [ ] Testing: Learn with work projects
- [ ] Drupal 7: Learn with work projects

Front-end and web design
- [ ] More JQuery + AJAX for richer interactions?: Learn with work projects
  Not estimated because this is part of work
- [ ] CSS and frameworks: Learn with work projects
  Not estimated because this is part of work
- [ ] Basic information architecture: Learn with Quantified Awesome
  - Goal: Figure out a mobile and web interface that fits the way I (and maybe other people) live
  - Estimate: 40 hours

Projects
Not estimated because this is part of work
- [ ] Agile development: I want to get better at planning and executing agile projects
- [ ] Documentation: I want to take better notes so that I can support projects more effectively

Consulting

Not estimated because this is part of work

[ ] Determining needs: Learn with work engagements

[ ] Social analytics: Learn with work engagements

Time budget

From Dec 14:

Nudged by @catehstn‘s recommendation of my blog to @Tending2Entropy as an example of goal planning in personal life, I updated my learning plan with the things I’m planning to learn next year.

It was easy to come up with a quick outline. There are so many interesting things I want to learn. The tough part, however, was thinking about what I might actually get to do.

What does my cognitive surplus look like? I wanted to get a sense of how much discretionary time I actually had on a regular basis. I have about 20 weeks of data since I resumed time-tracking near the end of July. So that my numbers wouldn’t be thrown off by the vacation we took, I focused on the last eight weeks (graph: 2011-10-16 to 2011-12-11).

Over the eight-week period, I got an average of 3.5 hours of discretionary time per weekday and 7 hours of discretionary time per weekend day. I can simplify that to an average of 4.5 hours per day, which comes out to 1642 hours for 2012 (not including vacations, which include more discretionary time).

Around 40% of discretionary time was used for social activities. Let’s say that another 30% is a buffer for breaks and other things that come up, leaving 30% for focused learning. That gives me a time budget of around 500 hours. I want to do more than 1,000. Hmm.

Prioritization is important. I can focus on the things I want the most, then see how the rest of the year shakes out. Plans will change anyway, and estimates are flexible. My first few priorities for personal learning:

Android development, so that I can save time syncing and get more of the data I want
Goal tracking (handy for keeping the rest of my time in line)
Behavioural change (trying small experiments)

Another way to deal with the gap is to shift more time. Over those eight weeks, tidying took about 0.7 hours / day, and cooking took about that much time too. Let’s say half of future tidying and all of future cooking is outsourceable at $20/hour. That’s an additional 384 hours for a trade-off of $7,680 after tax, which is a large chunk of money. I’d rather save the money and let it compound for later use, especially if I time chores so that they take advantage of low energy. Besides, cooking and other chores are partly social time too.

I can shift time in other ways. For example, I can use commuting time to learn more about Emacs, Org, and Rails, so that will help too. I can also use walking time to record life stories if I can figure out a workflow for dealing with audio or short notes.

Good to know what the size of the box is, and how much I want to pack into it! Let’s see how it all works out…

You can comment with Disqus or you can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.