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)