Monthly review: September 2013
| monthly, reviewI’m back to consulting on Tuesdays and Thursdays in September, with
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays for my experiment with
semi-retirement. Let’s see if I can keep the momentum!
To accommodate some of the priorities and my clients’ plans, I ended up increasing my consulting to the equivalent of three days a week (two full days and two half-days for best responsiveness). I’ll keep the same pace in October, and then I’ll probably take off for some vacation in December. I don’t mind scaling my personal projects back a little to squeeze in some more consulting over a short period of time – I can see the value of the work I do, and I can still make time to write and draw.
September 30 was my second fiscal year end, so I spent some time thinking about how I wanted to reinvest in my business. Consulting is going well, and I want to get even better at drawing and writing. I bought a Fujitsu ScanSnap and have started using it to support a daily drawing habit, and I’ve been getting a lot of positive feedback.
In October, I’ll focus on consulting. In my discretionary time, I’ll focus on lots of drawing and thinking. I want to build that habit of daily visual thinking, and then I’ll use that to learn even more.
Here’s what I wrote about in September:
- Tech
- How to learn Emacs keyboard shortcuts (a visual tutorial for newbies)
- Using Emacs to figure out where I need to improve in order to type faster
- When I blog with Emacs and when I blog with other tools
- Reorganizing WordPress categories with Term Management Tools and other tweaks
- Dealing with SIGSEGV in php5-fpm and Nginx
- Setting up dynamic DNS with Tomato and Namecheap, and limiting SSH
- Sketchnotes and drawing
- Sketchnote: Managing Oneself (Peter Drucker)
- Sketchnotes: Conversations About Social Business (Jennifer Okimoto, IBM)
- Sketchnote: Reboot Your Business, Reboot Your Life: Your Future Depends On It – Mitch Joel (Third Tuesday Toronto)
- Sketchnote Lessons: Stick figures
- Sketchnote Lessons: Adding color
- Sketchnote Lessons: Having fun with words
- Sketchnote Lessons: Adding Emphasis
- How I prepare for professional digital sketchnoting
- Writing
- 4 steps to a better blog by planning your goals and post types
- What keeps you from taking notes? 9 excuses and how to get past them
- Balancing writing with other things
- The learning machine: How I turn what I learn into blog posts
- Poll: Planning a weekly topic-focused blog – what would you like to read more about?
- Reviews
- Life
- Business