Last month, I wrote:

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.

And boy, did I ever! I put together a PDF of 105 thoughts from October 2013 that compiled my notes from thinking through different things, and you can see a list (including some small sketches I didn’t include in the PDF) after the blog posts below. Not only did this give me plenty of practice in visual thinking, it also helped me focus and accomplish a lot. I hammered out a pretty decent drawing workflow that made the most of my new gear. I learned a lot about learning. I tidied up. I set up better backups and did some system administration chores I’d been procrastinating. Good stuff indeed.

November is going to be busy but good. I’ve got two projects going on at work, including some animation and voice recording. (That’ll be interesting to sort out with the cats and the heater…) I need to sort out possible tooth surgery for one of our cats and take care of other pet-related matters. We’re working on decluttering and organizing the house. Lots of things going on, and I want to continue doing my daily-ish drawing habit too. Let’s see how it works out!

Blog posts

• Decisions
  • The power of no: being completely* unhireable until 2017 (and possibly longer)
  • Decision review: Seven months at HackLab
  • Cheat uncertainty by sweetening the potential outcomes
  • What’s on your back burner?
  • When it comes to juggling multiple interests, it helps to limit your expectations
  • Growing slowly, adjusting the speed
• Learning
  • What do I want to learn about learning?
  • Visual book review: How to make a complete map of every thought you think (Lion Kimbro)
  • Next steps for system administration
  • Mindmapping chat with Billy Waters (@vitaminsludge)
  • I don’t write about everything; How do you manage your private notes?
• Drawing
  • Sketchnote Lessons: How do you want to grow as a sketchnoter?
  • Thinking out loud about how to help other sketchnoters go professional and how to help people get their ideas sketched
  • Drawing practice: Daily drawing
  • Learning more about illustrating my blog posts
  • Visual thinking: build your visual library
  • Sketchnote Lesson: Metaphors
  • Daily drawing update: So far, fantastic!
• Sharing
  • Blogging tip: Test your ideas and get more feedback in order to make your posts better
  • Test what you know by sharing
  • Growing this blog
  • Jetpack subscribers: Terribly sorry about the test posts! Disabling, please use Feedburner to subscribe instead
  • Integrating visual outlining into my writing process
• Gardening
  • Gardening plans for 2014
  • Gardening review: 2013
• Reviews
  • Weekly review: Week ending October 4, 2013
  • Weekly review: Week ending October 11, 2013
  • Weekly review: Week ending October 18, 2013
  • Sysad stuff – Weekly review: Week ending October 25, 2013
  • Monthly review: September 2013

Tons of sketches! You can browse through them at sketches.sachachua.com or check them out using this list:

Drawings

1. 2013.10.04 Drawing and scanning morning pages
2. 2013.10.04 Imagining the future(s)
3. 2013.10.04 Legend of Heroes – Trails in the Sky
4. 2013.10.04 Low energy versus high energy
5. 2013.10.04 Weekly review
6. 2013.10.04 What would be my ideal daily drawing setup
7. 2013.10.05 Gardening thoughts
8. 2013.10.05 How can I help people save time
9. 2013.10.05 Logitech H800
10. 2013.10.06 Consulting and focus
11. 2013.10.06 Daily drawing – thinking on paper
12. 2013.10.06 Possible pasts
13. 2013.10.06 Weekend cooking
14. 2013.10.07 Alan Kay
15. 2013.10.07 Delegation
16. 2013.10.07 JetPens
17. 2013.10.07 Kinds of email
18. 2013.10.07 Reflecting on friendships that work well and ones that need figuring out
19. 2013.10.07 Sharing circles
20. 2013.10.07 Sketchnote Media for thinking the unthinkable
21. 2013.10.07 Where are my people gaps
22. 2013.10.08 Backburner
23. 2013.10.08 Hacklab Dinner – four courses, actually!
24. 2013.10.09 Breaking down my visual vocabulary
25. 2013.10.09 Cats
26. 2013.10.09 Daily drawing updates
27. 2013.10.09 Doodles
28. 2013.10.09 More thoughts about delegation
29. 2013.10.09 My passport misadventures
30. 2013.10.09 Thinking about visual outlining
31. 2013.10.09 What do I want to learn about learning
32. 2013.10.10 Doodles medicine
33. 2013.10.10 Late at night
34. 2013.10.10 Playing with lettering
35. 2013.10.10 Relaxing
36. 2013.10.10 Relaxing
37. 2013.10.10 Small paper
38. 2013.10.10 Small paper
39. 2013.10.11 Adjusting the speed
40. 2013.10.11 Starting from enough
41. 2013.10.11 Weekly review
42. 2013.10.13 Watches
43. 2013.10.14 Long weekends
44. 2013.10.14 Long weekends
45. 2013.10.14 Mapping out learning
46. 2013.10.14 Mapping what you know
47. 2013.10.15 Applying computer science to learning
48. 2013.10.15 Current mapping limits and challenges
49. 2013.10.15 Reviewing what you’ve learned
50. 2013.10.18 Gardening notes
51. 2013.10.18 Indexing
52. 2013.10.18 Note-taking system
53. 2013.10.18 Note-taking techniques
54. 2013.10.18 Weekly review
55. 2013.10.18 What I want to learn about gardening
56. 2013.10.19 How to Make a Complete Map of Every Thought You Think
57. 2013.10.20 Cooking notes
58. 2013.10.21 Fitting multiple thoughts on a page
59. 2013.10.21 How can I think on paper more effectively
60. 2013.10.21 When do I pause or stop when thinking about something
61. 2013.10.22 Different methods for (assisted) learning
62. 2013.10.22 How can I tap the value I create
63. 2013.10.22 My new sketching and thinking workflow, and mindmap comparisons
64. 2013.10.22 Plenty of sleep
65. 2013.10.22 What can I do to get more value from online courses
66. 2013.10.22 What do I need to do in terms of system administration
67. 2013.10.23 Evernote Fujitsu ScanSnap
68. 2013.10.23 How can I find the right balance of thinking, learning, doing, and reviewing
69. 2013.10.23 How to Ask Questions the Smart Way (Eric S. Raymond)
70. 2013.10.23 Sketchnote Bullet Journal (Ryder Carroll)
71. 2013.10.23 Thinking About Getting Better at Asking Questions
72. 2013.10.24 Asking myself better questions
73. 2013.10.24 Current state – backups
74. 2013.10.24 Google Helpout
75. 2013.10.24 Mindjet 14 vs Freeplane
76. 2013.10.24 My processes for reviewing info
77. 2013.10.24 Personal information architecture
78. 2013.10.24 Quantified Self Toronto
79. 2013.10.24 Sharing my mindmap
80. 2013.10.24 What topics do I want to make progress in daily or weekly
81. 2013.10.25 How I organize and publish my sketches
82. 2013.10.25 Weekly review
83. 2013.10.25 What do I want to do with my business
84. 2013.10.26 Planning for the trip
85. 2013.10.27 Time Management for System Administrators – Thomas A
86. 2013.10.28 Deployment procedures
87. 2013.10.28 Drawing on paper versus drawing on my computer
88. 2013.10.28 Mindmapping chat with vitaminsludge
89. 2013.10.28 My roadmap to becoming a better geek
90. 2013.10.28 Setting up my development environment VMs
91. 2013.10.28 Setting up virtual machines with Vagrant
92. 2013.10.29 Accelerate your learning through visual thinking
93. 2013.10.29 Bike versus subway
94. 2013.10.29 Visual Thinkers Toronto
95. 2013.10.30 Destructive scans – is it worth cutting apart my books
96. 2013.10.30 How can I make the most of purchases
97. 2013.10.30 How do I break a large topic down into small questions that I can handle
98. 2013.10.30 Playing with style – how do I want to explore
99. 2013.10.30 What kinds of thoughts are interesting or useful for me to explore on paper
100. 2013.10.30 Why do I prefer bottom-up thinking to top-down thinking
101. 2013.10.30 Why does note-taking matter to me
102. 2013.10.30 Why does note-taking matter to me – positive
103. 2013.10.31 How do I want to tweak four months of tilting the balance towards consulting
104. 2013.10.31 Imagining an awesome day
105. 2013.10.31 Possibility – Hire or partner with an extrovert to interview people
106. 2013.10.31 Reflections on cats
107. 2013.10.31 Understanding gaps
108. 2013.10.31 What do I want or need to store on my backup drives
109. 2013.10.31 What do I want to explore
110. 2013.10.31 Why do I prefer asynchronous communication, and what can I do about it
111. 2013.11.01 Weekly review

More posts about: monthly, review | See in index // Add Comment »