Weekly review: Week ending March 7, 2014

Posted: - Modified: | weekly

Started working on our taxes. Also visited J-'s school to find out more about course selection and the coop program. Fascinating. =) Fiddling about with LaTeX, too.

Lots of podcasting and presenting next week. Let's see how this goes!

Blog posts

Sketches

  1. 2014-03-03 How I work with knowledge - seek, sense, share #pkm
  2. 2014-03-04 Paths for web design #learning #path
  3. 2014-03-04 Do I want to accept more work - Under what conditions #experiment
  4. 2014-03-04 A path for learning AutoHotkey #path #autohotkey #automation
  5. 2014-03-05 Start, stop, more, less #plans
  6. 2014-03-05 My paths to learning #my-learning
  7. 2014-03-05 How can I make my active plans and experiments more visible #review
  8. 2014-03-05 About me - Sacha Chua #bio
  9. 2014-03-06 Our frugal life #finance #frugality
  10. 2014-03-07 Maps versus tables of contents #information #organization

Link round-up

  • What is your PKM routine?: I'm always curious about how other people manage what they know.
  • Financial Independence and The Cost of Raising a Family: Actual numbers for the win.
  • Foggy Wednesday (Day 3): I like David Seah's fogbrain reflections (insights, followup). He does a great job of stepping outside himself and watching what's going on. How does he do that? Must practice this myself. Coincidentally, I'm learning more about NodeJS and Express myself, so doubleplus good. =)
  • My Completely Unscientific GitHub Survey: It's good to check your assumptions against reality (and other people's perceptions). =)
  • Student Notetaking for Recall and Understanding: A Lit Review Review: More research I want to dig into (Robert Williams and Alan Eggert, Kenneth Kiewra, etc.). So maybe there's a research-backed reason for why I like these not-quite-high-level-gist-not-quite-detail notes and where I am on the sketchnoting spectrum…
  • Learning Problems: Incremental learning versus discontinuous / step-based learning. Also related: Mastery, the plateau, and sticking with it even though you don't feel any significant progress.
  • Writers write and innovators innovate: "The big gap isn’t between people and firms doing incremental innovations and those doing big disruptive ones. The big gap is between those that aren’t innovating at all in any form, and those that are." One of the things that encourages me to keep inching forward is the thought that it takes so little action to distinguish yourself from people who never take that first step. It's depressing (how can so many people be stuck?), but it's also encouraging (how can I help them get unstuck, and in the meantime, how can I make the most of these small steps?.

Focus areas and time review

  • Business (49.0h – 29%)
    • [ ] Build: Find a user-friendly RSS plugin for WordPress
    • [ ] Change Twitter background
    • [ ] Connect: Talk to Denise Bahs about upcoming session
    • [ ] Connect: Talk to other visual thinkers
    • [ ] Connect: Talk to blogging class
    • [ ] Connect: Talk to Meloney Hall's group
    • [ ] Connect: Record primer with Jordan
    • [ ] Connect: Record financial independence show
    • [ ] Connect: Hang out with FI community
    • [ ] Delegation: Document process for setting up a public conversation
    • [ ] Earn: E1: 2.5-3.5 days of consulting
    • Earn (17.7h – 36% of Business)
      • [X] Earn: E1: 2.5-3.5 days of consulting
      • [X] Figure out why MOVs stopped having audio
    • Build (22.2h – 45% of Business)
      • [X] Build: Create visual bio
      • Drawing (3.8h)
      • Delegation (4.7h)
        • [X] Delegation: Add more web research and other basic tasks
      • Packaging (2.3h)
        • [X] Create PDF for Sketchnotes 2013
        • [X] Build – Emacs: Make a guide to Dired
        • [X] Build – Emacs: Prettify baby steps guide to Org Mode
        • [X] Set up LaTeX workflow again
      • Paperwork (4.4h)
        • [X] File payroll return
    • Connect (9.1h – 18% of Business)
      • [X] Connect: Talk to Brian Sharwood about Free Geek
      • [X] Connect: Work on slides for blogging excuses – Denise
      • [X] Have general hangout about learning
  • Relationships (14.8h – 8%)
  • Discretionary – Productive (9.2h – 5%)
    • [X] Call clinic to ask for summary of expenses
    • [X] Call the massage place to ask for a summary of expenses
    • [X] Download claim statements
    • [ ] Deposit USD
    • [ ] Follow up regarding transaction summaries
    • Writing (7.5h)
  • Discretionary – Play (3.9h – 2%)
  • Personal routines (25.9h – 15%)
  • Unpaid work (5.4h – 3%)
  • Sleep (60.3h – 35% – average of 8.6 per day)

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