This week was about making little improvements. We installed weather-stripping to stop the drafts under the exterior walls. We added more lights to the basement, including an undercabinet light at my desk. I organized the tangle of USB cables plugged into a hub behind my monitor, tucking them into a box with a few input and output holes so that there's less visual clutter. I also set up my Cintiq 12WX again. Using it to draw book sketchnotes is more pleasant than using my tablet PC. I wrote some Emacs Lisp to help me with my monthly reviews, and some Javascript to add blog links to more than a hundred of my sketches. I set up a Tasker scene to help me track my time on QuantifiedAwesome.com with just two clicks. Fun!

I posted my annual review. I think my focus for 2015 is going to be on little improvements and micro-habits. Getting really good at that will likely have all sorts of benefits.

Next week, W- will be back at work, and I'll probably spend Thursday consulting. The rest of the time, I'm looking forward to revising transcripts, sketching books, and planning my next series of 2-4 week experiments.

Blog posts

• Weekly review: Week ending December 26, 2014
• Sketched Book: The Inner Game of Work – W. Timothy Gallwey
• Start your titles with a verb to make them stronger; or reflections on titles, filler phrases, and my life as a gerund Self-directed and other-directed posts in terms of titles (vague gerunds versus clear, concrete verbs); thinking about better titles and post structures
• Org Mode publishing workflow for Sketched Books collection
• Learning a little more quickly
• 2014 in review

Sketches

• 2014.12.31 Sketched Book – The Checklist Manifesto – How to Get Things Right – Atul Gawande – Blogged

Link round-up

• Sketchnoting
  • Practical Sketchnoting workshop – Hat tip to Graphic Coaching for the link. Check out the related presentations on Slideshare for even more tutorials.
  • Sketchnoting: Tips for Students | Brain Bonbons: Suggestions for students (particularly in science)
• Emacs
  • Grant Rettke: All Emacs Users Should Probably Run auto-compile: Added to my configuration.
  • Endless Parentheses: Asynchronous package upgrades with Paradox: Neat.
  • Grant Rettke: The Emacs Widget Library: I've never played around with defining my own widget interfaces. Hmm.
  • A pretty different configuration of Emacs by Casey Muratori of Handmade Hero: This and other Handmade Hero videos (like Instantaneous Live Code Editing look interesting. Yay for more people sharing their workflow and working out loud!
  • A New Emacs Blog: Neat! Subscribed to oremacs.com.
• If you tell a story three times, blog it: Totally. Actually, I tend to blog things when I catch myself telling the story once. =)
• Most popular posts of 2014 (John D. Cook): Notable for the link to What would Donald Knuth do, which amused me greatly. (Probably requires computer science or related degree/interest to appreciate.) Check out the comments as well.
• The Best of Farnam Street 2014: Quite a few gems.
  • How to get smarter: Read a lot. Grab ideas and do sensible things.
  • Finding your purpose and living a meaningful life: "In short, he has not dedicated his life to reaching a pre-defined goal, but he has rather chosen a way of life he KNOWS he will enjoy. The goal is absolutely secondary: it is the functioning toward the goal which is important." – Hunter S. Thompson
  • How to think: Cognitive flexibility and cognitive self-control. Helping people develop grit through feedback.
• Kanbanote Organizes Your Evernote Notes in Trello-like Boards: Looks interesting. Doesn't work with shared notebooks yet, though.

Focus areas and time review

• Business (12.6h – 7%)
  • Earn (2.4h – 19% of Business)
    • ☐ Earn: E1: 1-2 days of consulting
  • Build (4.8h – 38% of Business)
    • Drawing (2.9h)
      • ☑ Sketchnote So Good They Can't Ignore You
      • ☑ Sketchnote The Checklist Manifesto
    • Delegation (0.0h)
    • Packaging (0.0h)
    • Paperwork (0.0h)
      • ☐ File payroll return
    • ☑ Fix forgot password process
  • Connect (5.4h – 42% of Business)
• Relationships (39.5h – 23%)
• Discretionary – Productive (11.6h – 6%)
  • Emacs (2.1h – 1% of all)
    • ☐ Revise transcript for Magnar Sveen
    • ☐ Revise transcript for Thomas Kjeldahl Nilsson
    • ☑ Reach out to possible Emacs Chat people
  • ☑ Get Org Mode to talk to my Vagrant VM
  • ☑ Make something that updates my Flickr photo descriptions in bulk
  • ☑ Write Emacs Lisp code for monthly review
  • ☑ Get passport pictures
  • ☐ Apply for passport
  • ☐ Pick up cultural access pass from Front and Parliament
  • Writing (7.9h)
• Discretionary – Play (12.3h – 7%)
• Personal routines (23.4h – 13%)
• Unpaid work (8.8h – 5%)
• Sleep (59.9h – 36% – average of 8.6 per day)