One of the neat things about parenting is that I get to think about how to develop different skills. Today I want to think about planning ahead. I can see the beginnings of it developing in A+, like when she says, "I'm going to put on my boots before I put on my mittens because that's easier when you have fingers." I can see when it's more of a struggle, like when we've forgotten to bring the stuffed toy she wanted to take along and she's overwhelmed with frustration. I can draw parallels between that and the way I'm learning more about this skill myself, like when we use the Band-aids I've stashed in my emergency kit or when I've forgotten to pack lunch and have to find something that A+ will like within walking distance. Even grown-ups have a hard time with these skills. We've got plenty of examples around us of people working on improving that skill and people who struggle.

I like breaking skills down into smaller chunks so that they're easier to think about, practise, and learn. Breaking down the idea of looking ahead into anticipating, choosing your future self, preparing, celebrating, adapting, and experimenting makes more sense to me than treating it as one big lump. I want to think about these subskills in this blog post so that I can get better at them and so that we can swap notes.

The parts that are hardest for A+ at the moment are adapting and experimenting. That makes a lot of sense. That's when planning gets tested. That's when you get feedback from reality. That's difficult for lots of people, even grown-ups, and I have plenty to learn about those parts myself.

Experimenting: reflective practice

It would be counterproductive for me to try to cushion A+ from failure. I want her to develop her own skills, so I want her to make decisions (especially ones without long-term negative consequences). Some of those decisions won't work out the way she wanted them to, but that's life. Besides, "How can we make things better next time?" is a question that can build on both positive and negative experiences, so even the uncomfortable moments can be useful.

When things don't work out, it's very tempting to blame ourselves or other people, but that doesn't really help us more forward. I want to be able to see the ups and downs as data points in our experiments and as opportunities to improve our processes. I keep working on getting better at responding to my own oopses and my delegated oopses. Fortunately, I have lots of opportunities to practice.

From James Reason's Swiss Cheese model of human errors:

The basic premise in the system approach is that humans are fallible and errors are to be expected, even in the best organisations. Errors are seen as consequences rather than causes, having their origins not so much in the perversity of human nature as in “upstream” systemic factors. … When an adverse event occurs, the important issue is not who blundered, but how and why the defences failed.

Failures point to multiple ways that we might be able to learn and to improve our systems. Paying attention to those opportunities could save us from bigger mistakes later on. Finding bugs when developing means dealing with fewer bugs in production, and this is basically her development environment. Besides, there's a lot of satisfaction in improving our systems.

Still, it's hard to think when people are dysregulated. It's easier to take that perspective when things are calm and there's an opportunity to try something new. So in the moment, my job is to weather the storm and adapt as well as I can. After the storm passes, I can think about what would make things better next time around. When I notice that A+ is calm and ready to learn, I can invite her to think along with me. She still gets defensive if I use the past events as an anchor for reflection. She responds better if we're planning for something that's coming up soon. I can use avoidance sparingly ("last time, that didn't work out so well") and lean more on building on things that worked well. That kind of reflection will probably be mostly on my side for now, but maybe she'll grow into it eventually.

I keep a brief journal, but life with A+ doesn't usually lend itself to quickly looking things up so that I can pull in the appropriate anecdotes at the right time. The tough moments tend to be easy to remember because they're emotionally-laden, but since I want to build on positive experiences as well, I can:

1. slow down and notice things out loud in the moment,
2. retell it shortly after, perhaps during dinnertime,
3. capture it in my journal so I can look it up again, and
4. think of the next little step, or some cues or situations it might be relevant to.

It's also probably easier for A+ to learn from my thinking out loud about my own processes than about hers. Fortunately, life gives me plenty of opportunities to practise learning out loud.

We already have a habit around drawing a moment of the day, and I could probably add something like Rose-Thorn-Bud to dinnertime or bedtime conversations. A+'s teachers sometimes add reflection to their assignments, too.

I probably don't even have to worry too much about explicitly teaching A+ these skills. I just have to try to not get in the way of her learning them. If we learn together, I think we'll figure all sorts of cool things out.

You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

• Changing relationships, losing people: Throughout the years, I'll need to deal with the loss of people close to me, whether it's because of natural development (like A+ going off and living her own life), changing situations (drifting in and out of playgroups based on her interests), or old age and death. I can prepare for that by making the most of the time I do have with people, learning more life skills, staying engaged, and laying the groundwork for more relationships that might turn into old friendships.

  It's a little complicated because I think I'll continue to be cautious about spending a lot of time indoors around other people. Fortunately, there are a lot of outdoor socialization opportunities. Eventually, when A+'s off and doesn't want her mom hanging around when she's out with her friends, I can join some of the walking clubs out of the nearby park.

  I like the Emacs community, and I'm looking forward to maturing into some sort of community grandmother. I imagine it'll be mostly about oohing and aahing over people's cool projects and suggesting that they go talk to so-and-so who was curious about something similar.

• Brain fog, slower processing: I got a sneak preview of this during the early years of parenting, and I still have many days where I either feel slower or I don't have lots of focused time. I think dealing with this is about being kind to myself (since there's no point in wasting even more energy on beating myself up), managing my expectations, and managing my tasks so that when I do have some focused time, I can do whatever I needed to do at the time that it's good to do it.

  I've gotten a lot of use out of speed-reading, but in case that slows down, I can also get a lot from reading more slowly. I can take more sketchnotes and try to make more connections to other things I know.

  Summarization seems to be one of the things that current natural language processing systems are getting pretty good at, so that might also be useful.

• Fading memories: I hope habits of journaling, taking pictures, and drawing sketches will help me appreciate these moments that fill my years so that things don't feel like as much of a blur. Backups are important, of course. Also, converting thoughts and memories into a form that other people can bump into means that it's not limited to my brain: blog posts about things I've been learning, photo albums that A+ can flip through whenever she likes, things like that. Retrieving memories and organizing them into narratives/stories helps make sense of them too.
• Less working memory: Working memory is useful for being able to see the connections between things and solving problems quickly. I'm beginning to appreciate the difficulty of keeping lots of things in my head, especially when someone's trying to talk to me at the same time. That's cool. I can reduce multitasking and minimize commitments. I can refile information so that it's close to related information. I can chunk information differently and then spread them out side-by-side, like the way index cards and sketchnotes help me build up thoughts and Org Mode helps me compare shopping choices. External monitors help, and I can print things out if I need to. Remembrance agents might be able to suggest related things, too.
• Lower recall of words, details: It doesn't matter much if the memory is there, if I don't have a way of getting back to it. Stuff inside my brain is likely to get lost. Maintaining a centralized note-taking habit (especially if information is fragmented over different apps and devices) will probably help with this. Mnemonic techniques can help with making things more vivid. I hope that natural language search will be useful too, and I'm looking forward to seeing what large-language models for artificial intelligence can do when applied to personal datasets. Episodic search might become more viable, too, if I can use things I remember to narrow down where to find something. Recognition is easier than recall, so even having something suggest a few options might be enough to unstick my brain. If I take pictures or notes of where I've stored infrequently-used things, that might make searching easier too.

• Inattention: I occasionally get brain hiccups, and stress or low sleep makes it worse. Slowing down and not rushing helps. Processes, checklists, and repeating TODOs helps. Organizing our physical space so that there's a home for things helps when I'm on autopilot, although I still get attentional blips and put things in the wrong place. Keeping an oops fund helps.

  Cubing might be a way for me to track this. Sometimes I make a mistake and my solve time goes way up, so that's a way to check how often my attention wanders when I mean to be paying attention.

• Less energy: I'm becoming more protective of my sleep, and I've got a good mix of things I can do even when I have low energy. Walking is good, and I can ramp up to other forms of exercise slowly. There are lots of long-term hobbies I can enjoy well into old age, so there's plenty to explore.
• Hormonal disruption: I think this is mostly about getting a sense of what to expect, having good relationships with doctors and other health professionals, and being open to adapting my lifestyle as things change. My friends have mentioned a fair bit of sleep disruption, so that's probably something to watch out for too.
• Changing priorities and perspectives: This is one of the good benefits of all of this. Constraints make things clearer. Looking forward to growing wiser.

I'll also keep assistive technology in mind, since there are all sorts of interesting ways tech might be able to help with age-related cognitive or physical decline.

Going to happen anyway, if all goes well. Might as well have fun!

You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

This post isn't super-special, but I wanted to experiment with a workflow for making videos based on my sketches and dictation, so I made this.

2021-12-20a Making the most of the moment #planning #kaizen

Building on yesterday's reflection on waste, I thought I'd think about how to make the most of the moment. There are some things that are easier now and harder later, so I should take advantage of the situation to prepare for what's next. There are some things that are harder now and easier later, so that's a good opportunity to stress-test systems and improve things when things are a little bit easier. There are things that are about the same. They've got to be done anyway, so I might as well figure out how to keep learning and growing through them.

What sorts of things are easier now and harder later? Well, the big one is spending time with the kiddo. Right now, she's really interested in spending time with us. We have lots of time together, and she actually wants to be with me. I know that this is not always going to be the case. So as a result, I should take advantage of this opportunity to be present and make memories and all those other good things, but also to personally enjoy it, to store up all those things that I'm going to fondly remember when she's having a teenage angsty meltdown. One of the ways that I can help myself remember these things is by keeping a journal, maybe taking pictures and videos if it doesn't get in the way of enjoying the time with her, and also investing the time to build the skills and patterns that will help us later on in life.

Something that's easier now and harder later: schooling. Right now, she's in senior kindergarten. That's the second year of kindergarten. Next year, she's going to be in grade one. That means that we've been able to get away with a very relaxed, play-based sort of learning. It's just essentially her learning whatever she wants to do and me writing it up nicely in an observation spreadsheet. I've been slowly learning how to guide her interests by leaving interesting things lying around and supporting her interests wherever they take us. Right now, it's puzzles, for example. Eventually, I'll probably need to learn how to give her a little bit more structure so that she practises things like writing, drawing, spelling, and so on. That's someday.

Another thing that's easy now is that partly because of where she is developmentally and partly because of COVID, we're focused on our own little world. She's quite happy playing with us. She's not that interested in online classes or hanging out with other people yet. So she's focused on us at the moment, and again, that's an opportunity to be present and make memories, and to build those patterns.

Definitely easier now, harder later: time with my husband. Parenting is a lot easier when you can take a break and know that someone else is going to be there, especially when the kiddo has decided that only Daddy will do or that Mama's the meanest person in the world. He's also really great at helping me keep perspective. For example, when the kiddo hands me something that I'm not entirely sure I should take at the moment because my hands are full or she wants to give me something random, he always reminds me that their world is so small and they want to give us whatever they can. So keeping those things in mind is helpful. Of course, the relationship is great, and I'm not going to have that forever. I want to make the most of it while it's there. Also, he has a lot of skills that I want to learn. So I can take advantage of this time to learn those skills, bring those perspectives into my head, and get through the harder parts of raising a kid. It's not always going to be like this, so it's great that he's around to help, and then eventually (probably) it'll get easier. It'll get harder first, probably, and then easier.

My mom is another example of something that's easier now, but I've got to start preparing for when it's going to be hard. She's the only one in the Philippines. None of my sisters are there either, so estate tax paperwork is going to be a big headache. If we can get some of the preparation sorted out, then that makes later much easier. There's also enjoying the time with her while we have her. So, maybe that involves recording some calls or finding other ways to talk about stories or remember things or make that connection.

And lastly, there's this big question mark around climate change and society. I think things are not super easy now, but they will probably get a lot harder later on, so if I can build skills, help us develop more resilience, and build resources, that might put us in a better position for when things get crazier.

On the flip side, there are some things that are harder now and easier later. As I mentioned, it's a good opportunity to stress-test the systems and processes. So for example, the kiddo really loves getting our attention. She wants to spend time with us, which is a little hard when it comes to focusing on my own things. But eventually she'll move towards independence. At the moment, I can just relish the time I have with her and put off whatever I can so that I can just not worry, not feel like I'm being pulled into different directions. Then I can try to just use those little moments.

That's a second challenge: fragmented time. Eventually I'll be able to sit down and focus on things. Right now, it's a little hard. But fortunately, that's kind of like a preview of later, much much later, when it will be hard to focus on things, so any note-taking habits and processes that I build now might be helpful later. So, build systems and tools.

My tech setup is not quite as awesome as it could be. Sometimes it takes too much setup time to go downstairs and plug into the external monitor, set up all the things that I want. Context-switching is friction. So I can use what I have and gradually build on that toolkit, learning different ways of using the things that I've got and then add more as I can.

COVID-19 pandemic: hard now, someday easier, maybe? It mostly means that we aren't relying on external resources. I can't take her to library story time or other things like that. There also supply chain issues to watch out for. Less socialization, can't really take her out to see friends. We could do some outer playdates, but even then, it's harder to arrange. And then, of course, there's a lot of risk and uncertainty. Again: put off what I can and look for opportunities to make the most of things. For example, virtual kindergarten has been working out really well for us.

Of course, screen time is an issue, especially with young kids. I just have to find other things to do, like draw these reflections and solve Rubik's cubes and things like that.

There are some things that are about the same now as well as later. Cooking, for example. It's always got to be done, but I can keep growing by trying new recipes and techniques.

Tidying. I've got to keep working on ways to see clutter and get rid of it, maybe figure out where things are supposed to go. I lose a lot of time like trying to find things if I have put them down in a moment of inattention, so I have to figure out how to smoothen that.

Gardening stuff happens every year. It's always a new opportunity to try different plants or learn more skills. This year, we learned how to transplant periwinkle and start them from cuttings.

Health, got to keep working on that. Finding things that I enjoy doing as a form of movement will make it easier later on, too.

There are lots of different things that I can do now to prepare for harder things later, and lots of different ways I can take advantage of what's tough now so that can have ideas for things to improve later on, when things get better. There are things that are about the same. It's all about making the most of the moment.

You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

I’m not worried about making sure A- is academically advanced. I do want to have fun playing with her, though. I like learning more about how kids learn math, science, and literacy so that I can appreciate how she’s figuring things out and I can build on learning opportunities all around us. I want to learn more about nature and physical literacy, too. I can learn about these topics by reading early childhood education books and trying out ideas.

I have a little space to work on my own skills, thanks to investing in having a babysitter every Saturday. I’d like to slowly ramp up skills I’ve been neglecting for the past few years. If I pick personal projects aligned with these skills and I let my consulting clients know what I’m curious about, I’ll probably get plenty of opportunities to learn in the process of doing useful things.

• Python:
  • personal finance: better decisions, peace of mind
  • robotic process automation
  • text analysis: work with journal entries?
  • image analysis: handwriting recognition, grouping sketches?
• Emacs: because it tickles my brain
  • I want to start up hangouts again when A- is in school: maybe Jitsi + Icecast or Youtube?
  • I want to dig into new features in Org and other projects to expand the possibilities for automation
• Deployment: so that I can improve reproducibility and reduce risk
  • Automation
  • Containers
• Reusable web components: so that my prototypes look more polished and support richer interactions
• SQL, Tableau:
  • More data analysis at work? Hampered by indirect access to data
• Sketchnotes:
  • More colour
  • Wider visual vocabulary
  • Wider range of topics/thoughts: I can practise this in the process of learning more about early childhood education
• General organization/notes: My files have gotten a little overgrown. I’d like to get better at prioritizing, organizing, writing, and sharing

You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

I think this might be a better fit for my experimental learning than either a hypothetical market or specific people. After all, I’ll always have a future self who could benefit. (And if I don’t, I’ll be past caring!) If the things I build along the way turn out to be useful for others, all the better.

Anyway, I was thinking about the kind of simple, deterministic, idiosyncratic assistant I could build to make life a teensy bit better in the medium term and the long term.

I could start with a text box interface on a webpage, then move to alternative inputs like dictation or neuro-integration(!) when that becomes reliable. It would be great to have some kind of offline buffering, too.

In terms of logic, I could start with stateless well-defined responses, add synonyms, support conversational interfaces, use weighted factors, add feedback mechanisms, and then eventually reach proactive notification and action. Inferences would be awesome, but I don’t have to wait for them to be sorted out. Ditto for program generation and adaptation.

In terms of sensing and acting, I can start with existing APIs and tools, write specific adapters for other sites, push into the physical world with sensors and actuators, use context and probability to simplify, and then take advantage of improvements in fields like computer vision or biometric analysis as other people build and commoditize cool tech.

But first, it starts with building a simple tool. Hmm, maybe a little thing that suggests what to do next (and coincidentally makes it easy to track)…

You can view 2 comments or e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

In the problem-solving model that Tim Hurson shares in Think Better (2008), you come up with potential Target Futures and prioritize a few based on three factors:

• Influence: Is it something you have influence over?
• Importance: Is it important enough to you that you'll put in the work to get there?
• Imagination: Can you solve it with an off-the-shelf solution, or do you have to come up with something new?

A good future pulls you toward it. You want it, and so you act on it.

I periodically think about what the target futures for my interests look and feel like. Last year, I wrote about how I don't need to get to "awesome" in everything. Sometimes it still helps to think about what that "awesome" might look like, though. I realized that I don't have to use the same definition of "awesome" that other people use. Figuring out what "awesome" means to me can help me identify the differences between my current state and my future state, and that shows me what I can do or what I can learn to get there. I want to pick differences that are mostly under my control, that are important enough to call me to action, and that may even create something new in the world.

Coding

I figured out a little more about what tickles my programming brain. I'm not the kind of person who builds massively popular projects with elegant architecture. Someday I might do a good job at building bridges for other people so that they can do even better. What makes me really happy right now, though, is writing small, idiosyncratic pieces of code that are tailored to my particular needs (or that make things a little better for people I feel good about). On the surface, this doesn't have widespread impact. but I guess it also creates a future-pull – showing other people that this sort of play and customization is possible. So, if I follow that vein, amazingness looks like:

• Seeing clear, simple ways to address challenges or take advantage of opportunities
• Pulling the pieces together (APIs, etc.)
• Making reasonable interfaces
• Writing decent code
• Being proficient with tools
• Getting good at that delivery and feedback cycle, whether it's for other people or for myself

I'm getting a lot more practice in working with the APIs for services I frequently use. I've scripted quite a few small tools that interact with Flickr, and I'm looking forward to more experiments with Org Mode and Evernote. I'm also working on learning more about the tools I can use: debuggers, frameworks, even coding conventions.

Working out loud

What about working out loud? What would that look like if I could do it really, really well?

I'd keep detailed notes – probably in Org Mode, since that lets me mix everything together: snippets, links, research, TODOs, etc. My notes would help me get back on track after interruptions or delays. Whenever I finish a small chunk, I publish a post, since that's easier to work with than waiting until I've finished everything. I'll know if it's working if I:

• don't get as frustrated with dead ends, because I can just backtrack up the trail
• can look up my reasons for things I've forgotten
• can help other people find out about things they can do, take advantage of example code, or probe my understanding
• get the occasional suggestion from people on how to improve what I do

I'm focusing on getting more of my thinking out the door. One of the things I'm currently figuring out is how to balance logical order and chronological order when writing up what I've learned. On one hand, I want to save people time by pointing them straight to stuff that worked. On the other hand, it can be useful to see the thinking process. I'm experimenting with using signposts (like the "later in this post" part of one of my write-ups). I'm also experimenting with harvesting tips and putting them into occasional other-directed posts.

Writing

I don't need to get to Pulitzer-prize-winning awesomeness. I want to get better at figuring things out and sharing them. I think this involves being able to:

• wrestle with vagueness and beat it into specificity
• share practical tips
• extract ideas from research, other people's thoughts, and my own experiences so that I can help people save time
• and back up everything reliably!

If I can get better at seeing things, that's a really useful bonus. Since the easiest way of doing that seems to be sheer accumulation of experience, I'm focusing instead on other things that I can get better at first. Research is one of those skills I want to build up again, as there can be lot of value in a good literature review.

I'm also working on building up and linking to different chunks so that people can read at the level of detail they want. By setting constraints on chunk size and getting better at managing an archive of linkable things, I hope to be able to organize thoughts more flexibly.

Packaging

I imagine that as I get a sense of questions (other people's and my own) and good sequences to answer those questions in, I'll get better at putting together guides that lead people through those sequences. This helps because sometimes it takes a lot of knowledge to figure out what the next good question is or how to formulate it. For me, that's what packaging is about: making sense of things, and then sharing that in a way that helps other people make sense of things too.

I'm still far from getting really good at this, but as I build up chunks and figure out what order to put them in, I'll get better.

You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.