It's Not How Well the Dog Dances

The Third Wave

4 January, 2019

Randomly realized a couple of days ago that there is a name for the excellent coffee I have been fortunate enough to drink over the last five years or so. I don’t really know how this happened, but it is pretty awesome that I can get up in the morning and make myself an espresso that is complex, fruity, and almost nothing like the traditional Italian-style darker-roast espresso I used to seek out. (Which is also excellent by the way but usually I drink it in Italy now.)

I think this is what you call “civilization….” Heh…

Task Management

3 January, 2019

In a flurry of inspired New Year’s activity, I cleaned out 90% of my task backlog yesterday afternoon. This included doing some useful work — making calls, sending emails, scheduling meetings — but mostly consisted of removing things that never should have been there in the first place.

I’ve gotten pretty good about putting my commitments onto the backlog and ensuring that when something goes there it means I will deal with it in a reasonably timely way. (This is not how I have always worked, to be clear.) Yesterday’s exercise shows, though, that I’m still not paying enough attention to filtering and avoiding committing to things in the first place.

I guess I don’t think you can have a rule like “I will never put anything on my task list that I might discard later.” It would be nice to get a little closer to that ideal, though.

The Virtues of a Routine

2 January, 2019

It took me until almost age 50 to learn that there is enormous power in establishing a routine.

Long story short, I was in some leadership training at Red Hat and as part of that I started writing a journal every morning. Doing anything every morning beyond getting a cup of coffee had not been part of my life until that point. Basically, I had no morning routine beyond get up, have coffee, eventually make my way to work. So I didn’t really expect my journal habit to last too long, either.

But here I am, over two years later, still doing it (I’ve got about 400 pages of journal entries now). Why? I got into a habit of doing it first thing every morning, and the routine stuck.

What was really cool was I found I could stick other things onto that routine too. So, write a note to Mom every morning, study whatever language I’m working on, work out on the erg… once I got in the habit of doing these things every day it was much easier to keep doing them.

If only I had learned this about practicing 40 years ago!