Monthly Archives: January 2019

Personal Information Management

PiimCraft: The Difference Between a Task, a Habit, and a Goal

I’ve been wondering what the difference is between a task and a habit.

Just to make things more interesting, how about the difference between a recurring task and a habit?

One might think that the signal thing about a habit is that it’s… well, habitual.

“Habitual” means, among other things, that you don’t have to be reminded of it by your PIM, I would guess. When the trigger for your habit hits, you do the habit (Charles Duhigg wrote the book on habits, literally; see his Power of Habit for more on triggers, etc.)

I have a morning routine that’s pretty much a habit by now, but I still go through a checklist every morning even though I probably have it by heart and it’s probably triggered just by getting up. (Atul Gawande wrote the book on checklists, the Checklist Manifesto)

Maybe my morning routine isn’t as habitual as I would like, or I wouldn’t need the checklist.

But I have a bunch of things in my PIM that are essentially habits or habit wannabes. Strength training twice a week. Blog postings for this blog.

And just to complicate things, I have a habit tracker, HabitHub, which I use only on my phone and tablet (not for any good reason; HabitHub only runs on Android)

What do I track in HabitHub? “Move the bod” (which is any exercise every day), “Only Connect” (which is some connection with someone every day) and “Deep Work” (which is some Deep Work every day). I do this just to keep a Seinfeld-like chain of virtue.

But then isn’t my “goal” then to move the bod, connect, and do deep work every day?

I feel like there’s some difference among these things, but I’m not sure I can put my finger on it.

7 Hard Problems

Theme for Week of January 27, 2019: Income Inequality

I’m returning now to each of the seven antinomies in 7 Hard Problems, starting with #1: “Individual Wealth vs. Commonwealth”.

The aim is to flesh out the elements that were glossed over in the original vomitout, so I’m going to start in with income inequality, and then work my way over to class struggle.

Accordingly, I’ll be doing some reading and thinking this week on Thomas Piketty, Paul Goodman, and Anthony Giddens.

I’m not sure how far I’ll get this week, but hopeful I’ll break the back of these topics.

The aim now is to flesh out each antinomy until it’s more-or-less complete.

7 Hard Problems

Summary: Writing about Reality and Wishes This Week

Well, this was the most fun of the antinomies by far. There’s something about reality and fantasy that makes for interesting conundra.

I found myself getting into the struggle between science and faith. And that drew me somehow to the dialog between Einstein and Freud about the possibility of stopping war. Einstein was crystal-clear on Reality and pretty fuzzy on people (or perhaps wishful). Freud was unsparing about people. So much Reality is almost too much to bear.

Anyhow, that’s it for the vomitout of the 7 Hard Problems for now. I did about 22,500 words (a normalized 90 pages). That’s from when I started the vomitout in November to now (and remember I essentially took off December to write GoLang code). Not too shabby. And certainly enough to get a flavor for the core of the book.

Personal Information Management

PIMCraft: Why I Still Use a Pocket Notebook

I lavish attention on my PIM.

I’ve written here about a lot of it: my task-management software, my note-taking software, my Pomodoro timer gear, even my wall calendar.

But there’s one humble-but-vital set of gear I haven’t talked about: my pen and pocket notebook.

I use gel pens. I used to use only 0.7mm Sarasa pens until they started routinely jamming on me. I switched over to 1.0mm Pilot G-2 pens; I like them fine, except those silly extra 0.3mm, which make the mark a little thick for me. (Given how often the Sarasa pens were jamming on me, I don’t think I’m going to go back.)

I use any thin notebook that fits in my shirt pocket. I especially like the “Field Notes” notebooks because of the cool name and the witty implications. But I’ve used the Moleskine “Cahier books” as well.

The major point is to have something that’s always with you and allows rapid data entry.

The dirty secret about electronic stuff is it’s unbelievably slow for data entry.

Scott Cook, founder of Intuit, called his software “Quicken” because he wanted it to be quicker than writing checks with a pen. He succeeded, but modern smart phones do not. By the time you’ve got the phone out, woken it up, corrected a few typos, fired up Evernote, and made a note I could have ten notes filled out in my notebook with my pen. 10:1. (I’ve never tried it, but I just bet it’s so!)

When I can’t put the notebook in my shirt pocket (would you believe the nerve of these shirt companies making so many men’s shirts without a breast pocket?) I stick it in a back pocket of my pants. It shortens the life of the notebook — the binding gets worn out more quickly in that position — but it’s worth it to have it ever-ready.

And then part of my morning routine is to move any notes from the notebook to my PIM (or to Evernote for things that don’t have an action). I do that (it’s pretty quick) every morning, or almost every morning.

That’s it. A humble, but a key link.

Cabinet of Curiosities, Making

Cabinet of Curiosities: The Woodworkers’ Club of Rockville

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I last took wood shop in 4th Grade, which would be almost sixty years ago. I did love it, but I’m hardly a woodworker.

I just joined the Woodworkers’ Club of Rockville and went to my beginners’ safety and certification classes last week. Two nights, 6:30-9:30. We covered basically all the machines in their shop.

Above there’s a picture of the main table saw. Below are some of the routers and sanders.

It was a bit intimidating, not (just) because of the power of these tools (and their power to do me harm, although I took some comfort from the SawStop cartridges that are standard on most of this equipment and that will stop a blade before it takes off what my teacher called a “digit.”) It was also intimidating because most of the other people in the class have serious woodworking or furniture-making projects.

And me? I want to build a tool system on my wall that has “leaves” like a book and you can flip through the “pages” to find a tool. Something like the above.

In terms of what the rest of the people taking the cert course with me were doing, this is woodworking kindergarten. I feel a little ashamed even taking up the resources of the Club with this stuff.

On the other hand, I really don’t have the space for great power tools at home and the weather’s not nice enough to work on stuff in my driveway.

The Club is an opportunity to see if this has interest for me, to see if it’s worth the time and money (and the shlepp out to Rockville!) To see if I can make anything actually any good.

7 Hard Problems

Work and Study, Week of January 20, 2019

Continuing with vomitouts.

We’re at the last of the 7 antinomies, probably my favorite: What We Believe vs. What Is.

It doesn’t get much starker than this. But slaves to the Pleasure Principle (see “Pleasure vs. Duty”) don’t need to fret: the deck is not utterly stacked in favor of “What Is.”

Wanton regard for “What Is” is just as bad as wanton disregard: paying no attention to “What Is” may make you a fool, but paying no attention to “What We Believe” makes you something just as bad: a Nego, a concept I want to explore in this section.

Briefly, Negos are people without a vision, cynics, pessimists, “glass is not just half-empty, it’s broken” kinds of people. We need vision to supplement respect for reality. You need both.

Personal Information Management

Pimcraft: Two Cheers for my Wall Calendar

I’ve had a wall calendar for a few years now.

I get the one I use from NeuYear.net, which was recommended to me by Mike Vardy of Productivityist. The first record I can find in my Evernote for Mike’s teachings on the subject is from 2014, so I guess this is my sixth year with a wall calendar.

Originally I started out with Mike’s whole idea of “theme-ing” each month of the upcoming year. So January would usually be HHF for me (“Healthy, Happy, Fit”), February would often be “Money”, March “Deep Work”, April “Spring Cleaning”, etc.

I began to lose zeal for this approach in 2017 when I found I was flailing between my Theme goals for a month and what I would have done anyway (because it was a yearly goal or for other reasons). I also was under the influence of Essentialism and was asking hard questions about how complicated my goal-setting had become. To make a long story short, I stopped Theme-ing.

So why have a wall calendar at all now? The real estate for a single day is sufficient for an icon or two, but not really for much text.

I put on the calendar things that occupy blocks of time, so courses I’m going to teach during the year, vacations, other travel. I mark holidays with a red box.

I get a gestalt of the year-in-progress this way. I guess I avoid some double bookings, but I really rely on my Google calendar for that.

I’ll admit it, I’m on the fence. This could be the last year for a wall calendar. Maybe I could better use the space for a Kanban whiteboard, or maybe just a freeform whiteboard for sketching.

TBD.

7 Hard Problems

Work and Study, Week of January 13, 2019

Lots more to do on “Global vs. Local”. I had a couple of conversations over the weekend with an old friend who was in town for my birthday. He challenged some of my thinking about why globalization is unappealing to “people” whereas it’s pretty interesting for “corporations”. And in particular he wanted me to give a better account of global capitalist companies and what they mean for the future of the nation-state.

But I’m going to stick with moving on to the next vomitout, and catch up on these themes in the future.

The next antinomy is “Technology vs. People”, which is really three things for me:

  1. Techies vs. non-Techies. Not all non-techies are Luddites, but many of them are. What’s going on with the two different groups? This really begins with C.P. Snow’s idea from the 1950’s about “Two Cultures”, but there are a lot of threads to it.
  2. Intelligent Machines vs. Humans. Are we doomed? Are AI scenarios that have us being Terminated really possible? What kind of time frame?
  3. Future of Work in the age of intelligent machines. Are robots going to “replace” us? What does this mean? How might we manage this? What are the possible outcomes?

So I’ll be vomiting out on all these themes this week.

DIY, Lifehacking

Why Is Sharpening a Knife So Hard for Me?

I’m having a really hard time learning how to sharpen our kitchen knives.

As all the videos on YouTube will tell you, this is not rocket science. It’s a matter of patience and consistency and a few elements of attention.

But month after month passes, I keep trying, but I’m unable to get our knives sharp.

I went so far as to send them out once (by mail) to a professional knife sharpener. (I think I got the name from Lifehacker.) The knives came back very sharp.

So:

  1. It can be done
  2. It’s not my knives

Slowly, however, they became un-sharp, and, when they did, I was unable to get them sharp or keep them sharp myself.

I’m embarrassed to say how many different sets of gear I’ve bought to do this. Each of them has a video or two on YouTube showing how easy it is to use this system.

And I use the system, and I can’t get the knives sharp.

Latest iteration, I’m using a Norton Waterstone “Starter Kit” I got on Amazon. Not cheap. I’ve tried to get two knives — my favorite, and my wife’s favorite — sharp.

After two weeks, no luck yet.

I whale away at the coarse grit for a while on one side. No evidence of a burr. Then I whale away at the other side. Ditto. I do the same with the 1000 grit stone. Both sides. Then I try to cut a piece of paper with the knife. It looks like I sort of can. I declare victory. But it’s not really sharp.

I am training myself to see it through, to be more patient, to keep at it until it works. It’s uphill work.

Personal Information Management

Pimcraft: Whirlwind vs. WIG

One of my New Year’s resolutions this year was to “not be ashamed of what I like.”

For example, I kind of like country music, although my peeps are mostly alt-rock. I should let the country-music side of me unfold and stop just hoping a country tune will come on the radio. There is no radio anymore in any case…

But as I teed up this Pimcraft blog today I felt shame. Shame that I was such a deep-dish nerd that I care about the distinction between Whirlwind and WIG. Not only that, I even use those names for them.

I first read about Whirlwind and WIG in 4 Disciplines of Execution, by McChesney, Covey, and Huling.

(Ever notice how life uses the same “magic numbers” over and over? 3, 4, 7, 12)

The problem addressed by 4DX is this: even when you know the right thing to do, people have a hell of a time doing it.  The reason is they don’t pay attention to the 4 disciplines.

I’m not going to recap the whole book — it’s a good book, you might want to check it out — but discipline #1 has to do with distinguishing between “the Whirlwind”, which is the chaos of ordinary life in all its bewildering plethora of things to do, and the New Thing.

You have to respect the Whirlwind. After all, it pays your bills, educates your children, etc. etc. But unless you respect the New Thing as well, it’s never going to happen.

You do that by setting one special goal, a Wildly Important Goal or WIG. A WIG is a goal, but it’s also a formulation of the New Thing. Without the right WIG, the New Thing probably won’t happen either.

I decided that I wanted to put the distinction between Whirlwind and WIG right into the heart of my Weekly Review.

GTD-heads will know that this is like introducing a new section into the weekly church service. It doesn’t happen very often.

And what I did was split up the work into two days. I used to do everything for my Weekly Review on Saturday. Now I put the Whirlwind part — the “normal” analysis of the normal stuff for the week — on Saturday and then Sunday morning, after 24 hours living with the new weekly goals, I create a WIG for the week.

As I slog through the 7 Hard Problems draft my WIG has generally had something to do with the book. This current week the WIG is vomit out the chapter on “Local vs. Global”. And while I’m in the midst of the 7Hard push — the WIG for the year is essentially to finish draft 1 of the book — the weekly (and monthly) WIGs will probably devolve from that. But not necessarily.

In any case, the distinction is interesting. 4DX is a good read if you need more detail.

And let me know what you think.