“We lost!”, my son said as he finished 10th place in a Mario Kart race. He said this happily by the way, in a way that only a child could ever do. This is what we lost when we grew up. We lost that childlike innocence. We lost the ability to see the world through the eyes of a child. We lost the ability to be happy in any given moment like a child could.

The question I have is, how do we get it back?

#Reflection

I noticed that I write down notes with the expectation that I'll be publishing them in the future. This causes me to write longer, fuller sentences in an unconscious attempt to make my notes ready to be published with minimal editing.

I think this bogs down my note taking process. Instead of writing down notes for the purpose of referencing them in the future, I write down notes with the purpose of stringing them all together into a future blog post. I think that if I stop writing “ready to be published” notes and instead go back to writing notes just for myself, that will make my digital garden a lot easier and less exhausting to maintain.

#NoteTaking #DigitalGarden

After taking down my public digital garden, it was like a weight was lifted off my shoulders. I cannot explain it. I didn't realize it had that effect on me. Maybe this was another case of oversharing on my part, similar to what happened with my previous Journal Entry series.

#DigitalGarden

Saying I don't Know Is Okay — when you're in a meeting or job interview and somebody asks you something you don't know the answer to, instead of faking an answer, you can say, “I don't know, but I'll find out and follow up with you”.

#Work

hobbies for the hell of it — excellent read on seeing hobbies for what they are; an activity that brings you joy.

#InterestingReads

Monday Master Class: Rapid Note-Taking with the Morse Code Method — great note taking method from this blog post.

#NoteTaking

I just realized, with my digital garden now offline, I don't have to put in too much effort making sure the references and citations in my notes look polished and ready to be published online. I can leave them as a link if I want to and worry about attribution later on, when I actually have to publish something online. In the event that the note doesn't even make it into a published post, then I ended up saving time not having to add a polished, proper looking citation that wasn't even needed in the first place.

#DigitalGarden

Most good choices feel like sacrifices in the present, but reward you with something good in the future. Most bad choices feel good in the present, but has potentially devastating consequences in the future.

#Reflection

Using the Zettelkasten method for taking notes, as opposed to the basic “save the notes in a searchable format” method, is like going the micro-services route as opposed to building one big monolithic app. Both still work. And both have their own advantages and disadvantages.

#NoteTakingSoftwareDevelopmentAnalogy

In the end, this shadow is but a small and passing thing. There is light and high beauty, forever beyond its reach. Find the light and the shadow will not find you. ~ Bronwyn, Rings of Power, Season 1 Episode 6

#Quotes

The truth sets you free — Interesting take on the truth setting you free. It is not the truth that sets you free, but the Truth Himself (the way, the truth and the life He said) is the one who sets you free.

#Christianity

I was contemplating trading in my old Nikon D3200 for a newer mirrorless camera, like a Nikon Z5. However watching this review made me realize, that the D3200, being the cheap entry level camera that it is, would be a good one to let the kids use if they want to explore photography. Instead of letting them try out photography on a newer, more expensive mirrorless camera, let them try it out on the D3200.

#Photography

Finally figured out how to use an if statement on an Excel spreadsheet. It basically works just like a ternary operator in programming. If condition is true, return first value, otherwise return the second value.

Source: IF function

#Excel

What's the point of working out, or taking walks, or trying to be active, when I'm not even losing weight?

For those days when you have that question on your mind, here's a different perspective: All that walking and working out and moving around, is what's stopping you from gaining all that weight back. You might not be losing weight now, but you'll be in a much worse state if you decide to stop living an active lifestyle.

#Reflection #HealthAndFitness

What I'm liking about note taking apps with the bi-directional linking option (like Obsidian), is that it helps me avoid writing redundant information. It does so because it allows me to simply add a link to another note from the current note I'm on. It kinda supports the “Don't repeat yourself” principle of software development.

#NoteTaking #NoteTakingSoftwareDevelopmentAnalogy

Series: #JournalEntry Tags: #Reflection #NoteTaking #DigitalGarden #Work #InterestingReads #NoteTakingSoftwareDevelopmentAnalogy #Quotes #Christianity #Photography #Excel #HealthAndFitness

I believe it is rare for someone to have a job that is also fun 100% of the time. An example are professional athletes. I'm sure they enjoy the sport they participate in, but even they have to put in the work to improve their game and their physical conditioning. That is just part of the job.

I'll use myself as another example. I love programming and I love solving problems by writing code to solve them. To me that's fun. However, working as a software developer is not “solving problems by writing code” 100% of the time. I still have to drive through traffic to get to and from the office. I still need to write documentation. I still need to work through ugly legacy code. I still need to do code reviews. I still need to train new developers. I still need to do compliance training. I still need to attend meetings. The list goes on and on and on. All of that comes as part of being employed as a software developer. None of those are necessarily fun, but they are to be expected of me, because that is part of the job. That is the work that needs to be done.

If you don't like the work that you are being asked to do, that just means one thing, you are not the boss. So either you work harder so that you can become the boss, or you start your own company, or you can just accept the fact that work is not supposed to be fun all the time. It is why you are getting paid to do work in the first place.

Now if you don't think you are getting paid enough, that is a totally different issue, in which case you should get a new job.

Hard Work Pays Off

I guess you could say that this is one of my guiding principles in life. Nothing truly rewarding ever comes from slacking off. This is true in the workplace as it is in other parts of our lives.

The past few years I've run into the notion that instead of doing “hard work”, we should do “smart work” instead. I honestly don't know what that means or how that differs from hard work.

If you only have 2 weeks to finish a project that you've fallen behind on, following the “hard work” approach means you would stay late to get as much work done as you can, maybe even work on the weekends, thereby giving you more time to finish the project. What is the “smart work” approach to this scenario? I'm not being sarcastic, I'm asking a genuine question because I really want to know. You can find my contact info at the bottom of this post.

Magis

The most important thing I've learned from my alma matter is magis. Magis is a Latin word that means “more” or “greater”. To me it means “to do more”.

If your manager asks you for 5 test cases, give him or her 10. If your manager asks you to fix 3 bugs today, try to fix 4 or more. Basically in any task or job that you are asked to work on, strive to do better than what is expected of you. Don't settle for good enough.

This doesn't mean you have to stay late every day to do more work, no. What I mean is to practice magis while making the most of your 8 hour or so workday. If you don't get everything done by the end of the day, that's fine. Go home and rest. Don't think about your job at home. Don't bring your job home. The work can wait till tomorrow.

Now some people might think that by following the principles of hard work and magis, I am setting myself up for failure, or setting myself up for more work in the future. So far I have not found this to be true. What I have found is that hard work and magis is what gets you raises and promotions. So I'm going to continue practicing both until proven otherwise.

Tags: #Reflection #SelfImprovement #Work

What do I use as a work journal? I have a medium sized, ruled, Moleskine 007 Limited Edition notebook. It has rounded corners, an elastic band to keep it closed and comes with a bookmark ribbon. I bought it at Barnes and Noble. Other stores carry Moleskine notebooks, but only Barnes and Noble seem to offer the limited edition ones.

How do I use it? In general, I use it anytime I need to write something down at work. More specifically:

• I bring it to meetings and use it to write down meeting notes.
• When I'm in my cubicle, I keep it right in front of me. I write down whatever work related idea I come up with.
  • For example, realizations or insights about algorithms or design patterns. Why the current code works and the previous didn't. New SQL queries that will prove helpful in the future. Etc...
    
  • I keep a daily schedule on my journal.
  • I keep a weekly summary.
  • I record the number of code reviews I've done during the day.
  • I record the time I arrived at the office and the time I leave.
  • I list down the tasks I am working on for the day. I migrate unfinished tasks to the next day so I don't lose track of them.
  • I write down a list of things I need to test for a specific task. Sometimes while working on a task, an important test scenario comes to mind and I will write it down so I don't forget. It serves as a test case document of sorts.
  • I track Sprint schedules and deployment/release dates.
  • I use it to help me solve programming problems.

What benefits have I noticed from keeping a work journal?

• The biggest benefit is being able to reference my daily schedule. Being able to quickly check what I should be doing at a specific time during the day, allows me to stay focused at work.
  • A related benefit to that is being able to track how many “deep work” hours I had for the day, as opposed to time spent doing something else, like getting stuck in meetings, doing compliance trainings, responding to emails, etc...
• Another benefit is not losing track of bugs, issues or tasks that I needed to work on. In the past, there were a number of bugs that fell through the cracks because the discussion was done on email, but everyone was so busy that it wasn't tracked accordingly. Tracking those in a work journal stops that from happening because I usually spot them when migrating tasks over to the next day.
• Another benefit is the use of the work journal to help solve programming problems. I've mentioned this in my previous journal entry.
  • A related benefit to that is that I can go through old entries to see how I solved problems in the past.
• Another benefit is it stops me from having to use my phone as a note taking tool when I'm not on my desk. There is a time and place for the use of phones at the office; using phones while in a meeting is not one of them. Sure you could have been typing down the bug number or ticket number that you needed to look at later. However, to the CEO who happened to walk by the conference room while the meeting was ongoing, it will look like you weren't paying attention. That's not a good look. It will also come off as being rude to the meeting organizer or whoever is talking at the moment.

Tags: #Work #Productivity