David Seah - Productivity

Compact Calendar 2009

2008-09-19 17:21:01-05:00

The power of the human voice is such that when someone called me up to ask me about the 2009 version of the Compact Calendar, I was so moved that I actually got off my butt to make it. Easier said than done; I said it would take about 15 minutes + about an hour to post. Four hours later, I'm finally done with tweaking, testing, download testing, virus scanning, packaging, and updating. It takes a bit of work to make sure these archives are clean...hopefully I didn't miss anything. I almost posted a version that was off by one day...close call!

What Is It?

The Compact Calendar is my impromptu planning calendar, designed to be printed on paper from Excel. Print a bunch of these sheets out; it's great for bringing to a meeting and sketching out a schedule on-the-fly. I keep a supply on hand when I'm actively out in the field. Unlike other calendars, it represents the months as a solid "bar of time", which makes it easier to visualize how much time you really have. Plus, it just looks neat.

You can read more about the use and design of the Compact Calendar on the Compact Calendar Page.

What's New

I finally have a version that will update the entire calendar when you change the year field at the top of the spreadsheet, based on the work of Todd Foster. So now, it's super easy to make new versions of the calendar yourself for any arbitrary year. Just remember to update the Holiday Table.

"Jenny" and Jim Service both submitted techniques for handling the automatic month labeling on the left side, and I've incorporated it.

There have been several other modifications submitted to me over the year, and I've tried to pick the ones that are simple to maintain (e.g. they don't require additional Excel modules, or tricky hidden extra columns). Thanks everyone for your submissions!

Check It Out

You can download the 2009 version at the regular Compact Calendar Page. I have only updated the US version; the international versions are handled by independent bloggers and are not under my control at all. I just link to them!

You'll need Office 1997 or later to open the Excel Templates. Personally I have been using Office 2007, so there may be some issues with earlier versions of Office that I don't know about. Please leave a comment if you come across anything. For users of non-Office productivity suites, good luck!

Academic Year Compact Calendar

2008-08-29 12:25:00-05:00

Here's a quickie:

Professor (and reader) Jim Mitchell adapted a version of the Compact Calendar for the U.S. academic school year, with a few tweaks of his own!

You can download his version of the academic compact calendar from Jim's blog, Architectural Education.

Thanks Jim!

PowerPoint Resume Layout Tips

2008-07-24 14:08:02-05:00

I know I said I was going on hiatus, but I just I got a nice email from a reader today complimenting me on the layout of the blog...thanks Janet! She also asked a question about my old online resume PDF:

In particular your resume's design caught my attention. How did you create a one-page PDF resume that's so organized and detailed? Would you be able to suggest resources or pages on how to design a PDF resume from scratch?

The short answer is that I use Adobe InDesign and Adobe Acrobat, which are pricey professional page layout and document management software packages.

The longer answer is that I spent some time thinking about how I wanted people to perceive my resume and how people actually read them:

After scanning a few hundred resumes, you start to get snow blindness from all that white. This is where graphic designers have a seeming advantage: A HAH! We can use this opportunity to uniquely express our graphical talents and creative expression! While that does work when you know you're competing against a sea of white paper, it doesn't work so well when everyone else is doing the same thing. The takeaway is a resume should be easy to read, with style in a supporting role.
When resumes are being screened by someone who is unable to evaluate the strengths of a candidate themselves, the resume is being scanned for relevant experience and skills that match the job criteria they've been handed. It's important that these requirements are easy for them to find so your resume makes the cut.
When resumes are being handled directly by the people that you'll be working with, they'll be scanning for signs of rare competence or interesting combinations of skills. They aren't hiring for just skills, though: they're hiring for a team fit. While you still need to address the basic requirements of the job, interjecting that curveball skill might just catch the attention of the person assembling the list of "awesome people we'd like to work with".

Most of the time, my resume isn't being processed by an HR or employee review process, but is provided as a formality, so I don't really follow the standard format. What is important, though, is that people get a sense of what skills and experience I have. The issue I have with the standard resume look is that they often have long page-width sentences (hard to read) and are filled with sentences that sound like Single-handedly managed team productivity of 50 associates through just-in-time distributed beverage ordering coordination and delivery processes. I am yawning "BS" before I even get to the word "handedly", so I cater to my own whims by using shorter descriptions in my lists of credentials. My reasoning goes something like this:

I put all the experience "color commentary" in the "framing statement" at the top of the page, where it is placed so it is the first thing read on the page, after my name and categorical title. It should be short and to the point, serving as a kind of establishing shot, to use film lingo, for the rest of the resume.
All the following lists of education, experience, skills, and so on then (ideally) support the framing statement. If they don't, then you are sending a mixed message about what it is you do. You may do a LOT MORE in real life, but a company is generally looking you to FIT into a particular kind of box. You might change the actual categories from what I have here to suit the type of business and industry, and if necessary add the necessary years of experience quantifiers.
While I like to say that people should find out how to stand out rather than just fit in, the resume is one of those cases where you might want to make it easy for potential employers to IMAGINE you as a plug-and-play part in their company. That is what you are trying to sell here: possibility of a good fit, which makes it a no-brainer of a deal to get a phone call.
When you get to the interview, your personality can then sell the other connections you can foresee. The AREAS OF INTEREST part of my resume provides potential jumping-off points for conversation.

Anyway, this is just what I do for my simple resume. I'm generally targeting the case where my resume is being considered by the creative professional for informational purposes, not competing with others as I've described above. So your mileage may vary considerably!

So, You Don't Have InDesign

In answering Janet's email, I thought about the common problem I face when telling people that I use expensive production graphics software to do my work. The implication is that THEY SHOULD TOO, though it's impractical most of the time due to the need for training and people like to use what they have available. Most of the time this is Microsoft Word or Excel. While I like Word for straight writing and basic formatting of source text, I hate its page layout tools. They are very finicky, and often times one little layout issue will cascade into an unrecoverable mess. Excel just lacks the fundamental typographic control tools, though it is surprisingly flexible.

I avoid using Microsoft FrontPage on general principle, which is that it is the source of ugly web pages that I have had to clean up. Call me small minded, but I don't even want to know what it does because of past ills visited upon me by its twisted autogenerated HTML progeny.

That leaves Microsoft PowerPoint. I occasionally have received photo assets that had been copied and pasted into a Word document or PowerPoint presentation, and this creates a production headache because the original file is down-sampled or destroyed in the process. However, I've also seen several reader-provided PowerPoint and Excel versions of my templates, and these look fine. I then idly wondered if I could use PowerPoint to recreate the layout without looking too ugly, so I gave it a try. I think it actually works. The advantage of PowerPoint over Word is that you can freely place text blocks and format them as you would in Word. You can place graphic imagery. You can also specify in PowerPoint's options to produce output aligned to the resolution of your printer, not the screen. And since PowerPoint is part of the most basic Microsoft Office suite, you probably already have it...so let's rock!

Shown below is PowerPoint 2007 duplicating my resume layout, with the "view grid" and "view rulers" options turned on to make the screenshot look more impressive:

PowerPoint allows you to set the page size of your presentation, so I set it to US Letter. Then I just drew a bunch of text boxes and aligned them in such a way that the white spaces worked together. The grid isn't particularly tight or well-constructed (in other words, it looks a little sloppy) but the overall look is fairly clean. The unit whitespace I used is the height of a line in the body text, because I didn't feel like fiddling with line heights for every paragraph. I adjusted the spaces between the headers to be greater than the blank line that separates paragraphs, and just adjusted other parts of the composition so they tended to line up cleanly where it seemed that should happen.

If I was being more anal, I would have shrunk the space between paragraphs by about 25-30% and tightened everything up proportionally...this would have improved the "scattered" look of the "education" and "experience" areas. However, this effort would have required a lot of paragraph twiddling and hey, I would have used InDesign or Illustrator for this if I were doing it for real. If you are so inclined to this kind of adjustment, though, you would select the paragraph and then right-click to choose "Format Paragraph" to play with the "space after" parameters and linespacing.

There are a couple of tricks that I had to apply to the topmost header that says DAVID SEAH.

First, I tweaked the left margin from 0 inches to a small value to make the left edge of the D in "DAVID SEAH" line up with the type before it. If you align by the text box margins, the D does not optically line up with the left margin of the text below it ("new media designer"). In a real page layout program I would have just nudged it over, but I could not place the text box accurately enough with the mouse due to the way the program "auto-snaps" objects into alignment. Adjusting the internal margin was easier than figuring out how to turn that feature off, which I suspect is not possible.
I opened the text box formatting options to adjust the character spacing (the default value was way too wide) by -2pt. This didn't fix the regrettable amount of space between the D and A letters (a common problem with electronic type on PCs) but it does seem more put together.

I use Acrobat Professional to create my PDF files, but I imagine there are other providers of inexpensive PDF encoders. I'm not familiar with any of them. Readers, any suggestions? [UPDATE: Several suggestions have been posted in the comments, so check them out!]

Download Example Resume Files

If you'd like to play with your own version of this resume, just download the zip file which contains the PowerPoint 2007 source. I've also enclosed a version that should work with PowerPoint 2005 versions and earlier, though I'm not sure if it works. A sample PDF is also included for your reference. Please note that this is not my actual resume, though it is using elements from it.

» Download PPTResumeSample.zip (170K)
» Requires Microsoft PowerPoint

Note: If you are looking for Calibri, the font that I'm using here, it's part of Office 2007. You can download and install the Microsoft Office 2007 Compatibility Pack to get them; check this article for some tips on other options.

NOTE: There have been some really great reader comments for this article; you should definitely check them out! :-)

A Year of Going to the Gym: Recap

2008-07-09 02:28:01-05:00

I started going to the gym on July 1st, 2007, so it's been a year of time and expense. Was it worth it?

In terms of weight, I am about 10-15 pounds lighter than I was before, which is still a rather hefty 210 pounds. I have also gained an inch in height, measuring 5' 8" tall. This was an unexpected development, and is perhaps due to stronger back muscles and improved posture. I attribute the lack of weight loss to a lack of control of my diet. I've shed about 3" from my waist, however, and I think some of the fat has been replaced with muscle. I have to take one of those body mass index readings on my friend Duncan's scale to find out.

In terms of cardiovascular endurance, I am vastly improved and can go almost all day moving people's houses or running around outside. It took about three months to get to the point where I can maintain regular 160-170bpm heart rate on a machine without feeling winded. This came in handy last winter when I was in downtown Boston and my friend had left their luggage in the taxi we'd just vacated. We ran as fast as we could down Newbury Street, suit coats flapping behind us as we booked down the brick-paved sidewalk on a beautiful autumn day as passers-by watched on in curiosity. I'd always wondered how FBI agents chased anyone down in their dress shoes, and apparently the secret is that they are in good shape; I was just a touch winded, and felt pretty darn good.

I haven't really focused on muscle development, but I am a little stronger. I haven't really pursued a regimen of exercise other than to work the core muscle groups, alternating between lower and upper body. I also do some abdominal things on some machines along with some isolation of the arm muscles.

Other areas such as posture, balance, and mental clarity have also improved to some degree. My biggest challenge currently is keeping the daily workout to a reasonable amount of time. If I had time to burn, I could spend about 90 minutes total. However, I tend to get sleepy afterwards, and that kills the rest of my momentum. I'm experimenting with a lighter regimen that's designed more to wake me up and get some sweat out of me, but this isn't very satisfying.

Ok, ok, enough stalling! Here are two pictures to compare "pre-gym Dave" to the current state-of-the-art.

At the left I'm at a "Chainsaw Garden Party" event I attended in 2007, a few months before I started going to the gym. I'm looking pretty hale and hearty after layin' down some manure. Definitely chubby, but I'd like to think I'm lovably so ;-)

On the right is a picture I took for an online dating profile in late June 2008. Since no one was around to take my own photo, I had to use a mirror (hopefully distortion free). I think I can detect shifts in the subcutaneous fat of my face with some improved definition, and there is an increased leanness in my torso, and my posture seems more balanced.

Long Term Lessons from the Gym

Hey, it's cheaper than having Starbucks every day, especially if you factor in your health insurance provider's willingness to reimburse you for part of the cost of joining. I paid $249 the first year to join the club, a one-time fee, plus $19/month. My health insurance required that I go 3 times a week for at least 3 months to kick in $200. The subsequent year, I am just paying the $19/month because I've already paid the joining fee. Theoretically, that works out to $240 for 12 months, minus the $200 that my health insurance provider kicks in once you show them the proof that you've been going. Grand total: $40/year. It's better than cable, and it's infinitely better for you.

If you get to like the feeling of physical exertion, sweat, and exhaustion, then the gym gives you an automatic hobby when you're too bored to go to the mall. I've done this a few times; there's always a muscle group, sport-like activity, or exercise that you can work on for a few minutes.

My gym is fairly quiet, so it's become a place of solitude for me. There are a lot of books and podcasts that you can consume while you're doing that 30 minutes of cardio on the treadmill. I sometimes just meditate or zone out. Some days I try to work through programming problems. It's a great time to be with yourself.

If you go to the gym every day, you will eventually run into people and make their acquaintance. This has happened to me three times, and in two of those cases I made some new friends.

Next Challenges

To lose another 10 pounds would be fantastic, and this will take concerted effort on my part to count calories and increase the intensity of my workouts, which are not as rigorous as some of the ones I've seen people follow. I also have become a little lazy in going to the gym every day because work is pulling me away through guilt. It might be time to put together my own targeted regimen to emphasize the areas I'd like to most improve: upper body strength and core abdominal and back muscles.

You can read about the first few weeks of going to the gym here:

Groundhogs, The Future, and Tanabata Too

2008-07-07 18:54:00-05:00

It's 07/07, which is Groundhog Day Resolutions Review Day 5. This is one of the 10 days during the year when I review the progress of my resolutions. In 2007 , I did a fair job of keeping to task, but my zeal for process faltered this year. I've been all over the place, as you can see from my past posts on the subject. Last month's update was really just an admission that I didn't really like tracking my goals because I lacked real passion for it.

Today is the day when I reset my expectations.

From Goals to Business Outline

Here are the general goals I'd set this year. I've crossed out the ones that I've either achieved or no longer need:

Work based on my vocation, so it's work that sustains me in spirit, mind and body.
Figuring out how to be a full-time writer and content creator, because I like it.
Commit to Deriving Income from Writing and Making Stuff
Sell a Product
~~Build Sustainable Social Networks~~ ... done!
~~Reduce my needs. If I can live cheaper, then I need less money, and can work less~~ ... maybe I should focus on making MORE money instead :-)

On review, the first three items on this list are really the same thing: how to make a living doing something I love. My challenge for the past two years has been to figure out exactly what that means. The criteria for making that living is, functionally speaking:

It's gotta be energizing, not draining.
It's gotta be something that people can use in their daily life, and therefore be worth paying for.
It's gotta be easy for me to do, yet relatively unique in the marketplace to maintain a leading position.
It's gotta be appealing to people that I find appealing.

Then I have some additional criteria for satisfying work:

It's gotta be functional and high-quality.
It's gotta have my voice; in other words, I represent myself in plain english.
It's gotta include your voice. If I don't hear your story, I will not be motivated to help you build you dream.
It's gotta be bullshit-free. I reserve the right to define this in any way I see fit, within reason of course.

The rudiments of a business model came to me as I was visiting the studio of Sid Ceasar, a local photographer that is starting a local scooter club. I was quite enchanted with his studio, filled as it was with toys, posters, and other cultural artifacts that suggested an eclectic mind. Sid's studio told me the story of who he was and where he was going, and when it came time to describe what I did for a living this came out:

A the heart of everything I do, I like to share stories and experiences. All my media skills are employed in service to that.

Now, I've written about this thought before, but in the environmental context of a friend's working studio the words helped evoke a different shape. The follow-up epiphany was that my design business really aspires to the following:

I help people create stories they can live by.

This captures a lot of different impulses I have: design, storytelling, sharing experiences, and productivity. And most importantly, I realized that there was a tiny voice inside of me that was trying to say something.

Shedding the Armor

So what do I mean by "tiny voice"? Last year I posted about acting coach Susan Barton's approach to creating a "walking, talking human being" for her Oscar-award winning clients. There are three parts:

The first is the need that is deeply planted in you by the time you're around 5 years old.
The second is the persona you create to cover-up or protect that need.
The third is the tragic flaw, which arises when there is conflict between the need and the persona. That's when things get interesting.

The little voice is that need, trying to express itself. As a little boy, I was pretty happy but tended toward feeling like an outsider. I spoke English and only English, and going to the Taiwanese Church where EVERYBODY EXCEPT ME spoke Taiwanese made me feel worse than stupid. It got worse when our family moved to Taiwan; again, although I went to an American/International school and could speak English every day, culturally and socially the rest of the island was a mysterious and frightening place. My need for understanding had a second dimension as well: I craved reliable and definitive references for my interests, and was often let down or put down by people who had "mastered" the subjects through some means I didn't follow. I came to the conclusion that I was probably just dumb.

To cope with the feeling of dumbness, I focused on things I liked doing: writing essays, drawing spaceships, and debugging computer programs. It was upon these competencies that I built my persona. Writing I could always do, so I went into Computer Engineering and generally did well. I went on to Art School for computer graphics design, got into the video game industry, burned out, and ended up doing Internet stuff before discovering blogging. Over this period of time, I developed a pretty sophisticated and comprehensive set of methodologies that I have come to rely on, both professionally and personally. It is my suit of armor, girded when the going gets tough.

Recently, I came to wonder if that suit of armor had become a substitute for interaction, masking something else very deep inside of me. I realized that it was "the need" again, making sad noises and emanating mild terror. These feelings had been there for so long that I no longer heard them; they were just part of my automatic reaction to the world. The armor, effective as it was with dealing with the nastiness of the world, had muffled it.

I was scared to look, visions of The Tell-Tale Heart coming to mind. What if I didn't like what I saw. But I had to look. Defining and facing your fears is just one of those things that you have to do.

I lay down on my bed, looking up at the ceiling. Then I closed my eyes and quieted every rational and analytical thought that was going through my mind. After a few minutes of this, I felt the desire to bounce around in the world without fear. The manifestation of this desire wasn't myself as a little boy. Instead, I envisioned a little bird, like the sparrows I see every morning at Starbucks. These birds had made an impression on me because they are aggressive, bold, and industrious in a cute sort of way. Now I was seeing them wrapped up and muffled by my persona, and they're clambering to get out to start talking to people without apology.

"Whoa", I breathed to myself, "I am going freakin' nuts. I should keep this to myself."

I came to the conclusion that these little birds actually were tough enough to face the world despite their small size. In other words, I didn't need to protect these innermost desires from the nasty world. They can face it. If the world gets REALLY nasty, I can strap on my armor of rational objectivity then. The armor, however, is not me. I have to lead with the little birds, which means I have to lead with what is important to me in my heart. I suspect this is one of the keys to following my bliss.

In the days following this epiphany, I've found that I've relaxed a lot more when dealing with people, and for the first time don't have trouble making eye contact. I don't even think about it anymore, as the little birds bustling inside of me will do what they want. Before, I would rationalize my behavior: "What am I saying when I look at someone? What will they think? Will I offend them?" These are old behavioral patterns that are obsolete. Now, I know when I look that I'm just looking and taking in those people in the environment that I find interesting, no big deal.

Next Month's Concrete Goals

For the coming month, I really want to work on the whole idea of a story-based design business that employs my particular powers of observation and analysis. I could write this up as a brief, but I think the form it will take is similar to my Make Your Own Museum approach on my public wiki. I think it will feel more "live". It will be fun to define what this "agency" would be like in my wildest dreams. Hint: there would be a professional kitchen :-)

Secondly, I want to start blogging more regularly. I've been letting my other project sap the energy out of me in this regard, and it's important to me to maintain momentum here because this is my main business. Shorter posts, with one idea per post, might do the trick. I'm thinking a 3-day a week schedule; we'll check on this on August 8.

Thirdly, I want to complete my online dating profile by incorporating some of the suggestions I'd received. Yes, it will be shorter, and I will keep in mind that you really just need 3 or so intriguing things listed. I'm not out to sell my entire being on the first read (which is what I was doing). I'm just trying to be interesting enough for a date...thanks for that tip, everyone :-)

Making Wishes

July 7 happens to be a Japanese holiday called Tanabata, a day when you write down your wishes on paper streamers and hang them from bamboo trees. I'm planning on deploying these wishes as goals for the rest of the year.

Let the world directly touch my inner self (i.e. those birds) instead of impacting on the armor. And vice versa: let the inner self lead, not follow, the armor.
Let my community grow and flourish.
Have the guts to approach some women and ask them out.
Stay real.
Stay in motion.

Resolutions Checkpoint: Reevaluating the Year’s Goals

2008-06-06 13:47:00-05:00

Time for yet another progress report on maintaining my new year's self-improvement goals, what I call Groundhog Day Resolutions (GHDRs) because I make them on February 2nd after I've recovered from the holiday season. I just realized that I like the name also because there is an theme of procrastination subtly underscoring my approach: Groundhogs like to sleep (as do I), I'm kind of a "low energy" person when it comes to starting projects, but I want everything I do to be awesome. Low energy and high standards usually results in procrastination instead of excellence, but GHDR has the potential to work with me rather than change me.

Motion Generates Energy

I'm really not a go-getter by nature, so the GHDR "system" is really designed to address that: it's a lazy approach, not a high-energy one. That's why a lot of New Year's Resolutions fail for people: the investment of initial energy is exciting and very high, but maintaining that sustained burn rate is all but impossible for all but the most energetic and focused of us. Those are the people who become natural coaches and productivity gurus, but sadly that is not me. I would go so far to say that the demographic I fall in is that of the low energy, passionate creative. I love the feeling of getting something done, but it's easy for me to get derailed by distractions. I am also very good at estimating the amount of work required to get anything done to completion, which tends to diminish my enthusiasm to start because I am also very impatient. It doesn't help that I'm good at seeing holes in tools, workflow, and knowledge; while this is a great skill to have when optimizing existing processes, it's a huge bummer when it's time to create a new system from scratch all by yourself. The massive weight of the endeavor is tangible, and my energy slumps in response. Result: nothing gets done.

My process for overcoming my low energy state pretty simple: I just try to start moving and not think too much about the consequences. I just did it with this blog post, which I've been putting off for a day because I wasn't sure what to write. I started by looking at what I wrote last time (always a useful crutch) and just started riffing off of that. Everything I've written so far has been pure "stream of consciousness", which I find pretty easy. Now that I'm moving, I have a sense of where this post is going and can start filling in the gaps. This is where that ability to see holes in various things becomes an appropriate supporting skill as opposed to using it as a creative one. Being creative is an entirely different skill altogether, and it has just hit me that creativity and productivity go hand-in-hand. Add motion to the mix, and you have a recipe for kicking ass. Then add focus or direction, and you have the means to really get things done.

But I am starting to digress. What I'm trying to say is that I'm passionate yet low-energy, and therefore need to focus just on motion. Any motion at all, like just spending 10 seconds writing a sentence. That's what the Groundhog Day Resolutions system, which was born out of the recognition that I'm just too damn tired on January 1st to make any goals, is more suitable to me. The GHDR System is designed to maintain momentum via natural levels of desire, whereas other systems seem to be designed to use either pressure (nagging) or structure (idealize process) to create the necessary motion. I happen to know that what works for me is just focusing on moving, and I will build structure as necessary, so it's no surprise that GHDR has evolved the way it has. I suspect what I'm describing is a subtle-enough difference that a lot of people might not "get it"; even I am wondering if I'm just imagining that it's there. However, this insight fits general principles I use when analyzing workflow:

determine the valued result or benefit from each process...in this case, I want to be making progress toward some personal goals that will leave me more fulfilled as a person with more financial resources for minimum effort.
determine what resources are used by each process...which for me is time, energy, and to some extent knowledge.
determine sources of drag or suckiness...which not surprisingly is low-energy due to the procrastination factors I mentioned above.
identify natural reservoirs of strength that can be repurposed...which for me is knowing that once I'm moving,
make sure to optimize for root causal forces, not symptoms...and in this context the root causal force is just to maintain motion, which means to generate energy or make better use of what is available. Nagging and idealized processes are examples of treating symptoms, which brings limited or short-lived success.

Goals Reviewed

One difference between Groundhog Day Resolutions 2008 and the original trial run has been the addition of a summer break that runs from June 6 through July 7, when a goal reassessment is scheduled. I know I'm probably going to hit a slump around now due to the nice weather, and there's no sense in beating myself up about it. As important as these goals are to me, they are also longer-term goals that compete with important short-term ones. I can't make everything a high priority goal, so I focus on work, people, and health right now and assign whatever energy remains to GHDRs. Summer is that time here in New England where you get outside in what we call "sun" and play with other people. I'm taking that into account and reducing the pressure. After this mini break, it makes sense to look at one's goals and see if they still make sense. Time away brings new perspectives.

This is on my mind right now, actually, so I'm going to compare the goals from February 2nd...

Commit to Deriving Income from Writing and Making Stuff
Build Sustainable Social Networks
Sell a Product

...to the goals of May 5th:

Figuring out how to be a full-time writer and content creator, because I like it.
Reduce my needs. If I can live cheaper, then I need less money, and can work less.
Work based on my vocation, so it's work that sustains me in spirit, mind and body.

I also had scheduled two reflection days, to help maintain motion. Rather than assign a task, I thought it would be just as good to just think about what I'm doing and why it's important. It sounds like a cop-out, I know, but I ended up itemizing my priorities into several lists. Looking back at them now, I can see that I was just feeling a certain ennui with the way life was going. Getting some of those lingering burdens out of the way, one-by-one, seemed to unstick things. It didn't take as much dramatic action as I thought. I didn't even take the second reflection day, because I am actually feeling on-track.

As for actual review:

Figuring out a living as a full-time content creator is going to be on the backburner for the next several months as I finish some long-term projects, but in the meantime I am pondering what I can offer in terms of content creation. And I've come to realize that content creation can go beyond media and extend into consulting and relationship making. For example, part of my design process is to interview people for about an hour about their project context and motivations. I have heard over and over that this often a powerful experience, to sit with someone who listens well and can synthesize insight seemingly at will. If I frame this in the right context, it becomes an interesting service offering, one that I would actually really enjoy. This would then fulfill the work based on my vocation goal. As for reducing my needs, I at least have declared Wednesday from 10AM to 11AM as my Financial Review Hour. Knowing what I'm spending for what is the first step. A larger contextual goal is to get my shit together and clean up my house, put some more domestic processes in place, and make living pleasantly low-maintenance.

Looking back on the earlier goals:

I've actually reached a point where my local social networks are self-sustaining. Or rather I should say that I'm starting to know enough people with similar age and interest that I'm not feeling socially isolated anymore. Likewise selling a product is ongoing; I'm selling the remaining stock of pre-printed Emergent Task Planning Pads (still have quite a few to sell, so I'll probably post the direct store link soon). The intent behind selling a product is to support my real goal of making money by being a content creator.

I find it slightly surprising that progress was made without deliberately scheduled anything. You'd think that without planning and scheduling, nothing would have happened. Perhaps it works because I've aligned two forces together: my real desires and periodic reflection. This was enough to get me to do something when I had a moment or I when I was talking with friends. By knowing my real desires and reflecting on them, I may have structured my mental outlook in such a way that progress became more opportunistic and spontaneous. This is an interesting idea, more artistic than by design.

Wrapping Up

Thus begins the month-long holiday from goals. We'll resume our goal trekking on Tanabata, the Japanese "Star Festival" when you write down your wishes on streamers and hang them on trees so they might be granted by gods that live in the sky.

The Last 110 Pre-Printed Emergent Task Planner Pads

2008-05-22 13:18:00-05:00

I'm finally getting off my butt and making the remaindered Pre-printed Emergent Task Planner Pads available. I had been putting off researching the fifteen-kabillion e-commerce solutions that are out there to find a replacement for PayPal's clumsy ordering system, but I realized yesterday that I should just move on and give Amazon's fulfillment service a try for Phase 2. But first...sell the inventory on hand.

I have ~~110~~ 95 pads available as of May 23, 2:45PM.

First come first serve! Ordering instructions are at the very bottom of this post.

About The Pre-Printed Pads

The Emergent Task Planner (ETP) is a form that helps you focus on those things that you want to get done, while taking into account all the other stuff that just seems to happen. With task itemization, time tracking, time estimation, scheduling, and note taking combined in a single sheet of paper, you can see in a glance how the day is going, and what's left to get done. Most importantly, the design of the form acknowledges that getting anything done at all during the day is an accomplishment.

While the ETP is still available as a free PDF download, the sweet pre-printed version offer several advantages:

They come in pads of 75 sheets each. The pads are glued at the top for easy tearoff, cardboard backed for extra sturdiness. Each pad is also individually shrinkwrapped to protect them during shipping and storage.
They're professionally offset printed on premium Cougar Opaque 80LB Text White Smooth paper. This is nicer, thicker and more durable then your typical inkjet paper, so it will better stand up to daily use.
New design features: cleaner layout, space for hole punching on the left, and write-in year so you don't have to throw these pads away when next year rolls around.
Cost per page is comparable to high-quality inkjet printing, in a form factor that is easy to keep handy.
US 8.5" x 11" Letter

Sheet Design

LEFT The Emergent Task Planner sheet . There are 75 sheets in a single pad. Click the thumbnail to see it larger.

RIGHT The instruction sheet is a quick introduction to the use of the sheet. There is one instruction sheet included per order.

Ordering Information

The unit cost per pad is US$12.50, shipped in quantities of 1, 3, 5 or 10. I'm shipping within the domestic United States only at this time using USPS Priority Flat Rate Envelope and Box. The following table will help you estimate approximately how many pads you need. There is a separate order page which I will send you once I receive your email via my contact form. First come, first serve, until all pads are gone.

# Pads	# Days	Subtotal	Shipping	Total
1	75 days	$12.50	$4.80	$17.30
3	225 days	$37.50	$9.80	$47.30
5	375 days	$62.50	$9.80	$72.30
10	750 days	$125.00	$9.80	$134.80

Instructions

So if you're interested in picking up a few of these pads to try, and you live in the United States:

Use the contact form and say how many you'd like to order. If the contact form isn't working, email me at [dscontact]-@-[davidseah.com].
I will then email you the real product order page URL.
You can choose you quantities there and pay through PayPal.

You do not need to have a PayPal account...you just need a credit card.

The reason I'm not posting the actual order form is because PayPal has no notion of inventory management, and I can not specify how many units I have available to sell. So to avoid overselling and having to refund money and incur transaction fees, I am asking for people to email me their orders first. Sigh. You can see why I want to get away from PayPal.

Reflecting on Goals, Part I

2008-05-19 13:26:00-05:00

In the last Ground Hog Day Resolution Review, I realized that one of the best things about having them was the reflection that went into them. I did my reflection a few days later than planned, sitting outside this past Saturday at Starbucks with my reporter-style Moleskine for about 45 minutes. I let whatever tickled my mind drive the creation of lists, ultimately filling six pages.

List 1. Random Reflection

Foremost on my mind was a recent post I caught on Senia's Blog, the biggest lesson she's learned at a career coach struck home. In part1, she writes about two archtypical creative doers: one who does things because it's the right thing to do, and another who does things because it's what he feels like doing. In part 2, Senia writes how she's struck that there are so many people not doing what they want to do, and how sad this makes her feel. Senia is a very good friend of mine, so I could easily imagine her face falling just a little bit, savoring the sad feeling to get a good grip on it, then exploding into a flurry of energy-creating exercises and actions to chase those blues away from people that she knows can be happier and more fulfilled in life. She's very good at this, and reflecting upon her approach to life I realized that I'd swung waaaay too far toward the "doing things because I feel like it" approach. I don't think that this was a mistake, mind you---it was a necessary step to take to really get in touch with what is important to me---but now that I have more answers it's time to do things because they are the right thing to do. This trumps the forces that have been working against me:

laziness, blahness...
lack of motivation; a strong feeling of ennui...
feelings of personal suckiness...
feeling disconnected from the world and people...

What I like about "doing something because it is the right thing to do" is that it's a moral principle, not an process optimization. Before, I had given myself too many choices, and picking the best path seemed impossible even when I knew that any of them would do. I lacked conviction because the choices lay in the domain of process and self-interest. For me, those are not very strong motivators; while I like process, I need the context of real live people to make it interesting and relevant. Also, Wally Krapf once told me that the secret to having a good life was to get outside of yourself. I have been trying to figure out what he meant for the past two years, and I'm thinking that if one does something "because it's the right thing to do" has something to do with it. It subtly shifts attention away from "what I want, what I feel" toward something larger. And maybe this is the sense of mission I need to self-motivate. To summarize, there are many paths, but perhaps the trick is not to obsess about which path to take. The clarity of purpose comes from taking a path, and by doing so for the "right" moral reason will ensure that the results will be shaped accordingly. This may seem very obvious to anyone with children, but it is rather new to me.

So what is the right thing to do for me? As I was saying to my friend Erin this morning as we talked of the upcoming X-Files movie, what I really believe in is that everyone has magical abilities waiting to be unlocked, and that I love discovering what they could be. This childlike glee is what underlies just about everything I do, and I have an insane desire to see it happen. It's the basis for my interest in design, process, productivity, empowerment, and inspiration.

List 2. Project 2010

For the past year I've been plotting to figure out how to escape my dreary existence and become more of a citizen of the world. This is quite a jump for me because I am inherently a homebody, but interesting and unique stories are out there and I want to find them first-hand. The arbitrary goal I've set for myself is by the year 2010, I want to be able to have the means to GO. I jotted down a prep list to keep the outstanding issues fresh in my mind. The highlights:

Debt elimination / household stabilization, so I can live leaner and require less money.
Updating my Couchsurfing account, so I can meet more people between now and 2010 and therefore be part of a more international community.
Looking into TEFL certification
Getting the design and product businesses in shape so they can travel with me to any country.
Figuring out whether this is an escapist fantasy or not. Maybe I won't actually like it.
Gaining more solo travel experience.

List 3. The Social Scene

Also on my mind is maintaining a connection with my local community. The situation is vastly better than it was last year thanks to establishing myself as a "regular" at the coffee shop, and finding the right local Meetup groups. And then there are the friends I have nearby who are popping out new babies and forming new relationships; they're farther away, but it's good to know that things are going well. I wrote down a few things that were important to me:

Meetup activities.
Visits from people I've met through SXSW and this blog.
Family visits.
Personal health: Dental, Exercise in particular.
WebNOB, the Web Developers North of Boston group that formed recently.
Getting more creative retreats going this year.
Setting up a Quake 4 dedicated server

List 4. Process Challenges

I mentioned earlier that I have been stuck in a "doing things because I feel like it" mode, and the companion mindset has been to not follow a process-oriented methodology. It has been a good vacation, more artistic than engineering, but I have gotten soft and need to get back into some good habits if Project 2010 is going to go anywhere. Here's what I jotted down:

Maintaining the strategic picture, so day-to-day tactical operations are effective and accumulate results over the long term.
Not being overwhelmed.
Not overlooking details.
Not overscheduling or overworking.
Making predictable progress.
Blueprinting my time use to find the "natural" amount of time it takes to do something.
Developing a regimen that works.
Developing new process methodologies and documenting them for public use.
Working through process discomfort, accepting that it takes a while to develop those mental muscles.

List 5. Next Steps

I needed a big push to get things rolling, so I wrote down a few things that I wanted to focus on to kickstart the week:

Clean the house. I threw out 15 years worth of once-sexy computer equipment that I was never going to use again. It felt awful, and it felt good.
Sort the house. I am going through each room and figuring out what "piles" exist. As the piles accumulate, I am figuring out where "their place" will be. I'm also borrowing a technique of tagging piles for "transfer" from the world of airline luggage handling, creating piles with a "purpose destination". I don't know where that is going to be yet, but all I need to know is that it's NOT THIS ROOM.
Trust my instincts and don't overthink the consequences. I tend to worry about whether I'm missing something or am about to screw something up, but experience has shown that "things just tend to work out anyway."
Start writing PCEO descriptions and assemble the book. It is going to be long and arduous, but ultimately it probably won't be as bad as I think.
Sell out the remaining ETP pads and don't worry about the awful e-commerce system I'm using. Just get it done. Then I can move on to stage 2.
Visualize, then Do to gain practical experience. It's very easy for me to visualize how much a pain in the ass a task will be, but it never is as bad as I think it will be.

In Conclusion

Not bad for 45 minutes of thinking. It actually took twice as long to write it all down in this post, but this was (I think) a good way to consolidate the notes into a stream of consciousness. My day of reflection ended up providing me with some useful working principles. My next reflection day is May 27th, so we'll see by then what aspects of my notes I end up taking to heart.

Ground Hog Day Resolution Review 03: Tentative Progress

2008-05-05 09:00:00-05:00

It's already May 5th, so it's time for another Groundhog Day Resolutions review. I do these every month and one day: February 2, March 3, April 4th...you get the idea.

Recognizing Internal Motivation Limits

In the last two updates, I found I had floundered quite badly. I think it's accurate to say that I'd stopped believing in the original mission I'd originally set forth:

Commit to Deriving Income from Writing and Making Stuff
Build Sustainable Social Networks
Sell a Product

I'd even made myself a worksheet to help clarify my goals, but this was a big bust. Even I didn't want to use it. It felt too much like work, and there was not anything I could immediately act upon without having to sit down and do some planning.

I was very bummed out by this failure in my ability to self-motivate, until I realized that there's one key contextual difference between 2007 and this year: I have been on a full-time project since last November, and my patience for planning is all used up by the time I get to my personal projects. Do you know someone who is incredibly organized at work, but a complete slob at home? Or maybe you know someone who's great at dealing with people all day, but just wants peace and quiet when they're finally off the clock? I think something similar happens with me with regards to planning and organization: while I value and understand the processes and even have some chops at it, it taxes my patience and energy. Once my reserves are used up, it's gone for the rest of the day. I want it to be as easy and natural as possible. So, I'd best find an alternate source of motivational energy, preferably one that is not as easy to exhaust.

One possibility: find someone to serve as the external source of motivation. This is a long-term prospecting job, because I know from experience that it takes time to mesh two people's motivations together without one of them feeling put off.

Alternatively, I could try to achieve the same goals without planning. That might sound like a recipe for disaster to a veteran project manager, but consider this: the planning process exists so one can systematically create tangible results. People sometimes forget this, and that's when organizational dogma starts setting in. If there's another way to achieve the same results, that's just as valid an approach.

The Goals In Review

So let me review last month's goals, when I realigned them with personal desire and away from the implicit "desire for success" approach I'd started with:

Figuring out how to be a full-time writer and content creator, because I like it.
Reduce my needs. If I can live cheaper, then I need less money, and can work less.
Work based on my vocation, so it's work that sustains me in spirit, mind and body.

In the month since then, I've been thinking constantly about these three goals, and have come to some conclusions about how writing is my inexhaustable supply of expression. It is what I do constantly, so automatically that it didn't even register as a "passion" or "vocation". I also had the realization that it's one-on-one communication that's most important to me. That doesn't mean that I can only write for an audience of one, it means that it's important for me to reach the individual who's reading to deliver my message, and ultimately help empower them with new ideas.

It's also important for me to recognize that writing is not the only means by which I can express. I can work with digital media as a designer and programmer, and I can also put together functional information graphics design. There are a lot of ways one can express any given idea, and I'm quite excited by that. That said, it's even more important for me to point out that expression is merely the vehicle for delivering that empowering idea or critical bit of information. If anything, I'd like to be creating or packaging those empowering ideas for consumption by people who will directly reap the benefits. I believe this is my true focus. I expressed this last time as "my vocation is understanding and communicating ideas so ordinary people are empowered by them."

On a side note, the very act of declaring what I want to be...that is, to try to make a living as someone who does thinking and writing, is incredibly scary. It feels like I'm making myself a target because I've made a declaration without having a clear sense of what it means. However, I'm heartened by the memory of talking to a classmate of mine from the 4th or 5th grade in Harvard Square (yes, that Harvard). I was having a meal with a number of fellow high school alums who were attending, and this guy Lucian was there too. I hadn't seen him in years, so I was asking him what he was up to for a major. He rattled through something about either Physics or Psychology, but then said that he was looking to make a change to do what he's always wanted to do. Curious, I inquired what that might possibly be. At this he burst into a wild smile, and declared that his dream was to sing Opera. His parents, both artists, apparently weren't so keen on the idea at the time. I remember the pure joy mixed with an aura of insanity and doom at that moment, and I wished him all the best. I think my enthusiasm surprised him, and he seemed to appreciate it. That was the last time I saw him, and I never did find out how the story went. I feel I'm in a similar place, some 20 years later, mustering up the courage to make a declaration of intent that will take me quite outside my comfort zone. Yikes!

Next Steps

I am going to let the entire next month go along the same lines of thoughtful reflection, though I am going to schedule two reflection days on the 15th and 29th respectively. I am deliberately not planning a course of action, but I am instead going to use those two days to identify opportunities that require zero planning and nearly-immediate results.

Incidentally, I finally fixed printing on the website, after a reader pointed it out. I believe it had been mentioned once or twice in passing to me, but I hadn't actually seen the problem with my own eyes until recently. So you can now print out articles, stripped of sidebar images and pesky navigation, for your archives. I apologize for the long delay in addressing the issue. I figure having easily-printed content contributes a bit toward toward my writing goals by making the words easier to distribute.

The Art of Not Finishing

2008-04-22 23:42:00-05:00

I've been preoccupied with how unproductive I've been lately...until recently, when I realized that the road to productivity isn't the same road that I'm on. The road to productivity is paved with clear steps leading to an act of completion; essentialy, it's finish what you start. However, as I sit here contemplating the rather large list of difficult-to-break-down tasks I've given myself, I'm thinking that there might be another approach. That is to relax and not worry about finishing. Or, perhaps, restart constantly. This is a way of not worrying about the result you want, and focusing on what you are doing right now. When practiced with honest intent, it's possible that this approach will lead to the same destination: a sense of accomplishment. It may not be so important that it is a specific accomplishment that I intended. I'm reminded of what I've read about agile software development, and more personally it reminds me of mastering my fighting style against best friend / arch nemesis Alen in the martial arts fighting game Tekken.

That Feeling of Accomplishment

The model of productivity I have for myself is not unlike the software development process I'm familiar with. The particular hacks I've applied to it are designed to ameliorate my particular foibles when it comes to motivation, definition, maintaining momentum, and reaping that feeling of fulfillment.

Motivation: A lot of my Printable CEO forms are designed around the idea creating tangible progress when it is otherwise intangible. For example, a lot of the forms count chunks of time, equating chunks accrued with actual accomplishment. The reason I did this is because long projects defer the sense of reward, and without some kind of sign that we're actually making progress, our efforts will falter unless there is an overriding principle (e.g. duty, honor, love). Personally, I like to get feedback pretty instantly, because I'm an impatient person. Since I also work at home, I don't get the low-level but constant stream of feedback that a team environment provides. People without managers (or with out-of-touch managers) are also in the same boat.
Definition: There are two kinds of projects that I have: projects with well-defined deliverables and expectations and those that, well, require definition. Project that require definition are almost always trouble, so when one of these bombs lands in your lap you actually need to spend a lot of time establishing assumptions and creating definitions that serve as the foundation of the project's ultimate deliverable. If you know the deliverable and the desired result, so the reasoning goes, you can work backwards and figure out what to do to get there. This is a whole series of posts in itself because it's not as straightforward as it sounds, but I think it's safe to say that we never question the main supposition: there is a deliverable and an expected result. Otherwise, you're just screwing around.
Momentum: In other words, getting it done. I was just scanning the Wikipedia entry on Agile Development and saw reference to the so-called Waterfall Model of software development, which on the surface is exactly what Management asked for: a sequential design-deploy-deliver process that is nice and tidy. I'm experienced enough to know that it's difficult to predict exactly how it will come out or how long it will take. I make the best estimates I can, and discipline myself to push through the milestones so steady progress is made. If I'm smart, I also break down the steps into small-enough chunks so that a few can be done to completion every day, so theoretically I also have some way of measuring the rate of progress.
Fulfillment: This is what comes at the end of the process. You're done! All that planning, working, slogging away every day to get to this point pays off. Or if it doesn't, at least you're no longer stuck doing it. You can count your chickens, collect your remaining marbles, and head home feeling like you've done something.

My education and work training has pretty much imprinted this approach on my brain, and it is second nature to me. However, I also have to admit that I really hate working this way. As I've mentioned, I'm a pretty impatient person, and for many years I suppressed this because the process works. Until I started blogging, I didn't know that there was really another way of doing it.

I enjoy free creation, which is probably why I like blogging and the ad-hoc projects that I come up with so much. It's productive, but only in hindsight. Until now, this seemed acceptable to me only because I wasn't doing "real work"; when the stakes are higher, productivity is supposed to produce results in the future. Actions are taken step-by-step, their results measured, assessed, and iterated through. While iteration is a built-in to the process, I think that there is still the stench of Waterfall embedded into it: we seek to optimize for minimum production time for maximum quality. This is a challenge, a burden, and a source of stress.

What really matters to me is having that sense of fulfillment; in practical terms, it doesn't matter how I get there. That's what's on my mind right now.

Walking The Path To an Unspecified Somewhere

Now, I'm not suggesting that we abandon professional conduct, especially while working within the bounds of established business expectations. Nevertheless, it's occurring to me that for my personal business goals, I don't need to adhere to the same standards. This is particularly true for me now, because I am open to all possibilities and am purposefully being vague about committing to any given path. Yes, I could very easily define a number of arbitrary business goals that would make perfect business sense given my demonstrated strengths and areas of expertise, but this is a trick that I don't think will work without some kind of external moral commitment. In the absence of this, my natural values shape my activities:

I'm not driven by money, scale, or status.
I do, however, want respect, trust, a place in the community, and to be a contributor.

How to do this while retaining my independence (very important) and having enough money to create that situation is the challenge, and here's where I get impatient again. The deliverable in this case is a state of being, not something tangible, concrete, or measurable. That's because I'm measuring human values, and it's hard to predict humans. Therefore, it's difficult to optimize. Having said this, I've argued myself back into the corner: to achieve what I want, I do need to put in the effort to acquire money, scale, and status. Otherwise, it's difficult to attract and to fund the situations where you can spend all your time meeting the right sort of people. The trick is to do it in a way that does not, as Tim Ferriss might say, make me a "life deferrer", putting off the reward of being alive by trying to optimize for the future.

Is there a way out?

Restart. A Lot. Maybe.

I am feeling a lot of internal resistance to this idea: don't plan, do. I know I've seen this before. A lot. It bothers me. A lot. I don't like not knowing what I'm going to do, but I have to admit that I don't really know what I'm doing or exactly where I'm going. Therefore, there probably is no wrong way to do it. In a sense, my random path is already optimal :-)

When Alen and I used to play Tekken back in the 90s, we noted that we had different approaches to learning the game. Tekken is a martial arts fighting game for the Playstation that has a lot of different attacks, defenses, and throws for each of 8 or more characters. There were over 50 distinct moves per character, and each character had strengths and weaknesses relative to each other, which means that mastering the game required a lot of practice. There are hundreds, of not thousands, of gameplay variables that could potentially affect the victory of one player over another.

The main attraction of playing a game like Tekken is to beat your opponents like a drum so you can have bragging rights. It's even better when you're playing against your friend...unless you're me. I tend not to play to "win" games. I'd rather understand them first. Alen had the opposite approach: he was in it to win. The way that this manifested in our playing styles was that Alen would find some button he could press over and over again as fast as possible--usually, this was the shin kick move--and he'd win the first 20 or 30 rounds. He would win because I would walk right into that shin kick, trying to find the counter to it, or find the hole in the timing of the move. It would take about 20-30 losses until I found it, and then the situation would reverse because by then I'd have formed a partial understanding of my character's dynamics. Then I would win a bunch of games, until Alen adapted and found the next quick move. By then I'd have learned that there is a time for understanding how a game works, and then there's a time when you just want to wipe the smug expression off Alen's face, and then it was on. By the end of it all, hundreds of hours of play later, we'd both have arrived at something of the same level of play, having absorbed the lessons of the other's playing styles by incorporating them into our own.

The moral of this story is that there is the fast way and the slow way to learning, and that ultimately they may lead to the same level of mastery. However, if all you are counting are the first 20 rounds of play, then the lesson is play fast and cheap to kick the other guy down. Have no shame! It will get the job done. If you have time and can afford to lose a lot at first, then you can build toward a complete style of play by mastering the nuances of all game mechanics; indeed, this is the only way to reach the greatest heights of achievement. However, you're going to get your ass beat a lot at first. Do you have the time?

Applying These Lessons

Let me paraphrase myself.

I want to wander into an interesting life where I achieve in hindsight. I think this might suit my impatient, spur-of-the-moment creative nature.
However, I'm worried that I'm being dumb, because I know that there's a "right way" to start and finish a project. I also know that progress is made only by completing what you've started, and doing that over again.
So how can I complete things, but not on purpose?

Let me also consider those things that I'd like to create, which I think will help bring about the means by which I can create an interesting life:

Create the e-commerce side of the website, selling fancy productivity stationery.
Redesign the website to provide focused yet diverse categories of interest.
Create software products for time tracking.
Write some stories and some books.

Each one of those lines looks like a lot of work. There are dozens and dozens of smaller steps to plan, and it makes me sleepy just thinking about it. But that's me thinking in terms of the distant future, when the work has been completed. I need to start enjoying the process now, shin-kicking my way to cheap victories while buying myself some time to learn what does and does not work. I think that the processes behind e-commerce, design, and creating software are deep enough that I should just focus on those quick moves; I will forced to learn how to counter the challenges I encounter by the nature of the challenge. I can structure my productive approach to ensure variety in the interaction, and perhaps that will make it more varied and therefore fun. It has just struck me that if Alen and I hadn't had such different approaches to mastering Tekken, it would not have been nearly as interesting. If we had both played as shin-kickers, we'd have ended up being button-mashers and would not have mastered the game at all. If we had both been equally analytical, the game would have turned into work and would have ceased to be fun. That suggests that a good strategy for approaching one of those "big tasks" that you've just kept putting off is to take the opposite approach:

A big serious task, with lots of complexity, is going to make you want to curl up and take a nap. You'll procrastinate. Instead, run up to the thing and give it a swift kick in the shin and run away. Then run back, and do it again for as long as you can get away with it. Who knows, you might just start to win.
A very simple task may become interesting if you put a lot of energy into making it complex. Or maybe the better way to think of this is by being mindful of what you're doing, drawing that moment of simplicity out as long as possible. Through this, hidden meanings may be revealed. The example that comes to mind is the act of shooting a target with a handgun. Theoretically you just point the gun at the target and pull the trigger, but in reality there are dozens of interrelated micro-movements across the body that affect the accuracy of the shot. That moment of pulling the trigger can be an instant, which means you'll shoot terribly. Or it will be a kind of timeless moment that fully occupies your mind and your body until the bullet leaves the barrel of the gun and marks that bull's eye.

My next step is to incorporate more shin-kicking into my to-do list, and not think about the finished projects down the road. That will take care of itself as they come together. What I would like to focus on now is winning and being short-sighted about it. I'm pretty sure this is not the best way for every project, but it might be what I need right now to just get moving.