Hi everyone! Reviewing last week’s progress here, and I’m happy to say that even though it was a short week due to the holiday, it was also productive! I didn’t have to clean the entire house for guests, since our familyk had Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant. The big positive takeaway was hints of mastery through two activities:

• I finally got a complete development environment working, from live development on a local server to stand-alone packaged application using Electron. This took weeks and weeks working-through unfamiliar concepts before I could even get to the point where I could see anything happen. Though it was frustrating at the time, in hindsight it was a good refresher for “learning how to learn”. This is an essential part of mastery! I feel a little sheepish about how angry I was during the process, though ^_^

• After Thanksgiving I felt like trying to make a pizza. I had some theories about how to better handle the pizza dough after watching several episodes of The Great British Baking Show which worked out! For the first time, I made a ROUND hand-tossed pie crust that wasn’t too slack. This has eluded me for over a year, so it is another step toward mastery of the pizza dimension.

Let’s get into the week in review!

1. Week Assessment: B+

Following the current assessment protocol, let’s start with my letter grade of the week: B+

According to my notes, I actually got several major things done despite the Thanksgiving holiday!

• got electron packaging to work
• got billing for accountant done
• did marketing writing for deadline
• totally sorted my bedroom!
• restored website access for friend

This is not bad at all. Two relevant insights:

• It’s taken me a long time to accept working within my limits and not feel terrible. It’s OK! Stuff still happen, but now without the nagging feeling that I am sucking at it. I can still aspire to do my work more efficiently, but that is something that comes with time. It’s helpful to remember SLOW IS SMOOTH, AND SMOOTH IS FAST. Also everyone has limits, boundaries, and pre-conditions…I think it makes sense to accept this and be happy that we’re getting stuff done despite them!

• I am liking only having two mental slots available to be my primary focus for the week. Other stuff gets done anyway. Rather than try to manage a large list of “must do” tasks, managing a very short list works fine because my natural distractability and need for variety will see me working on those other things anyway.

2. Review of Goal Activity and Achievements

The primary work tasks and personal tasks haven’t changed. The template from October is still in effect (RIGHT).

2A. JAVASCRIPT WORK

As I mentioned, I got the Electron packaging stuff to work. BIG DEAL.

2B. STATIONERY and BLOG WORK

The collaboration with Brenda is working well so far! I had run out of steam on the writing of my ABOUT ME AND MY PRODUCTS and SIMPLE HOOK. Brenda’s contributions and feedback, though, helped moved it forward! Hooray!

2C. PERSONAL MATTERS AND MAINTENANCE

Let’s do this in pictures!

I met my sister’s cat Natasha (above left) for the first time. She was much more outgoing than her other cat Brix, who gasped when she saw me and ran away. She was very cute though.

As I mentioned in the preamble, I have been mastering pizza! This one came out pretty good! (above middle).

For Thanksgiving, we went to a steak house and had a nice turkey dinner. This saved a lot of time that otherwise would have been taken by cleaning and meal prep…maybe 4 days worth of labor!

I also cleaned my bedroom (above left to right) over seven hours. This is part of a major initiative to make my living room cafe more open. There is too much stuff in it now. Once I get rid of the terribly old mattress and boxspring, I can move two armchairs into the master bedroom and this will become a mini guest room / hangout room.

3. Choose New Targets

To make progress on my two main focii:

• JAVASCRIPT: Insert React AppShell and ensure it works
• JAVASCRIPT: Port minimum Unisys to ensure it will work
• STATIONERY: Write a final About and Simple Hook
• STATIONERY: Identify target pages where About and Simple Hook will go.

For personal maintenance stuff, want to knock at least one item off my responsibility queue, which currently looks like this:

• process mail
• pay printer
• health care renewal
• basement purge
• Christmas tree
• Global Entry
• Reconstruct Robert’s websites
• Call: Possible new accountant
• win/stuck in #accountability?
• dry packaging: pickles, bread, kimchi

Concrete Milestone Check

I think my above goals are pretty concrete.

Goal Conclusion

It seems to take me a long time to get these weekly reviews put together, and maybe the way to do them is just let them take as much time they need. I started this proecss around 1130AM, and it’s now 415PM. It seems that this takes four hours no matter what I do, but it certainly helps set a positive tone for the week.

After taking a break for an hour, I’ll be entering free productivity mode and just do whatever seems to grab my attention. I only have a few scheduled appointments this week, so i should be able to maintain positivity and focus! But for now…I need to goof off for a bit and restore my pool of energy.

I’ll also be LIVESTREAMING from 11AM to 1200 (eastern time) to get back into the practice of talking-while-doing. Here’s the first attempt of me just trying to get my head together!