Hey everyone! It’s week three of using the new review format. In summary, it’s been a eventful week for my personal stuff, but pretty uninspiring from the work side of things. I’m still spinning my wheels getting my head around the esoteric bits of Webpack so it works with our weird requirements. It has been very frustrating. I also am feeling like I am overcommitted, though it doesn’t feel like I’ve even made any commitments.

I am looking toward thiscoming week with hope that I can just make it to the light at the end of the tunnel. Today’s image captures my feeling; it’s taken from my favorite spot at the local Starbucks, looking over the parking lot on a rainy day.

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Starting with the question How did the week feel: I declare that the week of October 22-28 felt average, which to me means mediocre and unexciting, and therefore is something of a let down. Nothing big was achieved. I don’t have a sense of closure or victory or achievement. In that sense, it was sort of a sucky week. though I do know that I made progress on work. It was about as satisfying as the extremely average garlic hummus I had from a local Greek Gyro place.

For this GHDR weekly review, I’m using the process I made-up last week:

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I still find it difficult to remember what happened during the week, and I also don’t like spending too much time on these reports every Sunday. So, I’ve made more refinements to the process I laid out last week!

First, I made a cheat sheet for remembering what my goals are:

In the sheet, I designated four areas that I’m focusing on out of my entire set of GHDR goals. The two on the left are the “elective goals” that have external relevance, while the ones on the right are ones that are more about my internal fulfillment and interests. I’m not quite sure how to describe them, but they are tasks that are currently on my mind so I’m listing them.

To help make the task of writing this report less onerous, I’ve been noting observations in a draft of the report blog post. As a bonus, I’ve been writing my drafts in my “Knowledge Management Software” development directory:

While the software part isn’t working, I’m actively using the content folder to keep track of all my research and writing. It’s backed-up to a private repo on GitHub so I can access it from anywhere. For the curious, I’m using Visual Studio Code for all my text editing needs these days; it has a nice Markdown Preview built-into it.

Next, I updated the Review Process, splitting it into three phases:

1. GATHER ACTIVITY DATA
2. ASSESS ACTIVITY DATA
3. SET NEW TARGETS

The specific steps are also printed and taped to my laptop:

I think this will work, but I won’t know until we run through the list. Let’s see how the week of October 15-21 went! (more…)

It’s only been a few days since I posted my October 10 Report for Groundhog Day Resolutions, but I want to establish a quicker review process that helps me stay focused. I think the last refactor of my GHDRs makes it possible to do so.

I’m proposing the following format:

1. Succinctly evaluate how I “feel” about the past week with respect to my current success principles in social, personal, and professional practice.
2. Evaluate accomplishments with respect to my current activity centers of work, community building, and self care.
3. Itemize accomplishments and evaluate moral with respect to active projects within each activity center.
4. Review the week’s #accountability list from the Discord chat room.
5. Pick active projects for the upcoming project, based on my desire and outside dependencies that set priorities, with nod toward feeling achievement.
6. Make a short list of milestones for each active project to reach for in the next week.

So let’s see how this goes! The success metric for this new weekly process is to (1) make it faster and more succinct so (2) it’s easier for me (and others) to read. (more…)