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- August 5, 2009
Makers, Managers, and Getting Into the Creative Box
August 5, 2009Read moreSUMMARY: I recently read Paul Graham’s essay on Maker and Manager Schedules, and I realized that this had bearing on overcoming the procrastinator-perfectionist mindset, which is essentially that of management. If you can’t shake that, you can’t make stuff. From there, I describe two changes in perspective that might help me get into that productive “maker” mindset.
- July 30, 2009
Update to Manual Gantt Chart Excel Spreadsheet
July 30, 2009Read more
Last week I needed to do some proactive project estimating for a prospect, and so I busted out my old gantt chart spreadsheet. This is a nice quick-and-dirty visualization tool that doesn’t require quite as much mucking around with resources as Microsoft Project, but one drawback of my spreadsheet was that I have to redo the dates at the top every time. This has always sucked, but I have new Excel tricks from the 2009 Compact Calendar tucked beneath my sleeve. Now, I can just enter the starting date and the weekend shading will be drawn automatically. It even marks the beginning of the month now in tiny letters, which isn’t ideal but it looks unexpectedly cool.
Now I can print out blank versions of this spreadsheet to create gantt paper, which is helpful for visualizing how threads of work intertwine. The document is set up by default to print gridlines on 1 landscape page, so if you don’t like this make sure to change it. Also new are some instructions in the worksheet itself, with hints on modifying it for your use.
You can download the new version at the newly-updated Manual Gantt Charting in Excel post. Note that it still doesn’t do automatic calculation of resource usage or anything remotely useful like that, but it’s useful for a quick ballpark visualization of a project that the Compact Calendar can’t handle.
Enjoy!
- July 21, 2009
Vectorizing Photos for Productivity and Fun
July 21, 2009Read moreSUMMARY: The point of being more productive is making stuff, right? I recently was able to overcome my procrastination tendencies on a long back-burnered scooter club card project, and produced something that feels real. Result: I’m feeling productive! Second result: by writing about it, I can see some of the patterns that helped get me through the project.
Bonus: lots of pictures.
- July 18, 2009
Theories On Life Balance through Video Game Design
July 18, 2009Read moreSUMMARY: I know that the path to happiness goes straight through the Mountains of Productivity, a craggy place where discipline and steadiness of action are required to maintain one’s footing. Nevertheless, I have difficulty mustering the energy to even get on the path, as much as I want to.
In this post, I identify myself as a procrastinator-perfectionist, and detail some factors that I believe are barriers to action: a lack of immediacy, a need to be convinced, and a look at “happiness” not as a question to be answered, but as an indicator of pre-existing conditions. After coming up with some ways to trick myself past these barriers, I postulate that video game design may offer an analogous methodology, to be explored in future posts. (more…)
- July 10, 2009
Brutal Simplicity
July 10, 2009Read moreSUMMARY: Am I trying to balance too many competing factors in my life to be effectively productive? This makes life more complex, and that makes finding an optimal solution a burden.
Perhaps simplification can be achieved through the marriage of the triage mentality with a numerical method-inspired approach. Throw in a few “good enough” selection principles, and poof! Cut the number of decisions to make, and simplify the tests so you can tell if you’re getting closer or not.
