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- February 27, 2014
- February 27, 2014
Treating “Confusion Headache”
February 27, 2014Read moreAfter yesterday’s insight (see the end of the post) about “confusion headaches” that come along with my self-brutalizing style of learning, I’m curious how today’s creative activities will go. My theory is that I’m frustrated by the “deferred answer” situation that arises when I try to fulfill my systems-based approach to learning from mediocre documentation, and this is what generates the huge nap-inducing headaches.
This might be the demarcation point between “creative” and “creative support”. I’m reminded of a paper by (I think) Vannevar Bush where he (or maybe Douglas Englebart) says that the moment of creative work happens only after mundane clerical work** has been done to support it. And that’s what happens to me when I’m studying, say, a new software development tool that is unfamiliar to me: I need to absorb and organize a lot of concepts in my brain or on paper so I can see it all at once, and then the connections happen.
In terms of creative support for this specific problem, I think I can just accept that documentation sucks, and pull what data I can get from it. It may not be complete or even well-defined, but it’s a starting framework. I’m creating a set of lists, basically. Before, I was frustrated because I wanted to get on with the work, and I found the documentation an obstacle rather than a source. The negative feelings and mental burden conspired (I theorize) to create a huge headache. I remember the feeling well when studying various math courses, which have the worst documentation ever. I do find it interesting, though, that other people don’t seem to have a problem learning from the material, and they don’t seem to have headaches about it. What are they doing differently? Yesterday, it took a mere HOUR of pushing before I had to take a long nap. Perhaps they don’t have the same resistance, or have a different learning strategy.
Anyway, today’s thought about dealing with the frustration is to ease-off the desire for immediate gratification of my learning goal (“be the master of time and space and NodeJS”) and settle for acquiring useful data in a relaxed timeframe. My investigative design approach has a rule of thumb that I need to remember: “no one is telling the whole truth, but no one believes they are lying either.” That rule of thumb puts me in the mindset to discover the real story, and that requires a lot of mundane forensic data collection. In this case, the data collection comes from existing documentation, and that makes the goals more immediately achievable. The reward, then, is no longer quite as deferred. At the same time, I can also remember to turn off my brain, and just do data processing and term recognition WITHOUT triggering the “well, what the hell does THAT do?” subroutine that can never execute to completion.
- February 27, 2014
Foggy Wednesday (Day 3)
February 27, 2014Read moreThe third day of observing fogginess in my daily process. I have already forgotten why I originally started doing this…oh, right, it’s part of the research for creating a better workflow with “creative support”. Previously, I had a “productivity stack” of apps and processes that helped me manage time and tasks, but this did nothing to help me in the ACTUAL MOMENT of creativity, which remains foggy and difficult.
It was a scattered day, which shows up in my ETP for the day:
Here’s what happened on Day 3 of my research week, for which I’m journaling the day. (more…)
- February 26, 2014
Foggy Tuesday (Day 2)
February 26, 2014Read moreReflections from a (mentally) Foggy Tuesday.
The Morning
I got started at 1100AM after writing yesterday’s Foggy Monday post, which had taken an hour to do.
The day started with a number of small resistances (making a phone call), paying property taxes at City Hall, grabbing some peppermint tea, buying wine for a charity event, and picking up mail. I got home at 1PM, and put away my groceries.
OBSERVATION: The morning chores, which had loomed large in my head as “tedious chores”, were not nearly as unpleasant as my subconscious was making them out to be. I had imagined all these steps that I needed to do. The very act of thinking about them in the abstract created resistance. The actual part of moving around / picking up the phone was easy-peasy. Moral: STOP THINKING SO MUCH ABOUT WHAT I HAVE TO DO and just GET STARTED. Since I hadn’t put myself under time pressure, that helped.
OBSERVATION: Not feeling stuck, which comes from any forward motion, feel good. Feeling good reduces anxiety.
OBSERVATION: Organic whole chickens are surprisingly inexpensive. I could roast a chicken every week and get really good at it, and it would feed me for at least a couple days for under 7 dollars, if I read the prices right.
The Afternoon
It was 1:15PM, and I had a Skype call scheduled at 2PM. Tuesday is the day I assign to a particular recurring client, which is anchored by this Skype call. My brain is TOTALLY FUZZY. What to do for that 45 minutes? I don’t want to take a nap (though I really do) because I might just zonk out again in a post-lunch coma. I am already, though, feeling a bit fried and scatterbrained. I can tell by the number of times I check Twitter, Facebook, and Email in the span of 5 minutes.
OBSERVATION: I have yet to do anything creative today, and it feels like it’s not going to happen. Errands and meetings kill the impulse, and it’s harder to start it after lunch. I should have gone to the gym perhaps.
Maybe it is OK to just take a break. It doesn’t feel like I’ve done any real work yet, and this is why I don’t want to take a break. But I think I have to. I just bought some peppermint tea, after all. Let me just enjoy that in a quasi-meditative state and see what thoughts float up…
…and about 5 minutes later, I’m full of peppermint tea and STILL feeling fried and jittery. Yesterday’s experience of going into the Laundry Room when I was feeling fried came to mind. Maybe I just needed to get away from the computer. Maybe if I stood somewhere else in the house, something else would get done.
APPLICATION: Brain feeling fuzzy? GET AWAY FROM COMPUTER, which invites mindless clicking, and get in front of the Kitchen Sink, where that nervous/mindless clicking energy will end up washing dishes and decluttering. Wow!
This small victory at my back, I tried to kickstart again. Again, it’s a matter of getting into the workspace, which means gathering the relevant stuff up in front of me where I can see it. The first task is some bug fixing, so that means (urrrrr…brain resisting) loading Dreamweaver, the website in a browser (which URL was it? URRR), and Basecamp (which account, mine or the clients? URRRRRR) to start keeping a log of what I’m doing.
Upon opening Basecamp, I realized I had to make a “dev hour tracking message” for this time period (we go mid-month to mid-month). I summed up hours from last month in my Excel timesheet to make sure I wasn’t over the allotment. I still haven’t actually started work, but at least I’m in the workspace.
At 2PM, we chatted, and by 2:45PM I was ready to do some ACTUAL WORK. We had shifted the focus to add some features to a website. Along the way, the client showed me a cool website template that we wanted to use, and I liked it so much that I bought it for myself to use as the basis for a new-and-improved davidseah.com.
The Evening
At 5PM, it was time to make dinner and get ready to attend a Future Tech Women hangout to which I had been invited, where I could show off the Sparki Arduino robot I just got from a Kickstarter. Made dinner (Cajun Dirty Rice from a box, with turkey instead of ground beef). As I cooked, I marveled that I’d made progress on tedious tasks by just facing them and pushing just enough until I started. Not worrying about how long it would take seemed to be a key, as did trusting that I would figure it out somehow.
OBSERVATION: Just FACING something and figuring it out a little bit feels like progress, if you’re not freaking out about not getting it done RIGHT THIS FREAKING MINUTE.
Arriving at the venue in Manchester, I discovered my phone was dead (I almost never use it) so I couldn’t call the event organizer to let me in. I considered driving home because I didn’t want to bother anyone, but decided wait outside the building until someone else showed up, which I found a bit embarrassing. But it didn’t kill me, and I’m glad I showed up. There were all kinds of cool people showing off the cool inspiring tech toys and books, and I left feeling very positive and grateful for this community.
OBSERVATION: It’s good to be around people who love the same things you do. Which means I need to make some adjustments to other commitments I have that are more out of a sense of misplaced duty than love.
Wednesday!
I woke up later, and got downstairs at 9:30AM, if my twitter feed is to be believed. It’s now 10:30AM. READY TO ROCK. Sort of. Day 3 is always kind of a difficult day to get through when I’m doing a week-long logging experiment.
- February 25, 2014
Foggy Monday (Day 1)
February 25, 2014Read moreIt’s 9:30AM on Tuesday, and I’m reviewing how I dealt with the fog of getting things done on Monday. I think yesterday was a pretty good day. Let me check the time log I kept (which was the draft version of this very post), timestamped as I went.
(more…)
