Tag: tracking

Categories
Getting Shit Done

Watched My To-do List Philosophy

Watched My To-Do List Philosophy from YouTube

Too much of my creativity comes from my To-Do list these days.
0:00 To-Do lists as an accomplice to burnout
0:34 Philosophy of my DO lists
2:15 Archival to-do lists
2:58 A project for Sleepy Jones
4:11 The value of to-do lists
5:17 Are to-do lists destroying my creativity
7:39 The next thing on my to-do list

I still don’t really get his “do lists” — does he make a new one every day?

Lately I’ve been making two lists on paper: a daily to do list and a weekly or weekend to do list. The daily one only gets stuff that really actually needs to happen today, and if I have time I can also do things from the weekly to do list. I also include fun activities that I know I’ll enjoy but might otherwise put off, like baking a new recipe, and get-togethers with friends to recognize their importance in my schedule (and also remind myself about them, in part so I don’t overbook myself with tasks 😉).

(Via Anna Havron)

Categories
Entrepreneurship Websites

Open Source Website Analytics

Bookmarked Plausible (plausible.io)

While I plan to keep my personal websites analytics-free, it would probably be imprudent to have zero analytics on my business websites. Subscription model more trustworthy here because I know I’m paying for it, not my clients’ data.

Categories
Featured Learning Reflection

Why I track my reading

Replied to ‘It’s dopamine’: Why we love to track our watching and reading habits (irishtimes.com)

Like wellness before it, cultural consumption has become yet another opportunity for us to measure, analyse and optimise our lives using cold, hard data.

Yes, it’s possible to let tracking your reading become a performative thing, but showing off to others is not the only reason to track what you read. There are a lot of reasons I track what I’m reading:

  • To keep track of what I’ve already read — I read a lot, and can’t keep track of what I’ve read and what I enjoyed
  • To be thoughtful about what I’m reading — I try to read books with a wide range of representation and by diverse authors, and if I don’t track what I’m reading, it’s easy to fall into reading mostly white cis male authors because they are published more (and white cis women in the romance world) — I also like to try out new authors, not just read the same ones
  • To diversify my reading — by tracking what I read, it’s easier to look back and see trends so I can switch it up if I’ve been reading the same thing for a while (or choose to continue with intentionality)
  • To pay attention to my mental state — if I’m not reading, there might be something going on
  • To prompt myself to reflect on what I got out of a book by writing a review, and to think more critically about a work — while I’m reading I can get sucked into a story and it’s only when I surface on the other end I start noticing the problems
  • To keep myself honest — I can look back at what I’ve read, and use that to truth what I think I’ve been reading — for example, I say I read a lot of sci-fi, but in review I read as much or more fantasy, and my fantasy TBR is longer
  • To get better at picking books to read — I can compare what I actually read (and what I DNF’d) with my “to read” list, and adjust future book selections based on what I liked or didn’t like
Continue reading “Why I track my reading”
Categories
Cool

Personal Libraries Online

Bookmarked How I turned my Goodreads data into a self-hosted website with Eleventy by Hidde de Vries (hiddedevries.nl)

In the last week of 2020, I decided to export my Goodreads data to display it on my personal website. This post is about what I did and how.

Sometimes I feel a bit obtuse and unimaginative when it comes to how to use the web. Saw this idea of building a personal library on your own site rather than Goodreads and had a DUH moment. I’ve started tracking reads on here but I like the visual format of Goodreads, and seeing all the covers stacking up in one place. Never occurred to me to replicate that aspect of Goodreads in addition to simply my notes and reviews.

Can’t give myself too hard a time, I’m still opening my mind to the possibilities as I dabble in the Indie Web. There’s no race here, I’m doing this for fun and personal satisfaction (plus supporting a movement for good and living by my values). Also, it’s a pandemic and the president just attempted a coup, I’ve got things jamming up my inventive energies these days 🤷‍♀️

Of the examples, I particularly like how Dave Rupert displays his read list. I’d also like to use it to show genres and diversity, which I’ve been tracking.

I know nothing about databases so I’m not sure I’m capable of cobbling together anything that looks like this without a lot of manual work, because I’m also not sure I have time or patience to learn, at least right now 😉 But maybe something to keep in the back of my mind.

Categories
Getting Shit Done

Feeling like You’re Making Progress on Big Projects

Liked How to Feel Progress by Jocelyn K. Glei (jkglei.com)

As humans, we can’t help but be goal-oriented. We love to move forward. We love to feel a sense of momentum. And, more than anything, we love to tick things off a list.
This manifests as something called completion bias, a happy-making hit of dopamine that we get whenever we r…

Hofstadter’s Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.

Simpler ways of tracking progress could include:

  • Making a Post-It grid of all your tasks.
  • Track metrics on a daily calendar.
  • Write in a diary for 5 minutes a day… You simply make a practice of writing for just a few minutes at the end of each workday, noting down both your “small wins” and any setbacks. Then, at the end of the week or the month, flip back through your notes and see how far you’ve come.
Categories
Personal Growth

Changing habits through observation

Bookmarked How to change an unwanted habit by Amogh (The Examined Life)

It took me <2 min/day for a month. No will power, guilt or external motivation needed.

Exhibit A, what gets measured gets managed.

“We won’t need to force any change in our behaviour because consciousness itself will take care of this by its intrinsic power.“

His approach: literally write down how much of something you did a day. Every day for a month. For example, number of cookies eaten or time spent on phone.

As we begin to see and realize what we repeatedly do–without needing self-shaming and blame–the power of awareness automatically begins to exert influence on our behaviour and impulses

Categories
Health Mental Health Resources and Reference

Sleep Hygiene and Tracking Sleep

Bookmarked What is Sleep Hygiene? – Sleep Foundation (Sleep Foundation)

Looking for ways to sleep better? Improving sleep hygiene can make your habits, routines, & environment more conducive to consistent and restorative sleep.

Printable sleep journal for tracking sleep (pdf)