Nels Lindahl — Functional Journal

A weblog created by Dr. Nels Lindahl featuring writings and thoughts…

Tag: routines

  • A reflective Saturday

    Right now we are sitting at a recorded and processed backlog level of 3 weeks on the Substack. That 3 weeks of backlog is scheduled to run until Friday, September 15, 2023. Based on my normal routine for the weekend I should be recording week 139 right now during my Saturday morning. This morning The WAN Show was back (no comment) and I have the content ready to record for block 139. Instead of picking up the Marantz professional sound shield live vocal reflection filter from under my desk and starting to record on my Yeti X from Blue microphone I took a step back. Blocks 139, 140, 141, and 142 are actually written and ready to record, but they could be better. This morning I’m going to read all 4 of those blocks and give them a round of editing and expansion. That will be a part of the reworking content process that is important.

    Recently, I have been way more likely to push the entire backlog back a few weeks and drop in new topics. That is in part a function of not wanting to put a new topic so far out in planning and review. Having a new topic that grabs my interest be shelved for over a year while the backlog is consumed in front of it just seems wrong. Right now that backlog goes out until block 226 which is really a problem for future Nels. Sometimes you have to be willing to mix things up and change up the backlog. It’s a healthy part of the agile process. I’m even going to create a new category for posts that is going to be about backlog management.

    Throughout the next week I’ll be working with LangChain and building some Colab notebooks related to using and understanding all the use cases currently in that space. I’m going to spend time every day working on a single block of content within the backlog as well. That should end up yielding some good content building and a lot of focus on getting things done. For the most part the process of recording the audio, video, or other elements is distinctly separate from the writing process and is normally a part of my weekend routine.

  • Oh those pesky routines

    Shifting back into a routine of writing some daily observations down took just a bit of effort. Giving up writing in Google Docs and switching to mostly writing in the Microsoft Word application involved changing up my routine. This very document can be opened online or I can continue working out of this Microsoft Word application on my main desktop computer. Given that right now the main stretch of productivity that I have as a writer is at the start of the day this setup works out well enough. Right now for some reason it is the first couple of hours of the day where I’m able to produce solid prose and push things along. In the evening, I’m not able to compel myself to spend time writing. Sometimes that is problematic if I’m not able to be fully productive during that early morning writing session. No capacity for catch up really exists.

    Yesterday it had seemed like a good idea to use a large book to raise up both of my computer monitors by a few inches. I’m going to give this new elevated viewing solution a few days to see if I got the height correct or if it needs adjustment. My Dell monitors simply don’t have that much height adjustment on them and I wanted a better ergonomic setup where my eyeline was looking just about the middle of the screen from my current chair configuration. I’m still rocking the Scandinavian Designs WAU desk chair in blue. Overall the chair has worked out well enough, but it has always been a place holder while I try to convince myself to buy a Herman Miller chair for my home office. That will probably happen at some point in the not to so distant future.

    All of those pesky routines are the ones that drive my productivity forward on a daily basis. Waking up before everybody else gets up and starting to write is the key part of that routine. A lot of other things get pulled into that pattern. Sometimes it is cleaning up my workspace or something else that pulls my attention, but that is all about using a distraction to procrastinate. The main mission from the desired routine is to produce words. Today that attention got focused on this weblog post which oddly enough was about the very routine that produced it.