All that go forward

Writing a conclusion post for the Lindahl Letter weekly newsletter series should have been bittersweet, but instead it was just another block of content. I wanted it to be more and better. It should have said so many things, but it ended up being less than 500 words and will close out a 3 year writing effort. I might pick it up again later after transitioning to the Ghost platform for the newsletter. We will see what happens. My main focus will be producing two weekly nels.ai posts, writing code, and generating some academic articles. Today was one of those all that go forward days.

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Rambling about writing

Things are moving along. Sometimes, I wonder what type of prompt it takes to start the writing process every day. At the very start of things, it takes something to spark that very first part of the writing process. Today for example things are moving along, but the process of tipping the pile of things forward really involved writing about the pile. It’s the process of typing and feeling the keys move and the words begin to flow that makes the entire process work. Writing generally begets more writing and that is the thing that needs to be sparked. Now moving from the process of just going through the motions to finding that true spark of innovation is what makes the magic happen compared to a mundane writing experience. 

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A backlog without any order

A lot of news stories are picking up the news about Platformer moving off of Substack this weekend. I’m still looking at Ghost and trying to figure out if I just need to watch a couple videos about getting started on that platform. I’ll be really curious to see what happens here in the next 90 days. Yesterday, I shared my 3 year recap of publishing on Substack as both a podcast and a post. Right now I’m looking at the backlog and trying to figure out what order I want to set for the next few posts. I committed to writing my 2024 predictions post, but outside of that I just have over 100 topics in a backlog that are not really in any particular order. 

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The best writing adventure

They day accidently started out with a demo video of the NUX B-8 guitar tuner/boost pedal. The guitar singularity that is Rob Chapman stole 10 minutes of my most productive window this morning with that review [1]. Perhaps it is better to remember to turn on some music at the start of the day instead of letting YouTube be a part of the start. Sometimes one of those videos will just pull my attention to it instead of being background noise. That is exactly what happened today. 

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The subscription system is now running

Yesterday, I was able to complete my first subscription based post here on the old weblog. It took me a few minutes to learn how to insert the first paywall blocker widget. I’m not ready to engage in the active process of daily writing and publishing within the weblog. I’ll make sure the opening paragraph is always ready to be visible and that the rest goes a bit deeper after the paywall. It’s a strange thing to consider, but I figure that this could be interesting if the newsletter had to move over to the weblog. Right now it looks like Substack might be making some changes and could keep existing throughout 2024. A lot of turbulence has occurred and that makes me wonder if people might jump to some alternative if one presents itself. Now would be the time for a great online writer migration. 

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Refocusing on completing objectives

Refocusing on completing objectives should be my primary concern. Part of that will have to be opening the door to doing some of the things that have been a part of my regular routine and mixing in some productivity amplifiers. Probably one of the more productive things that I have done over the years is sitting down and writing at the start of the day to focus my attention on the things that deserve focus and to push away the things that are for later or maybe may never get any really focused attention. Some people might say that is an effort to compartmentalize and ensure focus is on the primary objectives. That sounds about right. 

Making this new plan work will be about writing down potentially in my notebook my five objectives for the day. Each working day has 5 good blocks of time in it to focus on the very real completion of objectives. Letting days go by without knocking out some high quality objectives is something that cannot stand. That is the core reason that refocusing on completing objectives really does have to be my primary daily concern. It’s the nature of not really being able to just fully and openly write that maybe creates my biggest degree of frustration. 

Everyday right now I’m both writing code to drive forward a business purpose and I’m looking for the next great opportunity. Those two things are not really in conflict. Within my 5 good blocks of time (5GBT) I certainly can work on both of those things. Generally, I have elected to spend the first block of the day on the search and then pivoted over to working on other pursuits. Some of that has been working in Overleaf to write academic style articles in LaTeX to publish, other parts of it involves writing Substack content, and the rest involves working on writing code in Microsoft Visual Code Studio or Google Colab. That could very well be broken down into blocks of the day. An example of 5 blocks would potentially look like: 1) Searching, 2) Overleaf article writing, 3) Substack posts, 4) Code development, and 5) Code review. 

Staying locked in and focused on the tasks is always the hardest part of that process. To be fair my best focus happens at the start of the day so whatever takes the last block positions never really gets my best attention. That means that complex troubleshooting or code innovation needs to be repositioned to the front of the block structure when necessary. Outside of that being at the back of the content blocks will generally be ok as some of that just takes time to complete vs. taking pure creativity to get from the desired direction to a working product. 

The things that needed to be said today have been written down and for the most part this is as good as it is going to get today. Welcome to the first Friday morning of 2024. Things are going to keep moving along. That is where we are at right now. Stay focused on the objectives. Always maintain that momentum that moves things forward.