2021-12-20a Making the most of the moment #planning #kaizen

Building on yesterday's reflection on waste, I thought I'd think about how to make the most of the moment. There are some things that are easier now and harder later, so I should take advantage of the situation to prepare for what's next. There are some things that are harder now and easier later, so that's a good opportunity to stress-test systems and improve things when things are a little bit easier. There are things that are about the same. They've got to be done anyway, so I might as well figure out how to keep learning and growing through them.

What sorts of things are easier now and harder later? Well, the big one is spending time with the kiddo. Right now, she's really interested in spending time with us. We have lots of time together, and she actually wants to be with me. I know that this is not always going to be the case. So as a result, I should take advantage of this opportunity to be present and make memories and all those other good things, but also to personally enjoy it, to store up all those things that I'm going to fondly remember when she's having a teenage angsty meltdown. One of the ways that I can help myself remember these things is by keeping a journal, maybe taking pictures and videos if it doesn't get in the way of enjoying the time with her, and also investing the time to build the skills and patterns that will help us later on in life.

Something that's easier now and harder later: schooling. Right now, she's in senior kindergarten. That's the second year of kindergarten. Next year, she's going to be in grade one. That means that we've been able to get away with a very relaxed, play-based sort of learning. It's just essentially her learning whatever she wants to do and me writing it up nicely in an observation spreadsheet. I've been slowly learning how to guide her interests by leaving interesting things lying around and supporting her interests wherever they take us. Right now, it's puzzles, for example. Eventually, I'll probably need to learn how to give her a little bit more structure so that she practises things like writing, drawing, spelling, and so on. That's someday.

Another thing that's easy now is that partly because of where she is developmentally and partly because of COVID, we're focused on our own little world. She's quite happy playing with us. She's not that interested in online classes or hanging out with other people yet. So she's focused on us at the moment, and again, that's an opportunity to be present and make memories, and to build those patterns.

Definitely easier now, harder later: time with my husband. Parenting is a lot easier when you can take a break and know that someone else is going to be there, especially when the kiddo has decided that only Daddy will do or that Mama's the meanest person in the world. He's also really great at helping me keep perspective. For example, when the kiddo hands me something that I'm not entirely sure I should take at the moment because my hands are full or she wants to give me something random, he always reminds me that their world is so small and they want to give us whatever they can. So keeping those things in mind is helpful. Of course, the relationship is great, and I'm not going to have that forever. I want to make the most of it while it's there. Also, he has a lot of skills that I want to learn. So I can take advantage of this time to learn those skills, bring those perspectives into my head, and get through the harder parts of raising a kid. It's not always going to be like this, so it's great that he's around to help, and then eventually (probably) it'll get easier. It'll get harder first, probably, and then easier.

My mom is another example of something that's easier now, but I've got to start preparing for when it's going to be hard. She's the only one in the Philippines. None of my sisters are there either, so estate tax paperwork is going to be a big headache. If we can get some of the preparation sorted out, then that makes later much easier. There's also enjoying the time with her while we have her. So, maybe that involves recording some calls or finding other ways to talk about stories or remember things or make that connection.

And lastly, there's this big question mark around climate change and society. I think things are not super easy now, but they will probably get a lot harder later on, so if I can build skills, help us develop more resilience, and build resources, that might put us in a better position for when things get crazier.

On the flip side, there are some things that are harder now and easier later. As I mentioned, it's a good opportunity to stress-test the systems and processes. So for example, the kiddo really loves getting our attention. She wants to spend time with us, which is a little hard when it comes to focusing on my own things. But eventually she'll move towards independence. At the moment, I can just relish the time I have with her and put off whatever I can so that I can just not worry, not feel like I'm being pulled into different directions. Then I can try to just use those little moments.

That's a second challenge: fragmented time. Eventually I'll be able to sit down and focus on things. Right now, it's a little hard. But fortunately, that's kind of like a preview of later, much much later, when it will be hard to focus on things, so any note-taking habits and processes that I build now might be helpful later. So, build systems and tools.

My tech setup is not quite as awesome as it could be. Sometimes it takes too much setup time to go downstairs and plug into the external monitor, set up all the things that I want. Context-switching is friction. So I can use what I have and gradually build on that toolkit, learning different ways of using the things that I've got and then add more as I can.

COVID-19 pandemic: hard now, someday easier, maybe? It mostly means that we aren't relying on external resources. I can't take her to library story time or other things like that. There also supply chain issues to watch out for. Less socialization, can't really take her out to see friends. We could do some outer playdates, but even then, it's harder to arrange. And then, of course, there's a lot of risk and uncertainty. Again: put off what I can and look for opportunities to make the most of things. For example, virtual kindergarten has been working out really well for us.

Of course, screen time is an issue, especially with young kids. I just have to find other things to do, like draw these reflections and solve Rubik's cubes and things like that.

There are some things that are about the same now as well as later. Cooking, for example. It's always got to be done, but I can keep growing by trying new recipes and techniques.

Tidying. I've got to keep working on ways to see clutter and get rid of it, maybe figure out where things are supposed to go. I lose a lot of time like trying to find things if I have put them down in a moment of inattention, so I have to figure out how to smoothen that.

Gardening stuff happens every year. It's always a new opportunity to try different plants or learn more skills. This year, we learned how to transplant periwinkle and start them from cuttings.

Health, got to keep working on that. Finding things that I enjoy doing as a form of movement will make it easier later on, too.

There are lots of different things that I can do now to prepare for harder things later, and lots of different ways I can take advantage of what's tough now so that can have ideas for things to improve later on, when things get better. There are things that are about the same. It's all about making the most of the moment.

I have a little less than a year to spend hanging out with A- and learning about early childhood education before she goes to kindergarten next year. If I’m intentional about what I want to learn, then I can make the best use of the time.

I’m not worried about making sure A- is academically advanced. I do want to have fun playing with her, though. I like learning more about how kids learn math, science, and literacy so that I can appreciate how she’s figuring things out and I can build on learning opportunities all around us. I want to learn more about nature and physical literacy, too. I can learn about these topics by reading early childhood education books and trying out ideas.

I have a little space to work on my own skills, thanks to investing in having a babysitter every Saturday. I’d like to slowly ramp up skills I’ve been neglecting for the past few years. If I pick personal projects aligned with these skills and I let my consulting clients know what I’m curious about, I’ll probably get plenty of opportunities to learn in the process of doing useful things.

• Python:
  • personal finance: better decisions, peace of mind
  • robotic process automation
  • text analysis: work with journal entries?
  • image analysis: handwriting recognition, grouping sketches?
• Emacs: because it tickles my brain
  • I want to start up hangouts again when A- is in school: maybe Jitsi + Icecast or Youtube?
  • I want to dig into new features in Org and other projects to expand the possibilities for automation
• Deployment: so that I can improve reproducibility and reduce risk
  • Automation
  • Containers
• Reusable web components: so that my prototypes look more polished and support richer interactions
• SQL, Tableau:
  • More data analysis at work? Hampered by indirect access to data
• Sketchnotes:
  • More colour
  • Wider visual vocabulary
  • Wider range of topics/thoughts: I can practise this in the process of learning more about early childhood education
• General organization/notes: My files have gotten a little overgrown. I’d like to get better at prioritizing, organizing, writing, and sharing

I was thinking about steps towards personal digital assistants. In a separate thread, I was also thinking about the psychology of aging. In a third thread, I was thinking about projects I might want to build to help me learn more. It makes sense to bring all these threads together: thinking of systems I can build to improve the quality of life I’ll enjoy in the future.

I think this might be a better fit for my experimental learning than either a hypothetical market or specific people. After all, I’ll always have a future self who could benefit. (And if I don’t, I’ll be past caring!) If the things I build along the way turn out to be useful for others, all the better.

Anyway, I was thinking about the kind of simple, deterministic, idiosyncratic assistant I could build to make life a teensy bit better in the medium term and the long term.

I could start with a text box interface on a webpage, then move to alternative inputs like dictation or neuro-integration(!) when that becomes reliable. It would be great to have some kind of offline buffering, too.

In terms of logic, I could start with stateless well-defined responses, add synonyms, support conversational interfaces, use weighted factors, add feedback mechanisms, and then eventually reach proactive notification and action. Inferences would be awesome, but I don’t have to wait for them to be sorted out. Ditto for program generation and adaptation.

In terms of sensing and acting, I can start with existing APIs and tools, write specific adapters for other sites, push into the physical world with sensors and actuators, use context and probability to simplify, and then take advantage of improvements in fields like computer vision or biometric analysis as other people build and commoditize cool tech.

But first, it starts with building a simple tool. Hmm, maybe a little thing that suggests what to do next (and coincidentally makes it easy to track)…

I know you're supposed to live in the present, but I get a lot of value from thinking about futures and what I can learn from the possibilities. Imagining different futures helps me see what I can do, choose to do some things instead of others, and keep track of how I'm doing along the way.

In the problem-solving model that Tim Hurson shares in Think Better (2008), you come up with potential Target Futures and prioritize a few based on three factors:

• Influence: Is it something you have influence over?
• Importance: Is it important enough to you that you'll put in the work to get there?
• Imagination: Can you solve it with an off-the-shelf solution, or do you have to come up with something new?

A good future pulls you toward it. You want it, and so you act on it.

I periodically think about what the target futures for my interests look and feel like. Last year, I wrote about how I don't need to get to "awesome" in everything. Sometimes it still helps to think about what that "awesome" might look like, though. I realized that I don't have to use the same definition of "awesome" that other people use. Figuring out what "awesome" means to me can help me identify the differences between my current state and my future state, and that shows me what I can do or what I can learn to get there. I want to pick differences that are mostly under my control, that are important enough to call me to action, and that may even create something new in the world.

I've been thinking a lot about goals lately, thanks to a few discussions with friends. I don't feel particularly driven by big, hairy, audacious goals (BHAGs). Instead, I focus on small wins and low-hanging fruit, accumulating progress. I don't have a clear picture of exactly where I'd like to be in 40 years. Instead, I have a multiplicity of posibilities.

But maybe I'm not a special snowflake, and I can learn from the kinds of goals many people have. It's fun to put on a different hat and try things out. By trying on common goals instead of rejecting them off-hand, maybe I'll figure out more about what I really want and how to get there.

Aristotle says that happiness is the ultimate goal.

I find it helpful to think of happiness as a response to life instead of as an external state to pursue, so this goal feels a little odd to me. But it's interesting to imagine a happy 90-year-old Sacha and what that life would be like. I think it involves building specific warm-and-fuzzy memories, maintaining a good perspective, and minimizing stressors.

Let's take a look at other typical goals: wealth, power, fame, and knowledge/experiences.

This might be the easiest of goals to desire, since it's popular and measurable. Based on my reading, I imagine that conspicuous wealth will bring more problems than I'd like, so I don't aspire to high-flying lifestyles. I value freedom, so it makes sense to have a financial buffer and to avoid becoming too accustomed to luxuries. That increases my security, which allows me to do more experiments. (I'm already privileged as it is!) Tools can be good investments, and it's great to be able to strategically use money to make a bigger difference. Money also makes decisions easier: instead of worrying about cutting into your safety margin, you can try things out and see what happens.

Power includes determining your life and influencing other people's lives. I definitely care about having power over myself, but I'm not driven by the idea of making big decisions that affect thousands of people's lives.

I think I care more about depth of connection (tribe) than about breadth of fame (celebrity). I'm not sure about legacy. On one hand, it's good to do things that are remarkable enough to help or inspire people throughout the years. On the other hand, what do we do that will matter after a century, and how can we get things to even be remembered for that long? I'll think about this a little more while reading history. What makes essays resonate with me even after all that time, and how can I also reach across the years?

I like the goal of learning more so that I can appreciate life better, maintain my independence, contribute meaningfully, and make better decisions.

I focus more on knowledge in the sketch above, but I think the popular approach to this goal is to focus on experiences. Bucket lists are practically all about experiences: seeing this country, climbing that mountain. That's why travel is so big, I guess. What kinds of experiences would I like to have if I were to travel more?

I currently don't like traveling, but it'll probably be less of a hassle now that I've gotten my Canadian passport sorted out.

Still, with J- in school and three cats at home, it's hard to plan. Maybe this will be something for later.

Besides, I'm not totally convinced that travel is the best way to learn these things. It was fun being immersed in a language and going to local shops. But traveling to learn more about cooking seems a little wasteful, since airfare alone will buy lots of ingredients (and even personalized cooking classes). Staying home means I focus on cooking dishes I can enjoy long-term, and I can take advantage of our kitchen setup. So there's an advantage to staying home, too.

What about other intrinsic goals?

Health makes sense, since your enjoyment of many things can be curtailed by poor health. I probably won't strive for buffed-up awesomeness, though. I'm mostly focusing on functioning all right, with maybe a little effort here and there to do a bit better.

People want to make a difference at work and in their relationships. Many people feel that their work doesn't matter a lot. Despite the abstraction of my work (I move bits around? I crunch numbers and questions? I write tools for a tiny, tiny fraction of the world?), I'm pretty good at convincing myself I have a small impact. =) Do I want to trade up by focusing on work that has a bigger impact (either for more people, or deeper in people's lives? I don't know yet.

I like this goal the most. Stoicism tells me that it's the one thing under my control. It transforms the ups and downs of life into opportunities for growth. It doesn't mean that I can't enjoy things, I just shouldn't get so attached to them that I become afraid. It doesn't mean that I can't be sad, it means I can try to take a different perspective on things.

Hmm. Trying on popular goals helped me take advantage of the collective centuries (millennia?) of thought that have gone into those goals. I still have to come up with my own specifics, but it's good to be able to quickly test what resonates with me instead of trying to formulate everything by myself. If tranquility, happiness, and knowledge are my major goals (with health as the goal I know I should have), I can focus on coming up with specific ways I want to explore those areas.

Do you resonate with some common goals? What are they, and what are you learning from that?

I like making contingency plans. It's like peeking up a manifold of possibilities, imagining a sure-footed Sacha capably dealing with whatever comes down the pipe.

In preparation for a recent event, I made a list of different things that could go wrong, highlighting specific scenarios I needed to worry about and listing a few catch-all scenarios as well. Amusingly enough, the actual challenges that came up (Windows updates, network/hardware latency, a network configuration reset, Powerpoint crashes, last-minute changes) weren't on my list as specific scenarios, but they were addressed by our general back-up plans. I like the blend of specific and general. Specific scenarios help you flush out questions to ask and things to prepare, while general scenarios identify characteristics to prepare for and help you come up with flexible strategies. Both types help you minimize stress when things do happen. Knowing that you have a backup plan, what the trade-offs are, and a probable deadline for committing to that plan helps you worry less about catastrophic failure and lets you focus on coming up with a better ad-hoc option.

One of the things that I gained a better appreciation of was the trade-off between preparing in advance and waiting until you can test your hypotheses. For example, I wasn't sure if the server would be able to accept incoming connections once at the venue. I could adapt the code to run on my public webserver, but that would take a little time. However, since we were likely to be able to get things to work on the event network, I could postpone worrying about it to Sunday, which meant that I could spend Saturday doing non-work things instead.

Outside work, I also have a lot of scenarios and contingency plans. It's been interesting slowly moving through time, watching the different uncertainties resolve themselves. Doors close and new possibilities open up. Because I've scanned my personal notes and I've blogged about many of my projections, I can recall a little bit of what past-Sacha was thinking, standing on the threshold of the unknown. I tend to overestimate risks and costs, but I'm good at coming up with small tests and approaches. I'm good at tracking my progress and keeping an eye out for “trip lines,” little reminders to myself to re-evaluate the situation. I want to get better at generating more general scenarios and alternative approaches, and properly evaluating risk/reward (maybe calibrating these with other people's experiences). It's fun treating life as a Choose Your Own Adventure where you might be able to peek ahead a little! =)

“What should I do with my life?”

When you have the freedom to set your own TO-DO list, it can be difficult to decide what goes on it. Should you focus on one project or juggle a few? Why one goal instead of another? How much time should you spend on something new, and how much time on polishing something old?

It's easy to get stuck in rumination. You can end up spending so much time and mental energy worrying about what you should do with your life that you don't actually get things done.

Here are some things I'm learning about learning from constant progress and setting limits on second-guessing.

I keep a list of tasks that I can work on even when I feel the twinges of doubt. I organize this by project and type of task. For example, I feel like coding, I can quickly pick a task related to that. This means that if I don't feel inspired, I can trust that the Sacha who made this list came up with tasks that would be a pretty good use of my time. It might not be the best use, but it won't be a complete waste either. These unscheduled tasks give me a baseline of productivity. If I don't want to work on something, I have to justify that by coming up with another task that would be even better.

For example, I know that I will generally get good value out of:

• writing 1,000 to 2,000 words to answer a question or help people learn more
• learning more about a specific programming language or platform by reading tutorials, source code, or blog posts, by working through tutorials, or by coding
• writing tests and code
• sketchnoting a video or book
• exercising or cooking
• braindumping thoughts

You probably have a list like that too: types of tasks that tend to work well for you, especially if they leave you feeling awesome.

Even a good list of tasks wouldn't help much if I'm switching projects all the time. I'd keep getting started on different things, with very little to show for it. To deal with this second-guessing, I try to publish or share things as early as possible. That way, even if I switch focus, my notes are out there for other people to build on. This also opens it up for feedback and appreciation, which is great for encouraging me to work on something even more.

I also limit when I plan. During the week, I might decide to focus more on one project instead of another, but I don't dump all my previous projects. If I come up with an idea I'm curious about, I add it to my list for later review. Every month, I look at my goals and evaluate my projects, checking which ones are still relevant. Every year, I look at my values and evaluate my goals.

When I catch myself procrastinating a task, I often use that as an opportunity to evaluate my projects and goals as well. Am I procrastinating because other projects have become more important? Great, I can replace the task with one for a higher-priority project. On the other hand, am I procrastinating because I overvalue immediate rewards over my long-term goals? The project/goal review reminds me why something matters and helps me get back on track. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about whether I should come up with new projects instead. The time for that is when I review my goals and plan my month, not when I feel like procrastinating things.

Another thing that helps me box in my tendency to over-plan is reminding myself that I'm not trying to decide the absolute best thing to do with my time. Good enough is good enough. If I move forward, even if it's not quite optimal, I can learn more than I would standing still. If I feel I'm slightly off-track, that can teach me about where the track is.

So it's worth spending a little time making sure I'm pointed in roughly the right direction, but it might not make to spend four hours trying to figure out how I can get 100% instead of 80% value out of an afternoon.

It's good to periodically check if I'm going the right way. I'm probably doing okay if:

• I can tell how I'm different or what I learn week to week, month to month
• My projects include several things that excite me, and I'm learning from my experiences working on different tasks
• Other people tell me that what I share or work on is useful
• Things build up; scale or network effects happen

If those are true, then I'm probably not wasting my time. I might even be able to get away without worrying about better ways at all. I can wait for people to suggest better ways to spend my time, and I can listen for suggestions that resonate with me.

What do you do to avoid getting stuck in the question “What should I do with my life?”

Related: Thinking about what I want to do with my time