Replied to Building a Day Log Habit by Ton Zijlstra (zylstra.org)

Last week I joined an IndieWeb conversation on blogs and wikis. I ended up with three take-aways. One of them was a tip by another participant to keep a day log as a means to add more to the wiki, do more wiki gardening. Writing a list of things you do during the day as you go along, you can the use…

Ton, I am replying to your post, I had been keeping a daily journal of what I was doing, but your description of a day log includes a little more, I am going to try that this week.

Bookmarked The Archive Turns 2 Years Old (Zettelkasten Method)

Last week, on March 15th, was The Archive‘s 2nd anniversary. Just like we’re all supposed to not celebrate big birthday parties or gather for festivities in general, this year’s app anniversary is toned way down as well. Here’s to what has happened in the past year.

Read Ten simple rules for structuring academic papers

via Stephen Downes, a good set of rules to help a paper speak to its audience.

Bookmarked Key Practices for Achieving Large Professional Goals (nodramadevops.com)

I attribute much of my success in 2019 to the practices of:

writing to develop my thoughts
learning to focus

Starting off the year 2020 – My Three Words

As I came to work this morning, I began to think about how to start the New Year. Over the Christmas break, I did some listening/reading at Sean McCabe’s website on writing (It All Starts With Writing, podcast episodes 39, 139, 303). I would like to do more writing in 2020. I also listened to an Akimbo episode on “showing your work“. Harold Jarche (Seek-Sense-Share) and Dave Winer (Narrate Your Work) are other views on this topic.

Other thoughts that I had:

If you keep doing the same things, you will get the same results
Failing to plan means planning to fail

After this reflection, I think the three words I would like to guide my year (following Ron Chester’s example) is – Read Write Help.

Building community

Ton Zijlstra commented on a post by Chris M about what would be a critical mass for a community. In Ton’s reply, he links back to a post, which links to a presentation on steps to consider in building/starting a community. I think the presentation contains some excellent material. I participate in a biweekly meeting of software engineers at my workplace (using the Lean Coffee format), and feel we have made some good progress in turning that into a community of practice. Reviewing this presentation, I can see some areas that we might be able to improve on. I hope to pass on some thoughts to the group leadership..

Using the tools at hand

Om Malik posted recently about his use of pen and paper, and what he likes about it. I am also a fan of making a task list on paper and crossing items off – it feels so good! Even if I do not complete everything on the list, getting everything down on paper feels good (see Getting Things Done Step 1 – Capture). However, there are times when other tools could and should be used. I have written about my use of Personal Kanban for organization, and I have dabbled with Google Tasks to replace my pen and paper list. The mistake I try to avoid is continuing to look for another tool when the one or ones I have at hand are “good enough”. I know of several people who always seem to be looking for another tool that will do the job better, when they could have used a tool they already have or that they are already familiar with. Use the tools you have at hand – see how that can make you more productive.

@Ron @kicks @bradenslen, I referenced your directories in this post: http://andysylvester.com/2019/08/16/why-make-a-directory/

Why make a directory?

Here are some answers:

Collection – This could be as simple as making a list. The most common directory in use is the Contacts list on your smartphone (people and phone numbers, sorted in alphabetical order)

Curation – Seeking to list the “best of” resources for a topic

Examples

Feed Handbook (by Andy Sylvester) – Information on feeds of many types (RSS/Atom/etc)

Radio Userland Resource Directory (by Andy Sylvester) – created in 2007! (have to hover in front of the entry to see the link, need to update this sometime…)

Bob Dylan Bibliography (by Ron Chester) – created in 1996!

Indieseek XYZ (by Brad Enslen) – A human edited Indieweb directory

href.cool (by Kicks Condor) – in the style of the old DMOZ and Yahoo directories

Tools

Web page – make a ordered list or an unordered list and – voila! – a directory is born

Hugo – static site generator, used for the Feed Handbook above

OPML – XML file format used for subscription lists for podcast players

OPML Editor (for editing OPML files)

Little Outliner 2 (for editing OPML files)

WordPress – use of categories could create a directory structure, also there are many plugins to support creating directory websites (like Yelp, etc.) or simple directories

Read: Write it down

Read ( )

Whenever you have an idea, write it down. Immediately.

It doesn’t matter how big or small you think the idea is. Just write it down. It doesn’t matter if you have other things to do, like changing diapers, fixing that horrible JengaScript bug, or debating on Twitter whether everyone’s a designer. There is always something that seems more important. But trust me. Write it down. Immediately.

From Matthias Ott…

I wholeheartedly agree!