Accidentally in Code

Tag: tasks

  • Habits vs Tasks: I Want an App For That

    Habits vs Tasks: I Want an App For That

    A man or woman on a leash
    Credit: Flickr / Daniel Kulinski

    I have this list of “habits” that I need to make time for, on a daily or weekly basis.

    For example:

    • Get some exercise, every day.
    • Read a book, every week,
    • Weight train 2x a week.
    • Do something for just for me, every day.
    • Connect with a friend, every day.
    • Do something outside (a long walk, skiing), every week.
    • Do something cultural, every week.

    I think these things make me happier, but I have no way to know because I don’t track them in conjunction with my mood. Really, what I want is an app that will allow me to separate my “todo list” from my “habits for a happy life” list, track them, and measure my mood (and ideally import data from my activity trackers about my movements).

    The difference between a habit list and a todo list, is that there is no making up. No exercise today? Let it go, try again tomorrow. I can’t make it up. In fact I think trying to do so, is harmful – “I’ve had no life for the last six months because work so I’m going to cram it all in to my 10 day vacation”, is an example.

    I like the idea of a separate place for habits, rather than tasks. Maybe because tasks are done and forgotten, but habits are built over time? Tasks define our days, but our habits define our lives? I think of this as a place for my list, when a task list is often full of things forced upon my by other people, or by society (note to self: sort out drivers license, bank account).

    Maybe I will build this after other personal projects are finished, or abandoned.

  • Week in Brief: a Celebration

    Goals for this week were:

    • Finish putting together presentation, record and upload it. See it here.
    • Put together loop exercises for extra session with my DGD group.
    • Start CA Assignment 3 (this one will apparently be shorter) – aim for half done.
    • Marking.
    • Read 5 papers.
    • Join gym (physio says yoga and body pump allowed – finally!!) attended a body pump class, and it hurts… in a good way though, which is a nice change after weeks of injury pain!
    • Clear new email mountain.
    • Code new viz idea. Read about it here.
    • Ignite! Read about it here.

    Crikey! I checked off everything. This never happens! I also:

    • Spent time with the people behind Betidings, working on their color-scheme (hopefully you’ll see some improvement to that soon).
    • Planned an introductory online Java/Processing workshop – you can read about it here and let me know if you want to participate.

    Thanks to everyone who made this week so awesome / productive!

    For next week:

    • Finish CA Assignment 3
    • Recreate conversational graphs from re-factored code
    • Create slide deck for introductory Java workshop
    • Read 5 papers
    • Go to the gym 3 times
    • Rename blog (taking suggestions!)
    • WISE coffee social
    • WECS meeting (Women in Engineering and Computer Science)
    • Work on website

  • Week in Brief

    For last week:

    • Finish CA Assignment 2
    • Read 5 papers
    • Code more on Viz
    • Write more on Thesis
    • Get SVN working fully
    • More on website
    • Clear giant e-mail mountain
    • Start tracking morning mood and exercise on Mycrocosm
    • Go to my first hockey game!

    Also:

    • Cleaned out fridge
    • Swam butterfly again for the first time since I injured my knee (super happy about this!)
    • Spent a lot of time debugging other people’s code!
    • Met with the girls from WISE, hopefully we can get some stuff moving.

    Another week where things took longer than they should have (CA Assignment), and plans were derailed (4 hour lab). I’m frustrated at how much I’m getting distracted by this kind of thing, and how it’s cutting into my quiet-focus-time which I need to work on big tasks. I haven’t had a completely clear day since last Monday, and won’t have another until next Monday. This is a problem.

    For this week:

    • Finish putting together presentation, record and upload it.
    • Put together loop exercises for extra session with my DGD group.
    • Start CA Assignment 3 (this one will apparently be shorter) – aim for half done.
    • Marking.
    • Read 5 papers.
    • Join gym (physio says yoga and body pump allowed – finally!!)
    • Clear new email mountain.
    • Code new viz idea.
    • Ignite!

  • Week in Brief

    Goals for this week:

    • Read 8 papers
    • Create diagram in Visio see it here
    • Turn plan into slides for presentation put them up on this post
    • Get started with CA Assignment 2 Would have liked to get more done, but have answer for one question – 2 to go!
    • Deal with final issues from marking fiasco
    • Read 2 chapters of CA book
    • Set up new laptop and get important stuff syncing Nearly there, iDrive is in use, SVN set up, just need to work out how to access it.
    • Code more on my viz stuff – nothing coded but had important epiphany. Really need to get more done on this, this week.
    • Write more on thesis
    • More on website
    • Move to Google Calendar
    • Clear up apartment
    • Finish reading Tribes (Amazon)

    I also:

    • Saw a lot of friends I hadn’t seen in a while
    • Met some new people!
    • Watched The Best Man (IMDb) – I rarely seem to find time to watch movies any more, I found this one pretty funny though. Only thing was, the main character had an Irish accent, and his best friend from childhood had a lousy American-doing-British-accent. Then the guy who lived in New York had a posh British accent and the women who he was marrying (who lived in London) had an American accent. So, that kinda distracted me!
    • Picked up some iKlean at the apple store.
    • Got my project proposal back with some helpful suggestions and positive comments.

    For this week:

    • Finish CA Assignment 2
    • Read 5 papers
    • Code more on Viz
    • Write more on Thesis
    • Get SVN working fully
    • More on website.
    • Clear giant e-mail mountain.
    • Start tracking morning mood and exercise on Mycrocosm
    • Go to my first hockey game!

    For November:

    I’ve noticed that I tend to create my “Week in Brief” early in the week and keep track of what I want to achieve – I’m finding it helpful for my high-level goals, whereas I find my ToDo list more helpful for low level goals. So – I’ve decided to make my progress more public as well and created a new page on my blog called Goals which contains my list for the week and the month and I can cross things off as I go along. I’m hoping that by adding what I want to achieve this month I can stop putting the same tasks on my list each week and then pushing them back when more pressing things occur.

  • Week in Brief

    Last week my goals were:

    • Write more on thesis not as much as I wanted, but some progress
    • Create slides for presentation – made plan, have a good idea of what I want to do
    • CA Project plan (need to find out what this entails)
    • WISE event
    • Write survey for other project – on hold until my supervisor gets back
    • Keep working on Twitter Viz, maybe look for a new viz toolkit.

    Last week was in some ways a write-off. I was miserable and strung out because of my TA job – after all the marking I did the week before (all Sunday afternoon and most of the evening) the Prof had made a mistake with the login he sent me, so that was all for nothing and I had to mark another group. And, as he didn’t mention this mistake when he sent me another username and password, I didn’t realize this had happened – until Wednesday when my marks had to be submitted Thursday morning. There was various other stuff, including a barrage of complaints from students about the marking scheme (I have no power! I have no power!) which meant by Friday I was really upset.

    But then I spent the weekend in Boston, and whilst I’m slightly overwhelmed by the amount of stuff I’ve come back to and still feeling slightly motion sick from the 8 hour car journey, I really needed the break. And, I’ve finished reading Stumbling on Happiness (Amazon) – wonderful, insightful book. I’m not any happier, but at least I know why. And maybe it gives me some tools to make better predictions of what will make me happier in the future.

    So, for this week:

    • Read 8 papers
    • Create diagram in Viseo
    • Turn plan into slides for presentation
    • Get started with CA Assignment 2
    • Deal with final issues from marking fiasco
    • Read 2 chapters of CA book
    • Set up new laptop and get important stuff syncing.
    • Code more on my viz stuff
    • Write more on thesis
    • More on website
    • Move to Google Calendar
    • Clear up apartment
    • Finish reading Tribes (Amazon)