Writing

In practice, you try to eliminate task barriers that require back and forth communication by setting dedicated block of time to meet. An office hour, reminiscent of your professor’s office hours, means you broadcast to your working network you are available in this block of time to chat about open loops.

The problem this solves is eliminating the number of unknowns in your work, whether that be client feedback, questions about a design contract, or ambiguous bug tickets. These tasks become open loops are require external help in order to uncover what tasks you have to do next. It also lowers the communication gap with your work network or team and bridge that gap of understanding. The end goal is it helps with end output and/or goals.

Championed by Cal Newport and highlighted in his book, Slow Productivity.

In VSCode, open your palette, and type %, you get a fuzzy search across your files. And you can use navigational keybindings like cmd+up or cmd+down .

I periodically try to dump all of my mental contexts into my notes. I noticed this comes in a few different flavors.

• Safari Tabs on my iPhone and iPad: Goes into daily notes
• Random thoughts - go into drafts and get processed daily
• Shopping - including groceries, bills, and things I would like but not need. Those all go into a task manager
• Dangling tasks - gets reviewed in the task manager inbox weekly
• Personal thoughts - journaling every two weeks, although I want to do this more often
• Events I have not logged - go into my calendar.
• Downloads folder - weekly processed into other folders.
  • Long-term storage in Dropbox and backup drive.
  • Short-term in Inbox folder
• Photos - place special ones in folders. Select shots in favorites.

I am trying to think of other things that I purge. I used to write in a notepad and write on the page of everything I was thinking about. I used to write about people I have not spoken to in a long time that I should reach out to, mantras I came up with, or completely random thoughts.

Tiago Forte recommends putting all unused files into an Archive folder. This This activity helps remove our digital file mess and stops us from immediately organizing everything.