2008 Quarter 2 Objectives and Metrics · 04/09/2008 08:14 PMSo here are my goals for this quarter. Since I collected a lot of data last quarter on what my actual habits are like, I’m now in a position to realistically improve them. I would like to accomplish a few main goals this quarter. First, I want to exceed my savings/spending goals from last quarter. I did well, but I can do a lot better. Second, I want to improve my daily routines. I know empirically that I spend less time getting ready to go in the morning if I look at what I’m doing that day the night before, but I need to cement this into my habits. Third, I want sleep better. Fourth, I want to show up on time more often. No one else seems to care, but I do. Finally, I want to improve my health a little. Baby steps on that one; I want to start up an exercise routine in a future quarter. Written: April 3 Improve my saving habit
Improve my daily routines
Improve my sleep habits
Improve my punctuality
Improve my health habits
Comment [3] 
2008 Quarter 1 Objectives and Metrics: Big Review Edition! · 04/03/2008 09:53 PMRemember those objectives I set in January? Neither do I, but it’s time to review them anyway. Let’s see how I did over the past three months. Improve my handling of money by establishing a permanent, baseline saving habit (Score: 0.49; Mean of following scores.)
I actually did pretty well here. As I was going along, I didn’t think I was doing that well, but I managed to get fairly close on both metrics. My money situation is getting a little better, so I should be able to look at this a bit more aggressively for the current quarter. Improve my self-evaluation methods by establishing a permanent, baseline self-tracking habit (Score: 0.90; Mean of following scores.)
I did a great job here. I really should have been more aggressive. Improve my sleep and punctuality characteristics (Score: 1.0; I successfully generated useful data. This goal was not sufficiently well described.)
This was the problem goal, even though I gave myself the full 1.0. This goal didn’t really ask anything of me. There wasn’t really a challenge, just a bit of data collection. However, that was useful: the current quarter is pretty aggressive based on this data. My final score turned out to be an 0.80, which is just slightly higher than I think I should be hitting, if these are going to be stretch goals. I’m pleased with the improvement of the quarter and it has informed my decisions for Q2. Q2’s goals are coming monday. Comment [1]
A Dumb Trick I Use to Improve My Writing · 03/17/2008 08:41 PMI’m always looking for ways to reduce the pain of writing. Don’t misunderstand me: I enjoy writing, but often there are obstacles to getting down to writing. One of these problems is simply that the tools get in the way. What’s worse is that a lot of the time, I’m stuck with whatever tools are available to me at the office or the computer lab, so I’m particularly enamored with the idea of using existing tools in new and different ways. Most frequently, that tool is Microsoft Word. I like Microsoft Word, but in many ways it’s a victim of its own success. Since this tool is forced to be all things to all people, it makes a poor working environment for me. Whenever I start a new Word document, I get tangled up in formatting, page layout, and all the other fun tools of Word. It’s fun, but immensely wasteful of my time. During a recent Future Technical Communicators workshop, I had a bit of an epiphany about how I should be using Word. The workshop was an introduction to styles and formatting in Word and during the course of the workshop, the presenter showed how the styles are reflected in the outline view in Microsoft Word. Immediately, I realized that the outline view isn’t just a tool for navigating large documents (even though it is that, too), but that it could also be the primary view for editing text. The Trick To implement my fast track to Word productivity, do the following steps:
Why It Works If you do this immediately after opening a new Word document, you can skip formatting entirely. Bypassing the formatting and the toolbars lets you work with the document at a strictly semantic level. It’s a simple trick, but one that works. Once you’re done with your document, it’s a simple process to switch back to a print view and sort out the formatting. The secondary benefit of this approach is that the outline of the document is no longer implicit. You can’t work on the document without, at very least, deliberately ignoring the structure of the document. If you’re lucky, you will adapt and develop an outline of the document as you go. Or if you’re really lucky, you will write an outline first and fill out the body text second. In any case, working in the outline view can’t hurt and has the potential to liberate you from Word’s distracting forces. Comment [1]
Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, Spoon · 03/14/2008 10:01 AM
Radiohead isn’t the only music I’ve been listening to obsessively for weeks on end. In addition to In Rainbows, I’ve also been listening to Spoon’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. This album has held my interest for about two-dozen listens, if iTunes is to be believed. I had not been aware of the mere existence of Spoon until late last year, when I heard “My Japanese Cigarette Case” on NPR’s All Songs Considered podcast1. The supposed indie rock quartet turns out to be pretty good and—unbeknownst to me—pretty popular. This is what I get for listening to NPR and not watching TV, I suppose. The album is instantly reassuring: not only does it contain a nearly 40-minute disc, but it also contains a 20-minute bonus disc, which contains some alternate versions of songs on the album proper as well as several bonus tracks, such as the almost-folksy “Mean Mad Margaret” and a track so ambient Brian Eno could have recorded it in the 70s, “Be Still My Servant.” Like They Might Be Giant’s second latest, “The Else,” the addition of a bonus CD makes me feel a lot less screwed over by the man. If more records were worth the money in this sense, maybe the recording industry wouldn’t be in decline. But who am I to tell the recording industry that they’re being utterly boneheaded for pursuing lawsuits instead of content? In related news, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is the album that convinced me that my iPod is a useful tool for its ostensible purpose: listening to music. This album seems to be recorded with the listening habits of iPod users in mind. Namely, almost every track on this album has space; the words, the beats, and the instruments play in such a way to leave space for ambient sound to blend into the music. Unlike a lot of other music, which obligates me to turn it up or turn it off while walking around campus, this album gives me the opportunity to accept the ambient sound in conjunction with the music. From the album opener “Don’t Make Me a Target” to the single-friendly “The Underdog,” each track has a neat hollowness created by what I suspect is more production than composition. I don’t know what makes the album work in that capacity, but whatever it was sold me not just on the music by also on the device I use to listen to it. 1 Not technically true; they were on the soundtrack of my favorite film of 2006, Stranger Than Fiction—I just didn’t realize it. Comment [1]
In Rainbows, Radiohead · 03/10/2008 09:44 PM
When I first picked this up, I was surprised. Is this what happens when a successful band sheds the pressures of a major label? Alternatively, I entertained the idea that the reason Radiohead offered the album to their fans for however much they wanted to pay for it was because the band wasn’t confident that the album actually had value. Luckily, I stuck it out through a few listens and realized why this album was widely regarded as one of the best of 2007. The album, as it turns out, is about forty minutes of really good music. Why did it take me several listens to final get it and appreciate this album? The first forty seconds really turned me off; the album opens with a fake beat, an electrical noise, and Thom Yorke’s falsetto. It’s not as though I can’t appreciate those elements—there’s no avoiding them on this record or many of Radiohead’s other releases—but that particular combination is caustic and, frustratingly, it temporarily set the mood for the whole album for me. Several listens later, however, I found that the actual mood of the album is found elsewhere: in the anxious energy of “Bodysnatchers,” the orchestral leanings of “Faust Arp,” and the gentle rolling of “House of Cards.” It’s not a high-energy rock release from start to finish despite what the single “Bodysnatchers” or a trip to Barnes and Noble where you’ve undoubtedly heard “Jigsaw Falling Into Place” might indicate. Like any good Radiohead release, the album has a pensive quality to it. “Nude,” for example, comes across as Radiohead’s take on the lullaby with Thom Yorke singing as sweetly as can, “So don’t get any big ideas / they’re not going to happen. / You’ll go to hell for what your dirty mind is thinking.” It’s a brilliantly composed track, even if it did take a few tries to figure out why it was I should go back to sleep. The song borders on political, but finds that skilled rhetoric that uses whatever’s already in your head to sort out the message. The album closes in a way that reminds me of the beginning, without the hackneyed styling of a (bad) concept album. Writing about this now, I realize that “Videotape” helps me understand and almost appreciate the caustic texture with which the album opens. Unlike the noise and artificiality of the album’s opening sound, In Rainbows closes with a real piano and a real drum rat-a-tat, yet this sound is unpleasant too, like that of distant gunfire. In Rainbows is a gem of an album. I just hope that post-label Radiohead has the self-promotion acumen to produce more records of this quality. Comment [1]
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