05-10-2022

— uid: 202205100801 tags: #journal

Startup routine:

• Cleared Things 3 inbox: things:///show?id=inbox

Wind-down routine:

• Read at least 15 minutes
• Physical health questions:
  • Rate your sleep today from 1-5.
  • About a 4. Fitbit wasn’t working but I felt like I slept pretty well.
  • Rate your fitness level today from 1-5.
  • 1. Literally barely did anything. That’s going to change tomorrow.
  • Rate your mental wellness level today from 1-5.
  • 4. Wasn’t perfect, but I think I managed to resurrect the day after I was feeling extremely unproductive at home. I didn’t force myself to become productive again, which is both kind of scary and also kind of cool.
• What was one cool takeaway from today? 202205102213
  • I liked these two articles:
    • Productivity - Sam Altman #productivity #physical-health
      • Takeaways:

        • It’s very important to work on the right problems.

          Many people spend too much time thinking about how to perfectly optimize their system, and not nearly enough asking if they’re working on the right problems.

        • Physical factors and physical health (mostly sleep and exercise) are very important, and it’s crucial to work them into your daily and weekly check-ins. This directly led to me including these in my daily journal template.

        • It’s okay to overcommit a little bit, if it pushes you.

        • It’s fine if you spend a lot of time in a comfortable and relaxed spot (in a couch, on your laptop)

        • Eating a lot of sugar makes you feel like shit (I ate so much sugar this past weekend at home, and it make it feel so hard to focus. I’m just going to avoid sugar for the next few days because of this.)

    • How I Actually Stay Productive (as a Software Engineer) #productivity
      • The way the article started — “I must have read at least a dozen books and a hundred articles on productivity throughout my life.” — immediately gave me a sense of kinship and closeness to the author.
      • I liked the author’s emphasis on two simple things. I’ve realized that complex methods like GTD are useless if you don’t follow them, whereas a simple method that’s become entrenched enough to become a habit is precious.
      • I also got the inspiration for the morning workflow from this article. I’ve known for a while that having a good, timely start to the morning is very important to me, but until I read this article, I couldn’t codify it. I now have verification that it’s essential to get an excellent start to the morning, and I’m glad I invested some time to automate that setup process to its full potential.

State dump 10:04 PM: Revamped my Zettelkasten workflow and my daily notes workflow. See changes in the zettelkasten workflow and the morning workflow. I feel very much ready to tackle the workday tomorrow. See excellent takeaway notes above.

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