goodbye, google reader

Last week, Google announced that they were closing up shop on Google Reader.  Earlier this week, I attempted the transition to Feedly, which is a fine service, but I need to re-tweak my reflexes.  Today, they removed Reader from the general "more" dropdown menu, which is exactly what I needed to finalize the transition. 

Feedly isn't quite right for me, at least not yet, so I might end up starting my own RSS/Atom reader projet.  There are all sorts of great machine learning techniques that could be applied to feeds, and I've worked on some myself.  Feeds could also be integrated into a massive life management application that handles email, calendaring, todo lists, etc.

This hypothetical app could spoon feed you exactly what you need when you need it.  For example, I'm not a morning person, and I tend to read a few webcomics over breakfast to warm up my brain.  While opening a new browser tab, getting to feedly, and clicking comics really isn't that hard, I do the same three clicks almost every day.  And then I usually check my email.  This could certainly be streamlined manually, but why not automate it and make the whole process easier for everyone?

Ideally, we'd be able to detect importance and urgency of emails, posts, or other messages, and figure out when someone would like to be interrupted for something (or a batch of somethings).  If work was automatically paced like this, would some people be more productive?  I probably would.  I hate email clients that ding or give you a popup every time you get an email.  But I also hate the feeling that I'm missing something important if I go for a while without checking my email.

This has turned into a rant about tools for streamlining productivity instead of an obituary for Google Reader.  Reader was good, but not perfect, and it obviously wasn't well-used enough to survive.  Hopefully Google will spend their energy on bigger and better things, and maybe it'll force me to write some awesome productivity app.  Regardless, I used Reader a lot, and I'm a little sad to see it go.  Goodbye, old friend.

craftiganza!

Sometime this summer I decided that I had accumulated too much in the way of crafty supplies.  They have the tendency to collect, being easier to buy (or otherwise collect...I'm a obsessive ribbon-salvager) them than to use them.  Currently, I have a large toolkit full of miscellaneous things, plus a basket of yarn, a basket of fabric, and six full-to-bursting cardboard boxes, each one with its own associated project.  And then there's my sewing machine, which is no dainty fairy.

So I decided to declare a craftiganza!  The rules are:

1. no more starting new projects until my current projects are done
2. no buying more stuff, unless I need it to finish an already established project
3. all of my current ten projects must be finished by January 2014

The idea is that when I'm done, I'll have my sewing machine, my sewing/craft box, a basket for a single handcraft (knitting, needlepoint, etc.), and a basket for single a sewing-machine project (dresses, quilt), giving me no more than two active projects at any given time.  I'll still have the capacity for plenty of stuff, but at least there'll be a good pipeline for using it up.

When this is complete, the next step is to do the same for my art supplies.  Until then, we'll see how this plan goes.

minimally problematic

Today I helped clean out some closets at my church building.  With the calling shuffle, we needed to know what was actually in the various Primary closets, since our now-released fearless leader was pretty much the only one who knew where everything was.

I found it interesting that I was the one who pushed to toss/recycle stuff we didn't need.  I've been progressively minimizing the amount of stuff I own, and given the amount of junk I've gone through so far, I've had a lot of practice at gauging need relatively quickly.  While I don't believe in waste, I also don't believe in keeping things that you realistically aren't going to use.  Given that I used to keep 10-year old balloons, boxes of dried paints, and clothes from elementary school, I am pretty proud of how far I've come.  Today allowed me to celebrate that a little.

Along the minimalism lines, I've been thinking more about eReaders.  I've gone from being opposed to owning one, to being theoretically okay with one, to kinda wanting one.  There is a huge appeal in trimming down our overflowing bookcases (the biggest remaining front of stuff), but the cost is the stickler for me.  Paper books are still so much cheaper, since I pretty much only buy used.  The local library has an increasingly decent collection of ebooks, though, so renting would be an option.

One conundrum is what to do with the paper books I already have?  Ideally, I'd like to only keep my favorites, selling the rest (or at the very least ensuring that they have good homes).  Selling is a bit tricky, since books are so cheap to begin with; Amazon buys a handful of used books, and then there are used book dealers...but I'd need to discover the ones out here.  (If we were back in Berkeley, I could get to the used book places with my eyes closed, partially because there were so many of them.)

An then there is the issue of what to get (if anything at all).  A Kindle/Nook is easier on the eyes, but an iPad is more versatile.  I think I lean towards the book-specific readers rather than the more general tablets, mostly because I don't need another window to the internet.  Plus eink readers have much better battery life, and Kindle at least has a "free" 3G option, i.e. no monthly payment plan, hence kindle is also better for travel abroad.  And then the classic, touchscreen, or keyboard?  I'm leaning touchscreen w/3G and no ads, but that's double the price of the classic.  Uf.

One thing that I need to do more research on is the reading of academic papers digitally.  If I would be comfortable with reading papers and maybe even taking notes on an eink device, that would be a strong selling point.  I've read mixed reviews on the topic so far, but many of them were from the early kindle days.

It's one of those things that I'll hem and haw about for a few weeks and then make an abrupt decision one way or the other.  I really wish there was an obvious choice, but I think there's just no ideal situation yet, at least given the constraints I'm imposing.

priorities, virtues, goals, and then some

Fair warning: a long, detailed post.

It's fall break and I've been using the extra time to catch up on a bunch of different things.  One of which is getting more organized.  I read most of the GTD book this summer, and there have been a bunch of lists floating around.  I've plowed through a bunch of goals--basically, I'm getting closer to my optimally productive state.  Of late, however, I've felt the need to take a step back, so I'm going to pull from GTD and hash out my "priorities." (Why the quotes will be addressed later.)  I'm doing this on my blog instead of on paper because it forces me to 1) generalize, 2) be reasonable, and 3) be clear.  But back to the priorities...to use the altitude analogy from the book, we have six levels:

• 50,000+ feet: Life
• 40,000 feet: Three to five-year vision
• 30,000 feet: One to two-year goals
• 20,000 feet: Areas of responsibility
• 10,000 feet: Current projects
• Runway: Current actions

The last two items--current actions and projects--are too numerous and detailed for this post, so we'll start with my areas of responsibility, which are basically just categories for organizing my projects.

• Academic
  • Research
  • Classes
  • Administrative
• Personal
  • Domestic
  • Hobbies
  • Church
  • Social (including family)

Next: my one to two year goals.  I want to pass my generals.  I want a good summer internship this summer and the next.  N and I were thinking of starting to have kids after I pass generals, so I guess that would be in this category: plan for children.  I want to have published at least one paper as first author, maybe two.  I want to successfully save tomato seeds from my garden.  I want to make at least one more quilt.  I want to start grinding my own wheat.  I want to do lots of stuff, but you get the picture.

The three to five year vision?  I want to have at least one kid and have strong, loving family relationships.  I want to finish grad school in five years and be looking for a job (or have one already).  I want to be minimalist enough that moving anywhere in the world wouldn't be a hard logistical problem.  I want to a host of skills or stores of knowledge of homestead variety: beekeeping, butchering chickens, making cheese, gardening, preserving, and various from-scratch baking skills.  I want to have enough money for downpayment on a house.  I want to have written my Russian historical fiction novel.  Again, lots of stuff.

Life?  I want a happy, healthy family (or at least as happy and healthy as possible given whatever circumstances we will have).  I want my family to be supportive, open, and loving.  I want to not have things I don't need.  I want to be organized.  I always want to have some form (or multiple forms) of creative expression as a hobby.  I want to be generous but financially stable.  I want to own land, and try my hand at some form of homesteading: raise my own chickens, waterfowl, or sheep, keep bees, have an orchard, tend a garden...these are all options, though I probably won't get to do them all.  I want a satisfying career: I could go into industry or academia, but I would also be happy making homesteading a full-time occupation.  Whatever I choose, I want to love what I do.

---

Now that I've gone over the GTD version of my "priorities," I wanted to explain why I put that term in quotes.  The premise behind setting priorities is setting an order of precedence.  Theoretically, everything I listed as goals above, no matter what the level, should come over anything else, all other things being equal.  Life is rarely that clear-cut, though.  Setting priorities as described above leaves me with more questions like "how do I prioritize things within my goals?"  There's the classic example of women who want to have both a family and a career--how do they choose when to put what first?

At the end of last year, I created some themes instead of specific new year's resolutions (the last one is new).  These address some of the issues of simple goals because they define a set of precedence rules.

• Physical over Virtual
• Creative over Consumptive
• Independence over Reliance
• Community over Isolation
• Simplicity over Clutter
• Stimulated over Numbed
• Appropriate Use and Reuse over Waste
• Thoughtful over Instinctual

When making daily decisions, people rarely consult their list of goals.  Likewise, I rarely consult my themes, but they're there to help give me guidance when I have the time or feel the need to sit back and ponder the bigger picture.  They also help evaluate the merit of simple goals.  I'm doing both of these things right now.

---

I've also given some thought to virtues.  There is the famous example of Benjamin Franklin's list of virtues, as well a lists from various religions and philosophies.  I've tried making lists of virtues, but they all come down to two things: treating others well, and improving oneself.  I feel that the first category is my first priority, over all else: love, charity, kindness...it's all kinda the same.  It leads to altruism and universality, mindfulness, justice, honesty, and respect.  It's the golden rule.

The second category is includes things like moderation (which in turn includes temperance and restraint), order, cleanliness, frugality, industry, tranquility, patience, knowledge.  Even still, some things like patience are on the border with the first category.

But even though love for others is my first priority, sometimes I must do things for myself.  Doing things for myself can enable me to help others, but I also just have a drive to take care of myself, so the first and second ordering isn't really strict.  In fact, I can frame my entire life as taking care of myself:

• take care of self
  • physically
    • sleep
    • nutrition/appropriate diet
    • hydration
    • medical health
       • preventative care
       • other treatment as needed
    • be in shape:
      • strength
      • balance/dexterity
      • flexibility
      • cardio
    • grooming/hygiene
  • mental health
    • mediation/prayer
    • organized life
       • all projects personal and academic/work under control
       • clean, tidy, and aesthetically pleasing environment
       • able to provide or have access all things listed here, combined with a sense of being in control
    • healthy relationships
      • spouse
      • family
      • friends
      • work
      • church community
    • sense of morality and acting accordingly (includes activism and various opinions)
       • fair trade, treating people equitably, giving to international aid, gender equality, etc.
    • have projects/purpose/a way to productively spend my time
    • have good outlets/hobbies/secondary ways to spend time

---

You can see similarities between the various framings of priorities, virtues, and goals. They're just different ways to look at the same thing: all the complexities of an individual life.

Take any one facet of a life, like my urge to do homesteading-type activities.  It's a hobby under the GTD system, possibly growing into something larger over time. In the priorities system, it's a manifestation of independence and arguably a few others.  Under the virtues system, it's something to hone my personal virtues, like industry, or something to keep me mentally healthy by having a productive way to spend my time.  You could make a slew of arguments to describe this impulse under any of the systems.

Given all this, what's the point? Priorities, virtues, and goals are just different ways of measuring or articulating our desires.  Too often do I fall prey to the mental trap of trying to put everything in its appropriate little box; it's a kind of game.  Sometimes it's useful, though; going through this exercise helped me gain motivation for the things I need to do this week, even this month.  But where do I go from here?  I get back to getting things done, appreciating as much as I can of the world, and living my values or accomplishing my goals or however else I want to frame it.

Well, that was a pretty elaborate life pep-talk.

bang for your buck, decision fatigue, and getting what you want

It's snowing like crazy right now, and already starting to accumulate, which is odd because it hasn't accumulated more than an inch of snow here in October since the Civil War. N is prancing about like a delighted little demon child. But I'm not here to talk about the weather.

I went to the local artisan quilt store yesterday because I was in the area anyway and knew that they were having a sale. A bit ago, I purchased a lovely alphabet quilt pattern with all sorts of animal on it, which requires a million different colors in small swatches, so I figured that this would be a good time to stock up of bits and piece for that quilt. I spent an hour in the store comparing this to that, and trying to figure out how much I should buy. At one point, I had sixty dollars of fat quarters in my arms, intending to buy them all. But then I decided that I was being ridiculous and that I should only get what I really loved and would regret not buying for that quilt. I cut the number down to a third, checked out, and left quickly--I was tired of making decisions.

I hit the grocery store immediately afterward, and when I got home, I made a to-do list then took a nap and didn't really do anything on my list until after dinner. School has been depleting me of late, and this was my first chance to relax in a while.

That whole experience got me thinking: I had infinite time and energy, what decisions would I make when it comes to consumption? How do I train myself to make good decisions always? The answer is in the last line of the previously linked article: "The best decision makers," Baumeister says, "are the ones who know when not to trust themselves."

My default used to be purchase something over leaving it behind, but now I've reversed that, and I think that that's a good policy for everyone.  It's the state of no change, and decisions can be made later.  Return policies complicate things, of course, as do annoyingly overwhelming salespeople, to whom I've fallen victim a few times.  

And then there's the need to keep glucose levels appropriately high for good decision-making.  Making decisions aside, I know I'm happier in general when I adopt a hummingbird diet, as my mom calls it: eating tiny portions near constantly.  Part of me wonders if there could be a system where a credit card charge would require a glucose check of its owner in addition to a signature.   I doubt that the credit cards or the retailers would want that, though.

In the end, list-making works best for me.  I make a list when I'm capable of making good decisions and then I need to make fewer choices at the store, as long as I stick to the list.  Knowing the product brands in advance is really nice too, which can usually be done online, even for grocery stores.  Part of the reason the quilt store was so exhausting was that my list looked like "1/2 yard of a variety of green fabrics for alligators, newts, and turtles," which requires in-store decision making.  It would be the equivalent of saying "spices for roast chicken" or "a few veggies for stir-fry" instead of "rosemary, thyme" or "carrots, bell peppers, mushrooms."

 Then there's the question of how much to get of any given item, be it fabric, food, or any other "consumable"--something you'll use up eventually.  I could buy a full yard fo green fabric, but will I actually ever use it?  How about getting my toilet paper in bulk?  Getting the most per dollar is important, but it's not always clear what to do.  Say you need one unit of product A and that goes for  $1.  You could also get 10 units of product A for $8.  Well, if you're going to use all ten units eventually and you have both the budget leeway and the storage space, then 10/$8 makes more sense.  Toilet paper, for instance would be an example of this type of product.  But if you might only ever use 5 units of product A and the rest will just sit there, then it's best to only buy what you need.  For me, lots of green fabric would fall into this category.  I'd use some of it, probably even more than the original 1 unit I needed, but probably not all of it.  If I only used 5 units, I would have really paid $8/5 units, which would be more than the $1/1 unit.

It's this second category of item that is really tricky, since you don't know how much you're going to use in advance.  For me, I error on the side of buying only the smallest unit that I need, or $1/1 unit in the case above.  Even if I have to go back and buy more of the product later, it's worth it to spending a little extra to only have exactly what I need at any given time.  When I choose not to buy in bulk, I think of the extra cost as a minimization fee--I'm willing to pay a little more so I don't have to worry about a lot of stuff.

I'm not always the wisest consumer, but I feel like I'm getting better.  In some ways I am a materialist in that I think about physical objects and how they impact our lives; I had the realization recently that conscious minimalism is a kind of materialism.  That's not to say that material things are more important than non-material things--quite the reverse in my opinion--but that material things are important, that they have value, and they are worth thought.  Unnecessary consumption seems a little vulgar, though I am certainly guilty of it.  But I'm walking down a tangent line.

The end point: make good decisions by eating well and making up your mind in advance when you can.  This can work for more than just being a consumer and is actually part of the GTD system in a way; sometimes it's easier to do something than to think or make plans about doing it.

new notebook

I have a tiny little red notebook that has been a lot of places and held a lot of information, but now only has half a leaf of empty space.  It's basically this, with lined paper.  I went to Labyrinth on Tuesday since they're a listed vendor for that brand, and ended up getting something a little bigger than my old one: a small flexible notebook with 300 plain pages, also in red.  It won't be quite as easy to lug about, but my old one was a touch cramped at times.  I don't like the new cover material as much (it doesn't feel as nice), but that's okay.

Since I'd rather not keep the old one around (more clutter), I'm trying to digitalize anything interesting.  In doing so, I discovered a page that reads as follows.

JMT - Day 1 got permits early, started late afternoon got into camp at dark, stayed at half dome hiker's campground.  day 2 made it to sunset camped a little past 130 mosquito bites kept going w/ no breaks once we hit the mosquitos.  day 3 thunderstormy. got to lyle canyon  day 4 more thunderstorms had to pitch tent to wait it out camped just before Donahue pass  day 5 lots of lakes

Not so bad for one little page.  I gave up on journaling the JMT and the next ten pages are fill with brainstorming for foodstuffs--everything from cafe menu ideas to dinner parties, muffins to salads, simple dinners to homestead productions, ravioli fillings to cookies.  I obviously was not pleased with the backpacking food and needed something to obsess about as I hiked.  Good times.

I think I'm going to try and do this more incrementally for my new notebook: when a page no longer contains unique information to be revisited, I'll draw a slash across it.  We'll see how it works.  This is all part of a larger scheme to get more organized.