I see a number of things to be proud of this week along with some rather more painful to look at. I’ll start by reminding myself that facts are what they are, whether looked at or not, so there’s really nothing to lose from the looking.
There was my trip to Uruguay, which I figure I’ve documented well already. Still, from the reviewing standpoint, two areas occurred to me for improvement. First, staying engaged with the channel; perhaps I just need to stop viewing this as a chore, as after all I do tend to enjoy it – and psychologically, it’s been feeling even more “real” lately, between the trip and seeing others engage with my work. Second is better planning for re-entry to the routine, as in fact I had assigned myself upon having missed the previous weekly plan, but mostly ended up avoiding during the trip itself.
My first substantial day back on Tuesday I got that plan done, then seeing how packed it looked, went to the opposite extreme compared to my lately increasing brevity by carving things up into specific time slots, meals and everything. I’m really not sure one way or the other whether this exercise was useful to me: it may have refined my sense of how long things take or how much productive time fits in a week; it also reinforced my notion that no amount of finagling a schedule will make the tasks go faster. I do think that giving more deadlines was a helpful aspect for getting my priorities in mind each day, but I missed several: genesis regrinds, #trilema log reading (where I see I passively accepted the suggestion to postpone), digesting MP’s comments on my blog (though I checked in with him to acknowledge), and catching up on my remaining feed. Basically, once the schedule started to derail I tended to throw it out and double down on what I saw as most important for the day.
My blog articles all came in over time and over the assigned length. I’m not even sure if I should count this a bad thing, as I’m pleased both with the results and with having got the intended topics covered this week. I can certainly feed this continued conundrum into processing MP’s take on it.
On this morning’s patch review article, the obvious mistake in hindsight was thinking I was already set to write something, whereas understanding the patch required research in the codebase that really amounted to unplanned wallet dev time. The work on the online part ended up taking about double what I’d planned, as I had to revisit previous work to make some changes, clean things up, and correct mistakes. On the bright side, the named address set capability is a major improvement from the original spec. I didn’t manage the intended 8 hours on the offline part, which puts me behind on even being able to answer Robinson about an updated schedule for it.
“went to the opposite extreme compared to my lately increasing brevity by carving things up into specific time slots, meals and everything” – well, what you published was not that extreme so you can’t lump the comment with what you did in private now, how confusing can you get there? To clarify: the part you published is more detailed without going nuts and as such I do think it was useful to you quite in the manner you state in this review, yes.
The above said, there is ” once the schedule started to derail I tended to throw it out and double down on what I saw as most important for the day” which fits the observed events – the lesson to take from it though is precisely that you should make the plan with this in mind to start with! The part with the schedule being a roadmap not a straightjacket, flexible and taking into account the *different* priorities of various tasks applies to you too, it’s not just for Robinson, you know? So don’t do the stupid thing here trying to cut yourself up into schedule-slots (it won’t work anyway but you’ll set yourself up for a lot of grief over it) – make instead the schedule more human simply!
“My blog articles all came in over time and over the assigned length. I’m not even sure if I should count this a bad thing” – it’s a good thing! It did/will still do probably mess up the schedule but it’s still worth it atm. Take it into consideration on next plan though ie don’t assume it won’t happen again just because it-should-not-plan-says-so or something. And yes, learn from the vpatch and all the rest – it takes longer than you still think it will!
“which puts me behind on even being able to answer Robinson about an updated schedule for it” – I hope you *did* update him on this already. Did you?
Comment by Diana Coman — December 16, 2019 @ 7:45 am
Thanks for clarifying; I should have asked before lumping things confusedly & confusingly.
“The part with the schedule being a roadmap not a straightjacket, flexible and taking into account the *different* priorities of various tasks applies to you too, it’s not just for Robinson, you know?” – At some level I must have known, of course, I saw it happen with him. I can but laugh at myself for having grabbed at the known-bad idea for the sake of grabbing something. I think I’m internalizing the planning approach, but slowly, so thanks for the patience.
Glad my sense of when to persist against the schedule did well even if my sense – perhaps more like wish – of how long things take didn’t.
“I hope you *did* update him on this already. Did you?” – I’d been updating him on progress in a retrospective way and he was acknowledging, but taking an honest look I can’t say I gave an explicit “the work took longer than expected this week, there’s even less time next week and I haven’t any clearer idea yet of how long the remainder will need”. Is that what you meant? I think it is. :(
Comment by Jacob Welsh — December 17, 2019 @ 4:40 am
It is what I meant indeed. Do keep him up to date rather than…post-date, you know? Choose any timeframe/granularity that works for that, it doesn’t have to be daily or something that gets in the way (and neither of you has the time for that anyway) but he – and you! – should have at all times a reasonable idea as to where the work is + where and how fast it’s heading, snags and unknowns especially highlighted.
Comment by Diana Coman — December 17, 2019 @ 8:12 am