1. Redo Wells post; learn how to use html img tags properly (3)
2. Full Ossasepia log summaries (not highlights). Read English prose style references (4)
3. Review today’s agenda; publish tomorrow’s agenda. Have this done at least 2 hours before bed. (1)
Review
Frittered away another day. Tasks rolled over to tomorrow.
Comment by Daniel Godwin — October 3, 2020 @ 9:20 pm
Eh, you’ll roll them over like this until next year, only now it’s even “better” since you get to do it while maintaining otherwise the “agenda” pretense and the “writing regularly pretense (the rolled-over thing is now writing)” and all that. It’s not even original, at that, a tool doesn’t do anything *by itself* and you clearly would rather sabotage it than use it at this stage so either there’s some hard and unyielding consequence that really hurts (and yeah, you’ll fight it and lie about it as much as you can get away with, too) or nothing will really change.
To make it clear though:
1. If I see one more “agenda” (or equivalent), I’ll turn off your login and be done with it. Pick in the morning *one* thing to do (or beg the previous day someone to give you one), then DO it, write it up, publish it and then fritter happily away whatever else if left of the day.
2. If I look at this past week, I can’t see at all even ONE article published by you, let alone two. Good that I tend to look at this on Mondays, I guess, so I’ll see tomorrow if there is an actual article on that Wells that I can read or if I’d better just close this down fully and set it to rest.
Comment by Diana Coman — October 4, 2020 @ 8:47 am
Thanks for the much-needed kick up the arse. While the redone Wells post makes for only one article this week, please don’t deactivate my login just yet: it’s late, I’m mentally spent, and an attempt at a second article right now would probably be counterproductive (closer in substance to another “agenda” than anything resembling an article).
I’ll have a proper article up daily, until you allow otherwise.
Comment by Daniel Godwin — October 4, 2020 @ 11:09 pm
If you mistake silence for “hasn’t noticed” or something of the sort, you’ll be…surprised (yet again). Not that there wasn’t/isn’t plenty of warning but possibly you are looking by now for a convenient way and enough excuses to stop-by-apparent-accident. Note that in such case, the end will come indeed but I’ll clearly mark it as exactly what it is, no sort of “accident”.
When I asked you for two articles per week there’s a solid reason for that number being exactly two, not 7 (“daily” as you promise above and then conveniently and almost immediately forget it because I didn’t say anything in reply) and not one either (where that one’s publishing time is predictably sliding and sliding until you’ll skip one week silently and think that will also not matter unless it specifically slaps you one to be unable to quite ignore it).
Comment by Diana Coman — October 29, 2020 @ 7:41 am
Not looking to stop – by “accident” or otherwise! But yes, as you’ve pointed out many times, I’ve a pernicious habit of trying to get away with doing just-enough work to not get fired (rather than aiming to do the job as well as possible/so that I grow the most).
Addressing the silent failure to deliver promised daily articles, I quickly realised that this would simply not be possible – at least in the sense of publishing something of quality. I’d be publishing for the sake of publishing; the tool’d be an end in itself (and I expect that touches on your reason for 2 – not 1 or 7 – articles a week: 1 would allow for laziness/putting it off right til the very end (…), and 7 would run into problems just noted). I should have SAID this when it occurred to me, rather than silently pretending it didn’t happen.
As always, thank you for the crystal clarity.
Comment by Daniel Godwin — October 29, 2020 @ 2:23 pm
So in practical terms, leaving aside for a moment here the debts of previous weeks, what are the 2 articles for this week?
Comment by Diana Coman — October 30, 2020 @ 7:04 pm
1. Thoughts on/what I’ve learned from JWRD so far
2. #o summary 8
I’ll calculate how far I’m in arrears and come up with a repayment plan, too.
Comment by Daniel Godwin — October 31, 2020 @ 1:11 am
Calculating article arrears: the following gives voice to a heretofore silent failure. The standard was set on 2020-09-06:
2 articles/week
1 image-containing post/month
The first full week started on 2020-09-07. From there, eight full weeks and two full months later brings us to the start of the ninth week (2020-10-02), meaning sixteen articles are owed, two of which must contain images.
My articles written in that period: 9/16
Ossasepia Log Notes 8
Does Not Compute
Here Lived
Ossasepia Log Notes 7
Summarising With Style
Going Deep, Eradicating Rot
Ossasepia Log Notes 6, Corrected
Wells Revisited
Ossasepia Log Notes 2
Image-containing articles: 2/2
Wells Revisited
Here Lived
So, I’m 7/16, or 44% behind. At three articles a week, I’ll be up to speed before the new year (the week of 2020-12-14, to be exact.)
Comment by Daniel Godwin — November 2, 2020 @ 2:06 am
Looks clear enough and sensible. And look that the original requirement even has baked in space for recovery from falling behind, since 3 articles per week is still doable, what a surprise and what luck (and who could have predicted it etc)!
Looking though also at the publishing dates & times of those 9 articles and even just at the last 2 (mhm, more like 1.3 if I look close enough at them) for this previous week, you’d be clearly better off with splitting the week-interval into smaller chunks to stand a chance to keep to it. So, one step at a time – when is your next article due?
Comment by Diana Coman — November 2, 2020 @ 1:54 pm
Yes – whould’ve thought teachers have reasons behind the work they set!:)
I agree – a publishing schedule would work wonders – something like Mon/Wed/Fri; leaving the weekend as a buffer. I’ll have my next article up on Wednesday, followed by Friday and Saturday this week.
You’re right – that Does Not Compute fragment isn’t really an article, and full disclose – I knew that at time of upload. I’ll redo it properly, and stop pretending things are what they ain’t, ffs!
Comment by Daniel Godwin — November 2, 2020 @ 4:29 pm
Eh, “have reasons” is not the point – everything has *some* reasons, after all and after a manner, for sure. Your laziness has reasons, too (even a bucketful of them or more if needed)!
The more important part is how well and to what extent they turn out to fit (or not) the full scope of the target problem in practice and what that says otherwise. Quality has its causes too, it doesn’t just happen and precisely for this reason it’s worth paying closer attention to it when it happens – there’s perhaps something to learn from it.
Comment by Diana Coman — November 2, 2020 @ 5:15 pm
I missed my publishing deadline today (via the usual procrastination); I need to publish on Thursday, Friday and Saturday in order to hit this week’s goal (with Sunday saved as buffer).
Comment by Daniel Godwin — November 5, 2020 @ 1:19 am
Failure: I published maybe 1/3 of an article today, which means there’s still essentially the whole week’s work to do. An article’s worth of work and write-up takes 6-8 hours, so this is still doable IFF I put my head down.
Comment by Daniel Godwin — November 6, 2020 @ 2:58 am
I’ve pissed another day away. I don’t know why, since watching YouTube all day isn’t even enjoyable, let alone satisfying; work can be both. I spoke with a childhood friend about my struggle getting down to work; he reminded me of the time I got in trouble with my primary school teacher for printing off and handing in thirty pages from Encarta, rather than researching the school project. It was the same at secondary school, then medical school, then as a poker player, and now: I’ve been finding ways to avoid work my whole life.
In an attempt at kicking myself up the arse, if I don’t get two full days of work done this weekend, I’ll ask Diana to shutoff my account.
Comment by Daniel Godwin — November 7, 2020 @ 3:16 am
What you are avoiding here though is not work but involvement first of all (there’s seconds and more, too) and by the looks of it, the more head-on statement of “must/will do” you come up with, the higher the resistance to actually just do it that you muster as well. Either you address the root cause of that or it won’t really work, pretty much for the same reason that pulling yourself up by your hair doesn’t ever work to lift you anywhere.
Take a break for now – from both “must write” and youtube/”news”/similar. Just take the weekend and next week to actually figure out what you do without either the call of superficiality or the imposition of meaning. If it turns out that indeed you don’t need either, all the better for clarity gained anyway.
Comment by Diana Coman — November 7, 2020 @ 9:27 am