I am moving to a monthly review frequency, though I will need to heed my master’s warning to avoid slipping into old habits. Still, I would like to test myself to see if I can still produce what I say I will within a monthly review frequency. So here we go.
As for March, well, it was not the greatest in terms of productivity. We had the closure of the Republic, which, I was not terribly shocked by. What I always appreciated about MP was that he always said what he meant. Always. This is rare, you feel me? And he had always said (in various forms and often outright) that he was not married to the crew, but to performance. This is an instance of separating of usage from confidence, I’ve come to understand. And in reading his words for the last 6 years and watching him interact with various people this is something he does indeed employ in his day-to-day business; just read any portion of the log or Trilema and you can’t not see examples. Republican production was in a steady decline in the final years and so he made the call to close up shop.
In other words, everybody could have predicted this. In any case, the natural laws of this world remain the same: there will always exist individuals who can move mountains, and other individuals who cannot. Maybe the ones who cannot are able to make themselves useful to the ones who can, maybe they fail. In this case, everyone failed to produce on the level Mircea Popescu wanted. Still, just because he disbanded the Republic doesn’t mean he has ceased to exist you know. And I do believe that those who can do things and actually learn to leverage their environment will float to the top (there’s a log thread somewhere on this but I stop myself at 5 minutes now if I can’t find a logline). In other words, while I do believe a great opportunity has been lost in general with the failure of TMSR, the best thing to do *now* is to learn from failure and continue to improve. There’s really no other option in any case on an individual level.
Moving on to my individual performance in March: it also was not the greatest in terms of productivity. I’m actually just going to call it a wash, with the small exception that I did deliver the historical logs to MP at least. The MP-WP bot is also finished. However, during the final week of March I checked out for a spell. I mean, I didn’t even do any saltmine work either. While I do believe impromptu breaks are healthy if all of your affairs are in order, in my case they were most certainly not in order. This has left me in a precarious position in general.
Still, I’m confident I can dig myself out of this small pit here. For April, I’m just going to focus on saltmines for the first half. Specifically until April 15th. By this time I’d like to turn my productivity deficit for the headless masters of the saltmines to a surplus (the structure of my work atm is such that this is possible). Now that I am 100% wfh I believe I can do this.
Now, that leaves me with the second half of April (the 15th onward) to first get my review of the Brasil hoster out for Diana Coman. Before then, however, I may as well start discussing the future mp-wp bot plan with my master. I honestly am not sure what the next steps should be at this point; need to think on it.
There’s also things like waking up early and house cleaning, which, I’ve let slip in March. Re: the house I will be honest in that I’m not sure I’ll be selling this house in 2020. I’m expecting the current virus hullabaloo will make it a bit more a difficult to sell now than perhaps in 2021 when everyone is distracted by something else. Nevertheless, I still aim to completely clean this thing out by mid-summer.
As more things pop into my head during April I will put them here.
Breaks are one thing, checking out entirely of everything is another sort of thing, lol. And that sort of seesaw behind/ahead with work on anything is not very healthy nor all that productive either. I suppose it’s more exciting than a more balanced approach though, so there is that for it.
Overall though look at it that March+April makes 2 months in which even by the most optimistic plans, you barely move at all (not even sure if there is *any* movement really) on the part that supposedly matters most, namely getting your immediate environment and self in best shape for moving forwards. So – what gives?
Comment by Diana Coman — April 6, 2020 @ 8:14 am
Definitely agree with seesawing being unhealthy and unproductive. I guess my current aim is to get ahead at work, and then stay ahead.
Yeah, I pretty much stayed stationary for the last two months. I mean I did accomplish some things, but yeah, the falling behind in everything kind of canceled it out.
As for the “why did I fall behind?” portion, I think I just burnt myself out without realizing. Last summer I kind of went full throttle ahead with various projects for tmsr. I’d just wake up, go to work, come home and just work on stuff until late in the night. Part of me, I think, was trying to rush to make up for the prior 7 years I had perceived myself as wasting. The first failure of delivering the mp-wp bot back in December kinda took the wind out of my sails a bit, but I was re-energized once I became a member of YHC.
The “seesaw” approach I think definitely did me in from the very start tbh. In retrospect I never should have taken that job to build something I wasn’t qualified to build in the time expected- or better yet I should have *asked* when the man expected it at the very least. I didn’t even think to ask; I assumed that “however long it takes me to grunt it out will be fine”. I was confident I could figure it out eventually and I figured the challenge would help me grow. Of course, now I’m reminded of your “grow, but grow in a sustainable manner” advice you gave me before. Going forward I need to make sure to understand what the topography looks like ahead of me before I charge in.
Anyway, after all that personal failure came the closure of TMSR, and I was a bit depressed for a bit. Ultimately, though, my mission is still the same as it has been my whole life, really. I had/have this good friend who’s family has done alright for themselves. I remember his dad gave him a piece of advice that he had happened to relay to me second-hand, but it has always stuck with me nonetheless. To paraphrase it, he said that the goal in life is to leave as many doors open for yourself as possible.
After coming here (YHC / post-TMSR ) and meeting many successful professionals, I can see that it is sound advice. Therefore, practically speaking I am best served by sticking around YHC and trying to better myself in some fashion.
With regards to immediate plans and longer term plans, I have some things on my mind that I want to get out in these here comments, but I should probably both think on them a bit more and also get to bed for now. I’ll write more later this week.
As always, ty for your time in reading my reviews and lending your thoughts.
Comment by Eric Benevides — April 13, 2020 @ 3:54 am
It’s a reasonably useful strategy, if not really a goal. Fwiw, whenever I couldn’t find something that I knew I *wanted* to do /choose, I went quite on purpose for the choice that kept otherwise the most options open down the road. Because it seemed obvious to me that if I don’t yet know what I want, the next best thing I can do is to work on widening the options until hopefully I do find something I want.
The above is pretty much why I say that leaving doors open is a good strategy but not that great of a goal – if you make it a goal in itself, then you won’t be able to make much choice even when/if you do find something you really want to choose. Because at that point, the choice might come with closing some doors and even burning some bridges – and if you refuse to do it at that point, the meaning of it is that you also refuse to fully choose what you finally found to really want. Like a lot of other things, it’s useful up to a point and it’s downright in the way in unusual circumstances.
You are welcome here, of course. As you hopefully know it already anyway.
Looking forward to reading it then.
Comment by Diana Coman — April 13, 2020 @ 7:50 am