Category Archives: Writing

The Second 13 Weeks

At the beginning of the year, I wrote The First 13 Weeks which summarized how I usually set up the first 13 weeks of the year. I am using a Recurring Journal that I designed using Page-o-Mat to run my daily tasks and help me reflect on the year as it progresses. We are almost at the end of the second 13 weeks of the year, so I wanted to give an update.

I build my schedule around weeks, which is why I use 13 week periods instead of months or quarters. They do line up pretty well since 4×13 is 52 and 52×7 is 364. In 2023, I treated Jan 1 as special day, and started the recurring part of the journal on Jan 2, which was a Monday.

The first two pages of the journal show Mondays Jan 2, April, 3, July 3, and October 2, which are exactly 13 weeks apart. In the first 13 weeks, I filled out the top-left quadrant of each page, and this “quarter” I am working on the bottom left of each page. But I can see the day exactly 13 weeks ago. I take time to reflect on that day and notice progress. Since the days that are shown together are always the same day of the week, they are usually comparable.

Doing this motivates me to journal because I know that I will be revisiting each day. There is an empty space waiting to be filled, and I don’t want to come back in a few months and see it still empty.

I have been journaling for many years, but most years there are gaps, usually in the late summer. I seem to have the most energy in the beginning and end of the year and drop journalling for a bit around August. This may yet happen in the 3rd 13 weeks. I’ll check in then to see how it’s going.

May 2023 Blog Roundup

I started writing much more frequently this month. I happened to be on vacation for two weeks of it, which gave me a lot of time for writing.

The main thing that got me going was wanting to start up my podcast again. I released four episodes in May.

I also updated my podcast workflow, which makes it a lot easier to do, and I think will make them better.

In Blog Posts, Randomness, and Optionality, I talked about my most popular blog post, and how it had more hits than the rest of my site combined (by far), mostly driven by search. That post hosts my UML Cheatsheet and is from 2006. I made the post following a talk I gave at a local meetup to try to get a job.

I am trying to write more about diagramming generally (to build on a past success). First I wrote that For Diagramming, Favor in-Document Editing and then I wrote that you should use C4 Context Diagrams in GitHub READMEs, and to help make these, I wrote The System Boundary is Defined by the External Pieces.

I’ve been interested in developer productivity metrics, so when I read about DevEx, I was interested, but I wrote a critique in Making Sausage and Delivering Sausage. But, then I wrote about the CRAP metric in Use Your First Commit to Fix CRAP and realized that both CRAP and DevEx are Metrics that Resist Gaming. CRAP always makes me think of refactoring, so in the middle of that I wrote about the First Rule of Refactoring Club.

June has four weekends, so I am expecting to make four podcasts. I also want to spend the bulk of my time thinking about diagramming, so I expect a lot of posts about that.

Two Color Journaling

I journal in black and red. Almost everything is black because I reserve red for anything on theme or particularly important to me. By “on theme”, I mean consistent with my yearly theme, which is to Make Art with Friends.

This has advantages in review and while journalling the day.

I am using a Recurring Journal this year, which means that when I journal I am seeing a past day on a different part of the page. If that past day was particularly red, I can try to match it. I can also easily see the red ink as a flip around. At the end of the year, when I review the journal, it will be easy to pick out the important parts.

During the day, I can see how much red ink I have or have not used and try to see if I can get something in to make the day more red.

Not every day needs to have some red on it, but sometimes I have a free moment, and since I have a low bar for making art, I can easily do it.

Morning Pages Make Me Feel Like ChatGPT

In the first episode of my podcast I said that I do morning pages to train myself to write on demand, and then I followed that up in Episode 3 where I explained that I use the momentum from morning pages to write a first draft of something.

While doing my morning pages last week I thought about how doing them is kind of like how ChatGPT generates text. It’s just statistically picking the next word based on all the words so far in the prompt and what it has already generated.

I am also doing something like that In my morning pages. I am writing writing writing and I use the words so far to guide my next ones.

My mind strays as I write and a phrase might trigger a new thread, which I follow for a bit and then follow another and another. ChatGPT’s results are a lot more coherent than my morning pages. It has an uncanny ability to stay on topic because it is considering all of the text, and I don’t.

First drafts are different. When I switch to writing a first draft, I do consider the entire text. I’m not as fast, because I am constantly looking at where I am so far. I also start with a a prompt in the form of a simple message that I hope to convey, which I use as the working title.

I know I could get a first draft faster from ChatGPT, but it would not be as good (I think), or at least not specific to me. More importantly, I would not have improved as a writer.

[NOTE: While writing a draft of this post, I thought of a way to make my morning pages more directed and made a podcast about it]

My New Podcast Generating Workflow

In Accessibility First in Podcasts, I wrote that since my podcasts are scripted, I don’t have to work hard to get a transcript.

But I found that writing a script was both hard and resulted in a podcast that sounded written. Even if I memorize and perform it well, it didn’t sound like my spoken “voice”.

So, I decided to

  1. Start with a rough outline
  2. Make a recording of a lot of extemporaneous speaking on the subject
  3. Make a transcription of the recording using Whisper from OpenAI
  4. Edit the transcription into a coherent story, but try to preserve the phrasing
  5. Practice it
  6. Make a recording that basically follows the script. It’s ok to make mistakes, rephrase, or veer off.
  7. Edit the recording to remove mistakes and reduce overly long pauses
  8. Listen to the recording and fix the script so it’s now a transcript.

The key thing is step #4 which helps me make a script that sounds like me talking (not writing).

Blog Posts, Randomness, and Optionality

I started this blog in 2003. I have some favorites and ones that I think are worth reading. But I would never have guessed which one would be the most read.

I have a few posts that are probably one of the best places to learn about a specific technical problem, and Google sends people to them. For example, Understanding EXC_BAD_ACCESS clears a lot of misconceptions about what this error means. It’s popular, but not the most popular.

I have a few posts that are jokey movie reviews, where I take one technical aspect and just review that part (it’s based on a Letterman bit). In my review of Oz (the James Franco prequel to the Wizard of Oz), I tried to figure out how the Wizard’s projection technology might have worked (given 19th century constraints). This one is the most popular of the movie reviews because people keep searching for “wizard of oz machine“.

But, by far, the most popular page on this site is the one that hosts my UML cheatsheet. It dominates my search traffic. If I had nothing else on this site, my analytics wouldn’t even notice.

I wrote that post in 2006 based on a talk I gave to a local .NET users group. I didn’t know C# or any .NET yet, but I contributed what I could, UML sketching, which is applicable to any OO language.

There is no way I could have predicted that it would be my most popular post beforehand, which is part of what I mean when I say in Randomness is the Great Creator, that “I believe that the universe is a random, unknowable thing that offers infinite variety. We have an opportunity to tap into it with contributions to the randomness”. It’s why I put these posts out there.

It’s also related to the lesson I learned on the importance of optionality. One of the reasons to collect options is that you are positively exposed to randomness. In this sense, each blog post is an option. They have a low fixed cost to make, but each has a tiny chance at infinite upside.

Or at least some.

It’s also a signal of a direction that might be fruitful, which I’ll explore soon.

In Praise of Pamphlets

One of the influential books in my life is A Technique for Producing Ideas [amazon affiliate link] by James Webb Young. I spoke about it at length in episode 13 of my podcast, where I called it a pamphlet.

I meant this in the sense of it being short and focussed. He doesn’t waste any of his 48 pages on background or fluff. It’s almost entirely about the technique.

I read a lot of (much longer) books in the same basic genre of this one — “A wise, old knowledge worker gives you their secret to doing knowledge work.” But probably because of the tyranny of the publishing industry, they have to be fleshed out to 300 pages, and so I have to read the same old Steve Jobs anecdotes again. Because pretty much any good idea about creativity, business, or productivity has a Steve Jobs anecdote.

We’re just lucky that Webb’s book predates Steve Jobs, but I don’t really remember him telling any anecdotes. There are no lessons from pseudo-science (or worse, non-reproducible, but compelling, real science). He is 100% betting that you don’t need to be convinced, or that the technique itself is convincing, and he rewards you by keeping it short.

Being American, I learned about the great patriotic pamphlets of the revolutionary era, like Common Sense, and so maybe I have a soft spot for this kind of work. In a way, maybe all pamphlets are common sense.

A Tale of Two Restarts

I injured my hamstring right before I was set to run a marathon this past June. I went to a few physical therapy sessions to see if I could do anything to salvage my training, but ultimately I decided to not do the marathon and greatly reduced my running volume so that I could heal.

And then I just stopped altogether.

I was traveling and my hamstring wasn’t getting better, and I just wanted to not think about it for a few weeks.

At the same time, I also stopped writing and podcasting.

By the time I got back, my hamstring felt great. I had lost a bit of fitness, and July in Florida is no time to train or run marathons, but I did settle back into my normal summer training regimen. I had restarted immediately without really trying that hard.

I did not restart writing. What was the difference?

For one, I’ve been running for a very long time, and I have gotten a lot out of it. I generally believe my health depends on me doing it. And, in the past three years, I have been doing it very consistently. Every run I do now seems to pay off immediately in self-esteem, weight maintenance, and feelings of fitness.

Although I’ve been writing over the same period, I have only gotten very consistent six months ago. And, although I have had successes, the benefits of continuing are not as clear. I have data that shows I am slimmer, faster, and more efficient. I don’t have anything like that for writing.

And, I legitimately hurt myself running in a way that rest would help. It was not an excuse. The work I needed to do was to rest. Perhaps that was the same with writing—maybe I needed a rest. That does feel like more of an excuse to me though.

I also have an app that I care about that can only be used if I run. My programmer identity forces me to run in order to program.

But, probably more importantly, I belong to a running group with a coach. It’s harder not to run than to run. There is some accountability there, but that’s not what helped me restart—it was my coach making a specific plan to restart that helped. She had been in my position many times and could help me through it.

So, what could I do to make sure I keep writing? I think two things are clear

  1. Get a coach.
  2. Have some kind of feedback mechanism.

My main issue is that I don’t really have a goal beyond just doing it to do it. I thought that would be enough, but I think I could use a little more.

I choose not to quit

THOSE WHO WOULD MAKE ART might well begin by reflecting on the fate of those who preceded them: most who began, quit.

– Bayles, David; Orland, Ted. Art & Fear [amazon affiliate link]

I began this year with the intention of writing here everyday and for 6 months or so, I found it easy.

And then, life got in the way.

In my case, it’s not bad news. I took some time off to travel in the COVID dip in June/July and got to see family and friends that I hadn’t seen in a year or more. And, I started getting interesting projects with deadlines and expectations. I don’t think it should have totally derailed me, but it did.

But, I’ve come back to some kind of equilibrium now. Or maybe it’s just the normal ebbs and flows of energy. I pride myself on having discipline and not needing motivation, but that only works most of the time. Not all of the time.

In any case, I choose not to quit.

Aim a Little Higher in your Whitepapers

I recently handed over my email to get a “whitepaper” that looked interesting from a company that had been recommended more than once as having an interesting product. I was kind of shocked at how shallow it was.

It was not just a crummy commercial — I think I would have preferred that though. I don’t mind being sold to if it’s done well.

I remember writing these kinds of things for Atalasoft, and it’s tough. I found one of my old ones that tried to teach imaging to prospective customers.

There are things in there that are simple, but my intent was to make the reader into a somewhat advanced user of imaging products with a deeper understanding. It’s kind of implied that our product could help them do these things, but they were free to try to do it themselves or use our competitors. I was betting that they’d give us a shot and we’d win on the merits.

I knew from talking to customers that these things were not obvious and not knowing them was making their use of our product limited. We could help them more, but they didn’t know what to ask for. The whitepaper was written to get leads, but I sent it to customers too when it was obvious it would help them.

As a test, put the first few pages up for free and see if you still get emails for the rest.