rianjs.net

Lately I've been radically changing my habits. Not all at once, of course, for that's impossible, but rather like a slow progression. I think it started with keeping my room clean(er) back in January or so, and it has progressed into other areas of my life as well. Some of the changes have added up to be *very* significant. Changes that have happened, or will happen in the near future:

• I'm leaving my current school. It's simply not a good match for me — I hate being there with a passion, and I'm not making any progress. The bad blood that exists between the administration and myself is continually biting me in the ass. It's best to leave.
• You might notice that I'm not on IRC or the forums much. I don't find that they contribute to my happiness or overall well-being.

I have some problems that I'll need to deal with along the way. A few of them:

• My friends. I don't have many friends whose company I find enriching. I'd say that I should hang out with "older" people, but they're mostly just more cynical versions of the people I spend time with today. That's not to say that they're bad people or not fun to hang out with, of course.
• This boils down to the problem of static. Most people in my life don't change — they stay the same, year in and year out. This isn't me. I'm not the same person I was a year ago or even six months ago. I need dynamic people, not people that are uninterested in changing. I need to find a new crowd to spend my time with. I don't like static people, and I don't like being thought of as one by those people that are.

I don't intend to do this (whatever "this" ends up being) like people do "New Years Resolutions" which are complete bollocks. I'm not going to "resolve" to go to the gym 3 times a week or anything like that. It's been my experience that things like that happen as one gets one's act together in other ways.

A shift in attitude changes everything else from the ground up.

Things I'll be doing in the near-term:

• I'm taking two classes this summer, at UMass Lowell. One that will be difficult (but that I want to take) and the other just for fun. Just because it's interesting. Something I have honestly never done in the 5.5 years I've been in college. (The two classes I'll be taking are Computing I (which I already took and passed and didn't learn a damn thing because I didn't want to) and International Relations.)
• I'll be paying for school out of my own pocket. I will allow myself to take out federal loans, but no private loans.
• I will be going to Hong Kong in July with my mom which should be quite the experience.

I am $132,000 in debt because of school, and that cannot continue.

Tomorrow is June 1, which seems like as good an arbitrary starting point as any. Not as though this will end a year from now, but it would be nice to have a concrete date to look back at to compare to a year from now. I'll have good days and bad days, but I want my overall direction to be forward. I can honestly say that in the last 3 months, I've never been happier. I've changed just about everything about my life, at least a little bit.

• I don't get heart palpitations anymore
• I drink maybe once a month, if that (I simply don't have the desire anymore)
• I read so much more than I ever used to — I read ~30 single-spaced pages with 10pt font — I know because I print them out because reading things on a screen hurts my eyes. Some days as high as 60 pages, some days only 5-10 pages. I read about everything: technology, science, politics, medicine, etc. If it looks remotely interesting, I print it and read it.
• I set deadlines for myself, and they actually work; I also keep better track of my tasks. (See this post for details on how I did that.)

The fundamental difference has been that I read things that enrich me. I'm an avid consumer of Lifehack, Lifehacker, Guy Kawasaki's blog, and about a half-dozen other sites that produce content really worth reading. (And, of course, Ars.)

Some of my goals (subject to change):

• Pay for school out of pocket, as outlined above
• Get above a 90% in my two summer courses

Naturally, I will continue posting here about my observations and changes, like I have been doing for the past month or so with my intro productivity series.

GTD, time management, reinventing

This is the third part in the series I've been writing about getting my life together.

One of my problems has been to delude myself. I have a habit of thinking that I'll do something later, procrastinating until the whole day is wasted. Electricity likes the path of least resistance, and so do people. It's easy to just sit and do nothing, but if you've done it before (who hasn't?), you'll find that it doesn't make you happy if you do it all the time. In fact, you probably feel pretty terrible about yourself and the direction you're going. Surveys have shown that while humans seek out these forms of "enjoyment" in a passive way — that is by not doing anything — they report feelings of unhappiness while they do them.

On the other hand, being active and in a state of flow makes for a happier, more enriching life that ultimately will lead to one becoming a "better" person. More educated, more accomplished, more of however one directs one's energies.

If you're like me, getting there is easier said than done. It's much easier to simply be a passive observer as life passes you by: it's easier to sit on the couch and watch TV than to mow the lawn and do some gardening, even though you might truly want a nice yard with a vegetable garden. I know I've made a habit of not doing many of the things that I actually want to accomplish by simply being inactive.

Like everyone else on the planet, I have some days that are better than others. Sometimes I like to tell myself (and others) that I'll do X just as soon as I finish doing Y. Often, Y doesn't have a set ending, so I can just keep milking being lazy as long as I like. The days that I do this are among my least satisfying.

In an effort to change this, I've decided to be honest with myself — I can always tell when I'm not going to be productive. It all goes back to that whole inertia thing. What can help the ball start rolling is to talk it out. With yourself or with someone else. I often find myself talking to my mom about how I'm not happy because I can't seem to bring myself to get off my ass. Usually the simple act of recognizing it and talking about it for a minute is enough to get me going either again because I've stalled, or for the first time that day.

You will have some bad days. I do, and so does everyone else. The trick is to simply let each day be new and separate from the day before — always keep on plugging, but remember to happy in the moment, because if you're looking toward some future day where all of your ducks will magically be in a line and everything will be perfect, you'll be sorely disappointed; your whole life will have passed you by because you were waiting for some fairytale that could never be.

Getting Things Done, GTD, life hacks, time management

This here is the index of my miniseries on productivity, and how I started to take control of my life. It's a 5 part series, where some entries will be longer than others. Two parts are published, and the third will be published later today. Tentative dates for the last few pieces are listed next to their respective titles.

This series is a result of an "itch" that I've been having for a while — a little tickle in the back of my subconscious that things weren't what they might perhaps be if I changed the way I did things — changed the way I go through life. Instead of being a passive observer, I decided I wanted to be an active participant — most of the time, anyway. It's still nice to unplug every once in a while. This is the (ac)cumulation of my efforts in the last month or so:

1. Starting well
2. Don't rely on your brain
3. Being honest
4. The power of deadlines
5. Spend a little to save a little

I have no doubt that I'll have more to say past these five things. Self-improvement is a journey, not a discovery, so there's no doubt in my mind that I'll have more to say on the subject. Probably not right off, though.

Some posts that aren't part of this series, but are somewhat related:

• Getting crap done
• Feng Shui

Getting Things Done, GTD, life hacks, time management

This is the second part in the series I've been writing about getting my life together. Disclaimer: this isn't actually an advertisement for Google.

One of the big mistake I've always made has been to rely on my brain for everything. Whether it's remembering homework assignments or simply going to an appointments or calling people.

Needless to say, I have a tendency to only remember about 50% of what I set out to do. This has meant that I:

• Miss appointments (which can cost money in the form of fees)
• Piss lots of people off, because I've unintentionally broken promises
• Didn't learn material that I needed to in my classes
• Caused me to fall behind the rest of the bandwagon

The last two meant that I did lots of cramming, which is no fun.

When I was back in elementary school, I didn't have much going on. Same for junior high and high school. No deadlines, no appointments to remember, etc. Some of this was simply due to being young: my parents were responsible for getting me places, so much of my day was spent on auto-pilot. As a result, the few things that I had to be responsible for were easy to store and remember.

This system didn't work in college.

I've floundered for 4 years. I knew my problem; I wasn't remembering what I needed to. So I tried lots of things: PDAs, paper notebooks, etc. The two PDAs I've owned ended up being expensive toys; I found them too cumbersome to write on quickly, which is a problem when you need to jot down assignments and readings at the end of a class. So I stopped using it.

Paper notebooks are much easier, but they're far less adaptable. It's difficult to change things and move things around and still have a calendar that's legible. I am constantly shifting priorities and changing things, so this was an issue.

Paper is fast but digital is interactive

For a long time I didn't like the idea of storing my data somewhere else. I didn't see the appeal of web-accessible anything. My email resided on my hard drive, along with all of my appointments and contacts. Then my Windows install crapped out after a bad overclock, and I wasn't able to recover my data.

Ouch.

That was about the Gmail was released, and I had scored myself an invite several weeks earlier, more to secure my name than actually use it as an email account. I never really used it. I had like two messages total, one of which was the "Welcome to Gmail!" message that everyone gets; the other was a test email I sent to myself. So I set up my old email address to forward to my Gmail account, and then I set about changing all of my accounts spread far and wide across the Interweb.

That was my first experience with having a large amount of personal data available anywhere. I remember thinking how f'n cool it was checking my email from a Telephone/Internet kiosk in downtown London when I was on vacation. I was hooked from then on.

So Gmail was great, but that didn't solve my problem with remembering things. I remember seeing one of my friends using iCal one time and thinking it was totally awesome. (I think I was more impressed with the pretty colors and Mac UI than anything else.) Gmail, of course, started the "Web 2.0 revolution" with AJAX.

About this time I was becoming really unhappy with myself, and how badly I was slipping. I wanted a method that would allow me to easily manage my life. I wanted a web calendar, but Yahoo! and Kiko seemed the only places you could really get it. I had started using Google's personalized home page, and you couldn't very well get your appointments from Yahoo calendar on there, or your Kiko ones. Then rumors of CL2 surfaced, so I decided to wait.

I started using Google Calendar on the first day it was announced, and I haven't looked back ever since. I can set things and forget them. I plug everything into it: personal projects, doctors' appointments, class schedules, travel schedules. Anything at all. And best of all, there are plugins which stick your upcoming events into both your Google personalized page, and Gmail sidebar.

I find my brain at its most productive when I'm at work. I work in a pharmacy — a very interrupt-driven environment — which leads to a constant bubbling of ideas: things I want to do, things to write about. I write them all down on a piece of scrap paper in my pocket. I expand on them right away if I have a moment, or I do it when I get home for the day. I figure out when I want them done by, and plug them into the calendar. Then I set reminder emails so I don't forget. (Alternatively, you can get them by text message, which might be useful if you are out and about, or simply want a more jarring reminder.)

Here's a screenshot of what my full calendar looks like this month, and another minus the travel bits. (I prefer the month-long view.)

The ToDo list problem

The calendar doesn't solve the "To Do" list problem.

The ToDo list problem is the ability to check things off as you finish them. While I wouldn't be surprised if this is built into a later revision of Google Calendar, it doesn't exist now. Even if it is added later, I doubt it'll be as cool as the one I'm using now…

While browsing through the widgets available for the Google homepage, I found a crude widget that allowed a list to be stored and worked with. It was okay, but it didn't really fit the bill too well: it simply wasn't powerful enough. A few months later, I was bored and decided to go through the available widgets again — the library had exploded in size during this time — and I came across the RL ToDoList by RL Widgets. It had more features, and I liked the interface better.

Bored again about a week later, I set about rearranging my Google homepage, and I started playing with the ToDo list. Holy crap. It was awesome. Tabs for sub-lists! Drag-and-drop! Customizable everything! I set it up the way it is today, and I don't think I'll be changing it anytime soon — it's as close to perfection as I've ever seen any piece of software. Here's today's list of things to do:

Final analysis

My setup isn't perfect, and I'll probably do a fair bit of tweaking almost constantly, but it's a good start. I'll have to wait and see how it weathers the test of time and school. I would like the ability to eventually sync my calendar and ToDo lists with a PDA, as I will probably buy another one in the next 12 months for drug information if nothing else.

There are those that might say that I shouldn't have all my eggs in one basket in terms of storage and usability: everything I do shouldn't be inside Google in some way. But I like this way the best, and I haven't seen any compelling reasons to not trust Google with my data. If I liked Yahoo! or Microsoft's way of doing things better, I would use their services, because I don't really have any qualms about storing my data with them either. So it really boils down to my personal preference rather than one company's ethics over another's.

Productivity, life hacks, Google, Google calendar, time management

Regular readers (are there any?) of my blog probably noticed my last super-post about my latest venture OnThePharm. Well I set up my RSS reader on my laptop (where I do all my writing) to suck down the Yahoo News RSS feeds for most of the big biotech firms. Well I've found that while most of the ~300-400 news items posted are either 1) duplicates 2) PR sound bytes or 3) snooze-worthy business items, this still leaves about 10-12 newsworthy pieces per day.

That's a lot of freakin' news.

I have to find some way to deal with it all. If stuff is pressing, and/or potentially interesting to a wide audience, I try to do it up right away, and then promote it in some way, usually by posting to digg, reddit, or wherever. This drives awareness of OTP, which will in turn help my PageRank down the line. Jacqui thinks I'm unhealthily obsessed with PageRank, and while she might be right, in the long-term, it drives traffic. Particularly in the form of search results. And it's this search traffic that's going to help generate some revenues. As I said earlier, one of my goals is going to be making money from what I write.

Also, expect some changes in appearance around here. I'm not sure I'm going to go AdSense-crazy, but I am going to be changing the theme to something a little less dated, I think. I'm rather tired of the tiny center column — I think I'm going to go with a two-column layout. I only ever had 3 columns because I thought, for some reason, that that's what all decent websites had: 3 columns. Ya right. :p I don't have that much to say.

1) I don't need a picture of myself.
2) I don't need a calendar showing off how often I (don't) post.
3) I need to tighten up my blogroll and categories. If I even have them at all.

Mostly though, I just want to clean things up and make it neater. I feel like this place is puke-on-a-page compared to how tight the theme for OnThePharm is. (And yes, I know not everyone likes the layout of OTP. I haven't decided what to do yet.)

It's 12.01am on Mother's Day where you are, and I'd like to take a few minutes to share with you (and the rest of the world) why I think you're the best, despite the fact that we butt heads on a pretty regular basis. (Though maybe not quite as much as we used to.)

Given that you're in China right now on business, I can't exactly say "Good morning, happy mothers day!" when you wake up. I sent you a card, but I don't know if you got it. 7 seems like just as good an arbitrary number as 10 or 5, so here are my 7 reasons why I think you're the best. This is an entry that I've thought about doing, well since last Mother's Day. Neither of us knew then that you would be away at the time, so it seems somewhat fitting that I post this here now, since everyone says the Internet brings the world closer together.

I'm gonna do this David Letterman style:

7. You always finish what you start

I wish this was something that I made a habit of, but I don't, though I'm trying to get better at it. We both know that I battle with being consistent even now, but I think I'm getting better. You finished college even though you had me to take care of, and finances were very tight. You always make yourself do things, even though they might suck. Like the back yard. You got out of your comfort zone and climbed on that excavator last summer even though you didn't want to, and you taught yourself how to use it, because I was lazy and wanted to sleep for another hour. I'm sorry I didn't help you, that was pretty crappy of me.

6. You fought to get me a computer

You fought John to get me a computer, and a nasty fight it was. You fought for it because you knew I wanted one so badly, and because you thought it was important. This is one of the reasons I have the skills that I have today when it comes to software and technology in general. While I think that I would have developed these skills later, I developed them much younger than most. I could probably get a job just with what I know off the top of my head should everything else in my life fall to pieces, thanks in no small part to your doing something unpleasant.

5. You taught me the value of money

You always gave me an allowance, even when money was tight. You were downright stingy by most people's standards, for which I am also grateful. It was through this that I learned to save for what I wanted. Because of these early lessons, I didn't dig myself into massive amounts of debt like so many people my age do when they get credit cards. Beyond that, you sowed the very first seeds of what (I like to think) is my prodigious knowledge of money, the market, and the interconnectedness of the world today.

4. You pulled me out of private school

I disagreed with your decision then, but I am grateful for it today. I'm glad you decided to pull me out of the small private school when you did. It allowed me to see a much bigger world, and I am a better person today for it.

3. Because you push me even though I push back

You have the strength to tackle tough conversations about my academic progress and the debt I am accruing, even though I have a tendency to make these talks unpleasant because they mirror my own thoughts all too well. Don't stop; it helps having someone else come alongside you so you can lean on them a little bit.

2. You never let me watch TV

Except for that hour every week on Saturday morning where I could watch cartoons, I wasn't allowed to watch television. I hated it then, but I am grateful for it now. Instead of the tube, you made me read books instead. And read them I did. I can point to that specifically and say that that is what gives me my gift of writing today, and I am so very grateful for it.

1. For adopting me

Because without you, I probably wouldn't be here today.

I hope I have the strength and the wisdom to make the kinds of decisions for my children that you have made for me through the years.

Thank You. I love you.

Mother's Day

This is largely copied from post over at polyscience.org:

There I was, re-opening shop, only to disappear after a week or so. Now I'm moving on, permanently. As in, leaving the business of science writing. Over the last six months, my interests have been slowly shifting, and I find myself interested in "science" as a general concept less and less. I'm more focused on business, medicine, and the business of medicine.

I never thought I was particularly good at writing about science and science-related things. I always felt as though there was someone who knew more, someone who could convey my ideas better than I could. I also felt as though it was a relatively new niche. I discovered quickly that I had been mistaken. It is for these reasons that I am no longer going to be writing about science and related interests.

While writing for polyscience.org, I always got the most enjoyment from writing about medicine. Specifically adding commentary to news articles written by journalists whose first area of study was certainly not medicine. In the meantime, I've also picked up quite an interest in business, and so it only seemed natural to marry the two ideas.

Thus, On The Pharm was born. I've been writing there for a few days, I can honestly say that writing for it does not feel like work. Indeed, it's more fun than anything else, probably because 1) it's easier and 2) I don't have to learn so many ideas from scratch like I did when writing about science as a whole. I can focus on my niche, and that's what I want to do. I also like the look of the site much better. So without further ado, here is my latest work-in-progress:

URL: http://onthepharm.net
Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/OnThePharm

Some stuff will be technical, some will be fluffy, some will be business-oriented, and some of it will be tongue-in-cheek. And all of it will likely be informal. I prefer to talk in my posts as though I'm talking to a person, and I hope that comes across, unlike here where I pretended to be an omniscient narrator. I'm writing for it every day (so far), and I have a small backlog of material from the last two weeks, but I'm slowly clearing it out.

I can only hope that it'll find a niche of readers so I'm not listening to myself echo in cyberspace. I've decided that I'm not going to be half-assed this time, either. I'm going to jettison my (utterly ridiculous) dedicated server which costs me $120/month — though it's a great deal for what I get — simply because I don't need it. As soon as my contract with iweb.ca runs out, I'll be moving both this website and polyscience.org over to DreamHost who is currently hosting On The Pharm. Their packages are unbeatable, and I'll likely never outgrow them. (Though it would be awesome if I did!) If the time ever comes that I need my own dedicated server again, I will likely go back to iweb because they were just that fantastic. (Read my review I linked up.)

I spent a lot of time on the layout and colors. I would like to make some money with this venture, which is why I said "doing it right" earlier. I studied ad layouts, and I'd like to see if I can effectively make some money without interfering with layout too much. I think I've done a pretty good job so far — I'd love to get some feedback from you guys. I think the ads blend in well, and it would be nice if they generated a decent CPM once I get more traffic going to the site. Given the nature of what I'm writing about, each click should be worth more than a few pennies — though that's certainly not why I chose my niche.

I still need to come up with some ways to drive traffic. My niche is pretty specific, and doesn't really appeal to places like Slashdot or digg or boingboing, so I need to come up with other ways to drive traffic. I haven't had time to really look into larger websites that I could submit some of my stuff to. We'll see what happens in the next week or so. I'm approaching this like a part-time job, and I'm trying to put in some real solid, uninterrupted time each day to add content. I hope it pays off.

writing, On The Pharm, Pharmacy, medicine, blogging

This is the first part in the series I've been writing about getting my life together.

My biggest challenge, even now, is to start my day well. Starting is almost the only deciding factor in whether or not my day goes well and I am a productive human being.

1) Use inertia in your favor

One day I was sitting at my desk, thinking about how I was being a slacker at that moment in time, and how I felt powerless to change it. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion until an external force acts upon them. The converse, unfortunately, is also true. Objects at rest tend to stay at rest until an external force acts upon them. This is true for people, too. Especially me.

For what it's worth, I didn't magically figure out how to stop slacking that day until it was time for me to go to work… at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. I wasted 7 hours. Looking back, I could have gotten so much accomplished I wouldn't have had to do a 12 hour essay-writing marathon later in the week.

Unfortunately though, it is much easier to stop the ball than it is to start it going from zero.

2) Examine your routine

What do you do in the morning? What is your daily routine? For most plugged-in people, it involves showering, eating, checking email, reading the news, and getting dressed. In what order is a big thing. For years, my typical routine has been to roll out of bed and plop myself in front of my computer and catch up on email, the news, discussion forums, blogs, etc. I would get sucked in and before I knew it, two hours would have gone by. I have fought this in several ways.

The first is simply showering and dressing before letting yourself sit down at the computer. For some this is painfully difficult at first — it certainly was for me. It's easier now; I found that as I interacted with people more in the offline world, I sought the online world much less.

3) Managing information input

On days that I don't do this — like today, for instance — I use a timer. There are so many feeds in my aggregator that on a Monday, it can take me up to an hour or two just to go through and sort out the content that I want to read. A quick scan can often reveal whether or not a particular article or journal entry is worth reading later.

Long ago I discovered that I can't read large bodies of text on the screen (though I have no problem writing them, as you can see ), but I did nothing to overcome this problem, until last December. In December of 2005, I bought a laser printer. I found that every time I loaded Opera, I would have 12-15 tabs left open from the last session for content that I never read. Eventually I would get annoyed and simply clear them all out. But when I bought my printer, I went looking, and I discovered that most major publications have a "printer friendly" option. I became friends with this option and I started reading more than I had in years. I must have printed out (and consumed) 40-60 pages in the first day of usage.

I would copy multiple blog entries into a single word document, shrink the font, and print them out for reading on the train or bus. In this way, I allowed myself to be more efficient with my time later. And I find reading things on paper much more enjoyable, which is why I keep a stack of 500-1000 pieces of used-on-one-side paper loaded in my printer at all times since this sort of printing constitutes the bulk of the pages I print. You won't find blank paper in my printer; I hate waste. (I recycle the paper when I'm done with it.) For large volume printing, a laser printer will save you money because toner is much less expensive than ink page-for-page, and laser printers can be had for a very reasonable price.

Back on track here… when you are at your computer, use a timer. Now that I have a Mac, I use Minuteur (which is unfortunately not available as a Universal Binary), which has a countdown egg timer, and a stopwatch feature, which is very useful when I'm using something like David Seah's printable CEO, and I want to keep track of 15 minute intervals.

I limit my daily sorting and reading to 30 minutes. One time, I let myself go longer, just to see how much time I would spend if left to my own devices. It ended up being 2 hours. (Minuteur turns into a stopwatch if you let it exceed the timer countdown.) I wasn't happy, and I try not to let myself go longer than this 30 minutes. 30 minutes for email and blogs, then it's time to continue the rest of the day.

If I can accomplish these things when I get out of bed, I am on a roll for the rest of the day. If I am worried that I won't be able to get going quickly enough, I involve other people in my morning, for instance planning a trip with someone else to Home Depot for the morning rather than the afternoon to force me to get out of the house.

Start the ball rolling as soon as your feet hit the floor, and it'll stay in motion almost by itself.

~Written 5/5/2006

Getting things done, personal development, productivity, GTD

I got a lot done today. A shitload of stuff. Here's a brief rundown:

• Got up at 8.30
• Wrote a quick essay (not for school)
• Finished an article (to be posted here tomorrow)
• Left to go shopping at 10.30
• Returned at 12.30 with supplies for the rest of the day which consisted of:
• Tearing up the front lawn and sifting the soil from the grass removed (4hrs+)
• Taking pictures of my items to be sold on eBay
• Extensive motherboard testing
• Wrote a letter of recommendation

I don't really feel any sense of accomplishment or pride, though. I rested for maybe… 90 minutes throughout the course of the day (minus 15 minute meal breaks). Thing is, I don't feel happy about getting all that crap done. Relief, maybe. But even that not so much.

I think I'm not feeling happy because the things listed above are things that I didn't want to do. They were things other people wanted me to do for them. I got a lot done, but I feel like I wasted the day, in a way, and I still have a few things left to do, and it's nearly 11pm.

I'm hoping for an equally productive day tomorrow, and hopefully it'll be a little more enjoyable and rewarding. Hard work is not its own reward. Hard work that you want to do, is. I just need to get this other crap out of the way so I can get to the hard work that I actually want to do.