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Tool Boxes

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Photo by s w on Unsplash

I like to tell people to develop skills like they would add tools to a tool box. I think I first came across this metaphor as a musician and it made perfect sense: learn scales, rhythmic exercises, excerpts from different composers — combine in different ways later on when you encounter something new. Rinse and repeat.

And it applies to what I do now with software too. Except… I’m just not applying it. I’m not thinking about it in the same way that I would with music, which I approach very theoretically and like a puzzle. You would think that kind of thinking would be obvious with programming for machines, but I’ve been a bit stressed out. And when I’m stressed out, I stop trying to add new tools — I instead rely on the ones I have, and even then only the very familiar ones.

I thought of this again today with cooking. I was using my rice cooker and only now decided to measure out the amount of rice I was going to use. I used to do this when I would measure out rice when living with my family! But I lost my dad and with that stress I forgot how to cook. And it’s only until today I realized I could gain that tool back, measuring rice.

Going back to music, I want to reflect on how I succeeded reasonably well without practicing. And it’s because I created a bunch of tools and I became intimate with how they worked. Then when I was stressed out playing (which was, admittedly, most of the time) I’d still know how to use those tools.

It’s also worth noting that because I had those tools, I was also less stressed out about what I was playing. The same goes for cooking. The same goes for coding. And the same goes for whatever it is you’re trying to do. If you can develop an intimacy and familiarity with the tools of your craft, you’ll be able to wield them that much better when you’re under a lot of pressure and stress.

Moving Offices

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After our company closed our office to save some coin, I’ve been working from home now for about a month and have a better handle of what that change has meant for me and my well-being. Everyone on our team is adjusting slightly differently, but hopefully by shedding some light on my experience I can shed some light on what to prepare for if the same thing happens to you.

First, What We Accounted For

I think we did a lot of things right when preparing to work from home. The big thing was to do trial runs, communicate about our experiences, and share any insights we might have. We tackled it as a team and that was really useful.

As for specific advice, we immediately figured out the following:

  • It would be difficult to truly know what WFH is like until we got all our equipment shipped from the office (extra monitors and keyboards, etc.), so we tried to focus on learning other aspects of what would change.
    • On the flip side, it gave us a clear impression that working out of coffee shops wouldn’t be ideal given the lack of equipment. Meetings in coffee shops have gotten less awkward, but they can still be noisy.
  • Getting out of the house was obvious to fight getting restless.

Working From Home a.k.a. Changing Your Commute

I think the best way to treat a transition to working from home is to think about it as a change in your commute. At this same company, we had moved our office downtown and it changed everyone’s commute. We should have treated this the same way. I think if we did that, we would’ve considered the following:

  • Commute route / length would change drastically
    • This might mean we need to reconsider what transit benefits mean for us.
    • If the length changes drastically, we should consider what that means for our routines.
    • Sometimes the mode changes, like going from a car to a train. There may be more or less walking.

I didn’t really think about the impact of walking less every day — the little amount I did when going to and from train stations and going out to lunch was instrumental in keeping my mood up and keeping my weight down! And that weight crept up on me — I didn’t notice it until I weighed myself at the doctor’s.

The separation between work and home is also important. I play games and program for fun in the same space I now work. Having the monitors in the same place isn’t a huge problem, but I need to make sure I get out of my desk and do something else for a bit before returning to it. Otherwise it all kinds of melts together.

Last, having a zero minute commute means more time in the day, right? Except for me, that commute time was necessary to stay sane. I used it to read books and get into a better reading habit! So now I need to make sure I bake that in to my schedule again.

Offices Are Social Spaces

And we are social creatures. We knew this would be affected, but it’s hard to gauge that in testing when you still have an office to return to. Not only does it feel more draining working from home without anyone to talk to, it completely affects the problem-solving methods that our team was accustomed to. We have to be much more deliberate.

And yes, Iggy is great, but she’s not a person! No matter how hard she tries. 🙂

Corporate Passed On Costs To Us

This one is simple — company not only saves money on not having an office via rent, but also via utilities, amenities like snacks and coffee, and providing a gym. And not only do we have to pay for these now in a budget sense, we also have to build their responsibility into our habits. I can’t just bring a duffel bag to work and swing by the gym during lunch — I need to take a twenty minute bus ride to the gym, workout, and come back. I also need to pay for it. And before you ask, no, none of us received raises to cover these costs.

Ultimately, Structure Is Good

I talked to my therapist about this today. Even though I’m not Type A and I don’t impose a lot of structure on myself, I like to dance around existing structure. Without it, I can’t dance! So it’s a big change for me to not have my routine of waking up, showering, getting on a train, sitting down at a desk and saying good morning to everyone.

So we need new structures: for our habits, for our social well-being, to make sure we budget appropriately and to help us do our jobs effectively. And if you know me, you already know I don’t have a lot of faith in those in positions of leadership and power to lead on this appropriately. So we need to roll up our sleeves and get ready to get our hands dirty.

Bringing this back

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This blog has been neglected for a bit, and I think I should bring it back in some form. In general, I’ve kinda laid low since the beginning of July, when we went through some huge restructuring changes at work and I haven’t had the energy to process them in written form. Instead I’ve been just trying to process them as they came, by myself and with my team. It’s been a lot, but I feel like I can at least post some updates now.

I now work from home. Which is to say, I see a lot more of my dog Iggy now. She’s nuzzled up against me right now, alternating between snoring loudly and trying to get some pets in. The biggest changes to my lifestyle center around broadcasting my work actions more (lunch, logging on and off, reaching out for help) and making sure I don’t go stir crazy being inside all the time. Iggy helps with this too.

I want to do more technical writing in the near future. Advent of Code is around the corner and I need to prep some CI/CD examples for different languages for the group I mentor. I also want to do more work on ceruleanlabs.com and that includes setting up Concourse so team members can manage their own deploys without me. Honestly, I guess I’m doing a lot of DevOps these days.

This blog is interesting in that it contains samples of my writing for over a decade of my life — without that context, it’s really scary to release out into the wild. But if I do it right, then I shouldn’t be too worried — it shows an individual growing over time and continuous learning. After all, that’s all I can really hope for myself. Right now, this blog only shows entries since May 12th. But the archives are there (I should add them to source control) and I still plan to republish them at some point. It is just not a top priority given all the other things I want to accomplish, and I don’t want to cut any corners to complete the archives import because it needs to be done correctly.

Anyhoo, that’s it for now. Expect more posts in the near future. ^_^

Separating Ideas From Actionables

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I use Todoist for all of my task management, and for that it works wonderfully. However when it comes to tracking ideas — or even things I just think I should do — Todoist is lost. It’s the same problem with email — items collect dust because I don’t want to act on them but I also don’t want to write them off or forget about them.

For example, I made an item for a new tattoo. But there are no actionables for it right now. Actionables might include eventually saving money? Coming up with ideas for a design? It’s like I need a placeholder for it because I want to break it down further and categorize it, but right now I can’t.

Part of me wants to build some custom view to handle all of these use cases. The other part of me just realizes I just started to figure out how Filters work and finally made one to separate work tasks from other things I might want to do. So I’m probably getting ahead of myself with wanting to use the Todoist API. This is the same brain that sometimes wants to build custom budgeting software instead of just using Excel!

Filters have a lot of strength because the tasks can be prioritized differently based on what I need to do. So something like a “Chores” list would just list all my chores and then I’d do them when I have time and energy. Something like a software project might just have a priority order and then I’d pick which one to do next.

We’ll see what I can do to better leverage the software I have. I still want to develop better ways to develop ideas, build out habits, and plan out larger projects that have several components that need to be done over larger swaths of time.

Cleaning Up Dropbox

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One of the unexpected side-effects of owning a dog is how many pictures I now take on a daily basis. I use Dropbox’s Camera Upload feature, so — as you might expect — I quickly ran out of space. Right now there’s a queue of a few hundred photos on my phone waiting to be uploaded to the cloud.

Rather than pony up some money to buy space and prolong the problem, I decided to dive in and start categorizing photos. I basically treat my Camera Upload folder like an inbox and move photos from there into other folders to be processed at a later point (assuming I can’t decide to delete a photo right then
and there).

Another one of my holdups for processing all of this data was that I wanted to write an app to make it easier to sort photos. But ultimately I just need to go through the data — the tools I have are sufficient to make good progress. I need to work on not getting hung up on doing something optimally if I want to make immediate progress. Discerning between immediate gains and long-term gains is a useful skill worth honing — I use it every day in software development and it’s applicable in many other areas too.

A New Start

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It’s time I start this blog again, and make a committed effort to it. I think it’ll be useful to have a platform to write down my thoughts both professionally and personally.

Scott Hutchison — frontman of Frightened Rabbit — took his own life this past week, and it’s been on my mind. As I near my birthday and older by another year, I can’t help but think about my own mental illnesses and how my life changes as those illnesses change.

I don’t know what my future holds for me. Yes, it’s kinda scary. I didn’t really want to say anything in particular, just to acknowledge the fear that’s real and present.