What’s your chief aim for today

• Write and publish one piece on this blog
• Review Inbox and Important projects sitting in OmniFocus (this was a miss yesterday)
• Put in 1 hour study session before and after work for advanced operating systems (seems unlikely since I woke up at 05:00 instead of 04:30 and made the fatal mistake of checking my work laptop first)
• Continue to chip away at writing one-pager design for a prototype for new feature at work
• Drive from Seattle to Renton in the early morning (while express lanes are flowing in our direction) to visit my sister and my new niece (Charly) who was born just a few hours ago. Looking forward to seeing my mom, who lives in OC but who is visiting us up in sunny Seattle for a few days now that Charly has arrived

How did yesterday go?

• Pretty good (although Jess says that I’m always a bit more on the edge, a little less patient, when I’m on call and getting paged throughout the week
• Felt good about squeezing in early morning and after work study sessions. I admit that I find myself taking the longer path on some homework and reading assignments, but then I remind myself that my purpose of graduate school is not to just get a master of computer science degree but to learn, to grow, to change the way my mind thinks. So I find solace in my decisions to reading a little more than necessary, generating and answering my own questions while reading the textbook
• I did not review my inbox (or personal e-mail, really) in neither OmniFocus nor my excel backed project list. Need to remind myself that to trust the system of getting things done (GTD), I need to establish a routine of extracting to-do items out of my brain and into the same location — every time. And of course, reviewing that list (which as I mentioned as part of this post, I did not do)
• But I am consistently writing, editing and most importantly, publishing on my blog, a strong cadence unfolding. In some ways, I am carrying out Jerry Seinfield’s “Don’t break the chain” strategy¹, a self motivation tool

Word of the day

The men set off in fear and trepidation

A few days ago, five-star basketball recruit Keion Brooks was asked about his level of interest in the Louisville Cardinals and expressed some trepidation².

trepidation – noun (n) – a feeling of fear or agitation about something that may happen

What are you grateful for?

• Jess dropping off snacks at my desk, fresh slices of peaches and toast covered with peanut butter helping me relax while tackling on call

Feelings

• After not speaking to my dad for 2 months and then very briefly video chatting with him on his birthday (August 23rd), he now is suddenly active on WhatsApp, sending Jess and I random links to Facebook, his way of communicating with us. I’m unsure how to engage with him: I’m never sure actually, how we — as a family — should move forward when we’re this entangled since dealing with addiction in the family is a complicated matter. Oh well. I’m not in this alone: I have Jess. And we’ll sort it out. And also, I need to remind myself that I need not figure this out all alone.

References

1. https://medium.com/@MrBuzzFactor/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-hack-don-t-break-the-chain-8d1944b8323d
2. https://grammarist.com/usage/trepidation/