Daynote - Tue 29 Oct

Cracking on with the cuts.

Daynote - Tue 29 Oct
Photo by Michaela St / Unsplash

Whoops, stayed up too late last night and missed my walk again. So it goes. But I slept very well.

ON DECK: I finished the edit plan for PROJECT SHARD and even knocked two or three tasks off the list this morning, for a new word count of 99 words. But, things are afoot in PROJECT SCARLET too, with another meeting soon. So I will crack on with SHARD for the moment, while being aware that there may be a context-switch shortly.

As I noted yesterday, I need and want to get better about maintaining momentum and minimising the impact of context switches. Because you are plugging into large, complicated businesses with many different factors impacting lead, response and turnaround times, you can neither plan too rigidly ahead, or rely on things coming back when you expect them. Sometimes they arrive rapidly, sometimes not. But the universal constant is that the time is going to pass anyway, so it's better to pass it getting something done, rather than being frozen in waiting/indecision mode. I lost big chunks of the last couple of years to this dynamic and did not make the progress I wanted to, when I wanted to. And I want to fix that. The work still got done, just in different circumstances than I'd prefer.

LISTENING: The excellently nerdy Cortex podcast has their annual State of the Apps episode up this morning, which is always a fascinating look at other people's software stacks and working processes. I love these kind of deep-dive episodes.

WATCHING: Caught a bit more WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS last night, just before watching this excellent Zoom call with Nick Harkaway and David McCloskey. I hope they do more events together, because this one was brilliant.

READING: I did not read a thing last night, because I played Call of Duty far too late. Whoops. The latest instalment has added very large semi-open world levels, which are my kryptonite when it comes to 'oh, just one more mission' gameplay.

UP NEXT: Continuting with the push on SHARD, to see how much I can get done before SCARLET resolves one way or the other. Feels good to be making progress.