June 25, 2024
I’ve Time Tracked for a Week, What I’ve Learnt Made Me Uncomfortable
Jun 25, 2024
I’ve started time-tracking 2 weeks ago after being inspired by the Cortex Podcast by Mike and CGP Grey.
Why? Humans are poor judges of how we spend our time. We overestimate the time spent productively while severely underestimating the amount of dead time, or transition time in-between tasks.
Ever since I’ve finished my postgraduate studies, I’ve been filling up my hours as best as I can. Despite my best efforts, I always feel like I’m short of time. There are plenty of projects that need completing and new habits to be formed, and yet 24 hours is not enough for my typical day.
Hence, I’d like to test my assumption.
Screenshot of project categories in Timery for Toggle app.
There are a lot of projects that I’m working on:
- Starting a B2B Marketing business.
Fulfilling my duties as a HealthyGamer Coach
Completing several Mental Health course modules.
Signing up for a Cross-fit membership
Signing up to join a Dragon Boating team
Finishing marathons
Meeting with friends or family every week
Completing my book reading backlog.
Spending quality time with my partner…
But I’ve chunked them into the following projects, each with one of four “clients” — Work, Myself, Others and Death.
Death is the biggest client that I’m wary of, because in theory, it is time that could be minimised to have a more “efficient” lifestyle.
After a week of logging, here are the results:
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- I’ve managed to get a respectable average of 7 hours of sleep, which is 30 min short of what I’d like it to be.
Death makes up the largest time chunk amongst all clients — which is surprising. This shattered any preconception that I was living a productive life.
At the beginning, “death” was a single umbrella category, but I have since segregated it into “travel”, “procrastination” and “transition”. I’m eager to see the time distribution in the upcoming weeks and see how it can be better optimised.
I like the time distribution between work, myself, and others, as they represent my priorities and neither is neglected during the week itself.
What have I learnt?
- I may not be as productive as I thought I was, and having data helps provide the objectivity needed to implement better strategies moving forward.
An ultra-optimised schedule is an impossibility. A <10% distribution of death alone is an impossible feat, especially for people who need to commute for a living.
Hence, it’s important to not implement moral judgement on how I spent my time. Was I lazier than expected? Should I be more hardworking? Those are subjective arguments that are indefinite. However, data is objective. This is how I spent my time and it is what it is. It’s now up to me to decide what I can do with this information.
I encourage any knowledge worker to take up time-tracking. It is tedious, troublesome and technically challenging, but I do see the benefits of it and will continue this experiment for a while longer.
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productivity
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March 22, 2024
Doom Emacs: A Text Editing Playground I Didn’t Know I Needed
Mar 22, 2024
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After migrating my notes to Notion, the names Emacs and Org-mode appeared constantly in threads, podcasts, and forums.
Though I knew the destination, embarking on expeditions into different productivity systems is an inevitable part of the journey. A straightforward note-taking system expanded into task management, calendars, and time-tracking solutions.
The toll on my wallet is substantial, a practice I heavily discourage. To maintain my sanity, I reassured myself that playing with software is a cheaper hobby compared to more extravagant pursuits like cameras and cars. Plus, the benefits of increased productivity and the self-discovery intrinsic to each platform migration more than justify the costs sunk into this hobby. But still, I find it hard to justify the expenditure, even though I’m supporting developers and their work.
I habitually adopt new hobbies during transitional periods in my career. Six months ago, it was the website migration to Hugo and fussing over themes to personalize the site. Now, it’s relocating from Obsidian to Doom Emacs.
So Why Emacs?
Plain Text Files
Originating from Obsidian, I fully endorse the core ethos of plain text files. They are simple, scalable, future-proof, and easy to understand. I like to imagine that my text files will remain relevant centuries from now, accessible via some ancient terminal lost in space, much like sci-fi stories. It’s hard to expect proprietary databases from emerging productivity app makers to last that long.
I appreciate that I can effortlessly access my Obsidian and Hugo files within Doom Emacs as projects. Although I’ve migrated to org-mode, Emacs has a potent, format-agnostic text editor. I can compose my Obsidian files swiftly without needing any import/export tool.
Vim Motion
If plain text was the goal, Obsidian would have been sufficient — and so would other known editors such as LogSeq, Joplin, and one of my favorites, Bike Outliner. But few have full-fledged vim motion support, as does Evil-mode.
I’m proficient enough with markdown, shortcuts, hotkeys, automation, macros, and cursor manipulation in standard text editors. But I work and LIVE in my notes in both my professional and personal life. They are extensions of my brain, and to some degree, my identity. It’s therefore natural that vim motions would be the next logical improvement in my brain externalization capabilities. Similar to how poets learning a new language and culture can enrich their prose and vocabulary.
Currently, I’m still taking baby steps. Writing and editing this post is frustratingly slow. But already, I find myself frustrated at the lack of modal text editing in other software. Give me a few months, and I believe things would turn for the better.
Ease of Entry
Without Doom, I would never have ventured into Emacs. Doom comes pre-configured with packages and settings that render Emacs newbie-friendly while offering enough flexibility for customization.
Many might venture into Vanilla GNU Emacs after familiarizing themselves with Doom Emacs and the Elisp language. However, veterans still prefer Doom for several reasons. It’s simple, practical, and so well-tuned that configuring GNU Emacs is generally not worth the effort.
The software’s speed is remarkable. After learning how to set up a server daemon and client for Emacs, the load-up time is instantaneous. It’s amazing how efficient the software is, even though it runs on essentially a single core.
Cost Savings
After tinkering with Doom Emacs for a while, I realized that many other productivity apps are mere attempts to replicate what Org Mode brings to the table.
Task management, note-taking, and PKMs — Org mode does it all, better and faster, with more customization in a free, open-source manner, well before new apps entered the scene.
Why bother with imitations when I can go directly to the source? If only I had ventured into Org mode right from the start, I would have saved so much more. (Well, that’s not entirely accurate. I can’t help myself from trying out new, shiny things.)
Aesthetics
I won’t lie — the aesthetics of Doom Emacs is perhaps the main driver of my switch from Obsidian. It began when I stumbled upon the Hugo.386 website theme, which emulates the old-school MS-DOS aesthetic.
Expressing my love for the design would be an understatement, and I spent countless hours diving into HTML and CSS code to give it my personal touch. This made me comfortable with messing around with configuration files after being spoiled by years of using UI settings. When I realized that migrating to Doom Emacs was within the realm of possibility, I downloaded the Parus theme to emulate my blog’s aesthetics as closely as possible.
Now, I use the Modus Theme for accessibility reasons but coupling it with an Iosevka font, and it feels like I’m living within a terminal.
Final Thoughts
My thoughts today lack structure — it’s simply me expressing appreciation and love for my new toy, Doom Emacs. Perhaps it gives you an idea of why I haven’t posted much in recent weeks.
But, I plan to write more often in the future. I’ve only started using Doom Emacs less than a week ago, and I definitely need the practice.
Cheers!
CoThinking
productivity
technology
February 25, 2024
Guide to Publishing to Hugo/Jekyll Remotely via iOS
Feb 25, 2024
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Hugo excels at desktop publishing. I can create files using CLIs or markdown editors, then publish to a Github repository. This directly reflects on the website through Netlify, Cloudflare Pages or Vercel.
However, publishing from my phone is not as straightforward. I have a micropost section on my website, intended to be a Twitter replacement, where I share posts that are:
I initially thought that the only feasible way to publish using my phone was via Micropub. This is evident in direct integrations with writing apps such as Ulysses, iA Writer and Paper.
The issues with Micropub are:
It’s extremely difficult to set up for someone without a technical background, like myself.
The only feasible way I’ve managed to get this to work is via Voxpelli’s Solution.
Even then, it costs money to host a micropub solution. The only free way I’ve managed to get this to work is via Render, which only spins up the server when in use.
This is problematic for my use case, because it takes a long time to publish a micropost, it often displays an error and there’s a high risk of double-posting.
A Much More Elegant Solution
Because micropub wasn’t working, I stumbled upon a different approach — creating and editing markdown files directly within the GitHub repo itself.
Unfortunately, GitHub’s native app doesn’t provide an efficient way to create and edit markdown files. That’s when I discovered Working Copy — an iOS Git client that GitHub should have been.
What’s more interesting is Working Copy’s integration with Shortcut Actions, which allows me to publish microposts via the action button on my iPhone. Hence, you can easily repurpose the shortcut to create your own customised templates or run via widgets or phone back taps.
Link to my shortcut: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/c6a068710cc848f3b5d0d98311e8d9fa
Shortcut in Action
I have two types of microposts — with photo and without. My shortcut differentiates the two based on whether the image is within my clipboard:
Note:
You’re able to change the note’s file destination and template by adjusting parameters within the shortcut.
This method only works on JPEG images.
This method assumes that you’ll be posting photos via YAML, rather than in-line. This requires adjustments to be made to layout HTML files with the following code, depending on where you need the image displayed.
<img loading=“lazy” src=“” alt=“Photo” style=“max-width:200px; height:auto;”>
Hopefully, this quick tutorial is helpful to you! Let me know if you have any questions below.
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CoThinking
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