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“Treat your to-read pile like a river, not a bucket. That is to say: think of your backlog not as a container that gradually fills up, and that it’s your job to empty, but as a stream that flows past you, from which you get to pick a few choice items, here and there, without feeling guilty for letting all the others float by.” (Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals)
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Finding the right time to exercise
One of my resolutions for 2025 is to exercise more. At a bare minimum, I aim to get a quick cycle in or walk at my desk (treadmill) for a while. I have the equipment, but I failed miserably in 2024.
Perhaps the reason for this failure is that I either scheduled my workouts first thing in the morning or late in the day, after work.
I find that in the early mornings, I don’t want to get out of bed, and when I’m finally ready, my mind is already working, writing, or occupied with some activity that I want to start right away. So, I tend to skip the workout, telling myself I’ll do it in the evening.
In the evenings, more often than not, I just keep busy with something right through my scheduled workout. Then, I’m exhausted and tell myself, “I’ll exercise in the morning.”
Over the past few days, I’ve tried a new technique. Mid-afternoon, when I start to get tired and still have things I want to accomplish, my brain begins to slow down. This seems to be the perfect time to get some exercise.
Forty-five minutes on the bike, and my blood is flowing, and my focus is back.
I’m fortunate enough to work from home and have a fairly flexible schedule that allows this mid-day break. If I have meetings, I can place the walking treadmill under my desk and at least get some steps in.
When I exercise regularly, I tend to eat better, sleep better, and feel better overall. No surprise.
I’m also hoping that talking about it motivates me to exercise more. I’m at the age where I need to do this NOW, or it will be too late.
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“You shouldn’t just envy the craftsman mindset, you should emulate it. In other words, I am suggesting that you put aside the question of whether your job is your true passion, and instead turn your focus toward becoming so good they can’t ignore you. That is, regardless of what you do for a living, approach your work like a true performer.” (Cal Newport, So Good They Can’t Ignore You)
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Starting 2025 with the Reflect notes app
On the surface, Reflect is as simple as it gets. When I open the app, I’m right on my daily note, when starting a new note, I get a blank screen. No toolbars, no bright shiny Share buttons, no distractions.
Under the covers, there is a lot to like:
- End-to-end encryption
- Markdown support
- Keyboard shortcuts
- Backlinks
- Image and PDF OCR
- A simple tasks interface
- Voice note transcription
- Built-in AI (OpenAI or Anthropic) for manipulating text, creating custom prompts, or even chatting with AI about selected notes
- Readwise (or direct Kindle) sync
- Import and export of notes in Markdown and other formats
Reflect feels like writing in the default notepad app on my OS, but with superpowers. The one big downside is the price tag: a $120 annual subscription. I’ve been using Reflect for a year and tried switching to Obsidian, but I keep coming back.
The Reflect YouTube channel is a great resource for anyone interested.
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“I try to avoid having thoughts. They lead to other thoughts, and-if you’re not careful-those lead to actions. Actions make you tired. I have this on rather good authority from someone who once read it in a book.” (Brandon Sanderson, Warbreaker)
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“Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don’t need to escape from.” (Peter Voogd, 6 Months to 6 Figures)
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Uptime, by Laura Mae Martin
Finished reading: Uptime by Laura Mae Martin 📚
A well-written productivity book that’s full of actionable advice. However, as someone who is a productivity nerd, I didn’t get too much from the book. I would recommend it for anyone who is new to the productivity space.
The book covers Top 3 priorities, saying no, creating lists, deep work, zero-based calendaring, finding your “power hours”, time reviews, procrastination, downtime (rest), using your environment, setting boundaries, creating plans, make the most out of meetings, mastering email, creating routines, meditation, and mindfulness.
The book is focused on what Laura calls the “5 C’s of Productivity”, which include Capture, Consolidate, Close, Calm, and Create.
Urgent once, take care of it, Urgent seventeen times … something is wrong with the system.
You can think of to-do lists like a funnel: start with the highest level of everything you could possibly do, or want to do, and narrow it down into what you actually will do hour by hour, based on time, energy, and priorities.
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“Loading everyone to 100% of capacity has the same effect as loading a highway to 100% of capacity: No one can make any progress.” (Mike Cohn, Agile Estimating and Planning)
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“Named after the economist Charles Goodhart, the principle states, “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”” (James Clear, Atomic Habits)
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“The map of reality is not reality. Even the best maps are imperfect. That’s because they are reductions of what they represent. If a map were to represent the territory with perfect fidelity, it would no longer be a reduction and thus would no longer be useful to us.” (Shane Parrish, Rhiannon Beaubien, The Great Mental Models)
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Switching from Kindle to Kobo: Initial Thoughts
I’ve been an Amazon Kindle user for about 14 years. This week, when deciding whether to upgrade to the latest Kindle Paperwhite, I instead chose to switch to Kobo to explore its offerings.
There are a few reasons that influenced my decision to switch:
- It lessens my dependency on Amazon.
- Kobo has seamless integration with library books through Overdrive.
- Kobo integrates smoothly with Pocket for reading articles.
I went through a lengthy process when trying to decide what to get and even went down a rabbit hole, looking at the Supernote Nomad, Boox Go 7, and even the Kobo Libra Colour. Based on my past experience with the reMarkable 2 and Boox Palma, I decided to stick with something small and simple.
I went with the Kobo Clara Colour, a small 6" color e-ink reader.
When it arrived yesterday, my first impression was, “Oh my lord, that’s tiny.” I immediately thought I should have gone with the Libre, which is larger and has hardware buttons.
However, as I started using it, I began to appreciate its lightness. It’s almost as if I’m just holding my hand in front of me, without anything in it.
I’m happy I chose the color version. It adds a nice touch, and I’ve been wanting to read some graphic novels, so the color will be a treat.
I think I enjoy the Kobo interface better than the Kindle’s. There are some nice shortcuts built in to make it easy to adjust the brightness and even switch to previous books in a snap.
The integration with Overdrive for library books works seamlessly. The Pocket integration works great as well. While I’m not a fan of Pocket, simply creating an account to use the browser extension and the Share action in Feedbin makes it a breeze to add articles to the Kobo for reading.
I started tinkering with Calibre to try and get my books from Kindle, as well as some ePubs I already have, onto the Kobo. The ePubs worked great, while I’m still struggling with the Kindle books. I’ve followed some online tutorials and tried multiple Calibre plugins, but I’m still not able to successfully download my Kindle books in the format Calibre needs to convert them to ePub. I’m not worried about it, though. I think I’m going to keep my Kindle anyway since I have probably hundreds, if not thousands, of ebooks and audiobooks on it already.
I’ll be sure to post any significant updates!
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“Learn to distinguish between events and interpretations. Events themselves do not upset us. Rather, it’s the stories we tell ourselves about those events.” (Epictetus, Sam Torode, Ancient Renewal, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The Manual)
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Books Read in 2024
Apparently, I read 15 books this year. It feels like it should be more, but if you count the several unfinished and discarded books, it would be closer to 20-25.
Unfortunately, Micro.blog seems to have lost the connection to my book notes for each completed book. My fault, for changing domains.
Check out my Bookshelf to see what I’m currently reading and what’s in my queue.
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“Life is the sum of what you focus on. Living the focused life is not about constant happiness, but about being mindful of what you allow in your mind, akin to tending a private garden. Your experience of the world is shaped by what you pay attention to.” (Deep Questions with Cal Newport, Ep. 311: Finding Focus in Distracting Times)
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AI, in its current state, is a rubber duck
I was listening to Scott Hanselman’s Hanselminutes podcast with guest Maggie Appleton, and they were talking about AI.
I agree with the discussion that LLMs (AI), in their current state, are best used for rubber ducking.
What is rubber ducking? It’s a term often used by developers where the idea is that you have a rubber duck on your desk that you talk through a problem with. You don’t necessarily need another person for this; often, you need to talk through the problem with yourself in order to discover the answer.
Today’s LLMs excel at this. Give it a prompt that will act as a guide. Tell it to ask you questions about the problem. Let it answer questions, but respond with more questions for you to answer.
The back-and-forth is invaluable for figuring out problems and thinking through topics. You can do this on your own, but a good LLM can give you a big boost.
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Cards Theme v1.9.8
I worked on a few updates to the Micro.blog Cards Theme today.
- New: New meta tags are automatically added to your head HTML. og:title, og:description, og:url fediverse:creator, and themecolor. The og: tags are for better interoperability with social media platforms. You can test your tags here.
- Added: In the plugin settings you can now enter your Fediverse Creator ID. Primarily supported by Mastodon, you can read more about this feature here.
- Updated: Updated the look of the default theme.
- Fixed: Your home page meta description will now use the header text in your plugin settings. Post pages will continue to use the post description.
Let me know if you use the Cards Theme and if you have any issues!
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Philips S9000 Prestige Shaver
I never believed I would buy myself a $299 electric shaver, but here we are. To be fair, I used Christmas money (from this year and last year that I never spent) and just a little bit of my own cash to pay for it.
Is the Philips S9000 Prestige worth it? I love this thing so far. It provides a nice and smooth shave. It’s also easy to clean since I purchased the model with the included cleaning and storage tub.
I’m using it to keep my head shaved, as well as my face (I have a beard, so not much to do there) and neck. Ideally, I will use this shaver every day, like brushing my teeth, since it only takes a minute or two to use it for maintenance.
I hope this thing lasts because I won’t be buying another one anytime soon.
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Red One, 2024 - ★★★★
I enjoyed this movie better than I thought I would. It was a good holiday action film. Very creative and entertaining.
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Whoop AI
I’ve been using the Whoop band for a couple of months now. My main reason for using Whoop is that I can wear it on my bicep and forget about it. Then, I get all kinds of data that I can use to improve my health.
I love data. But I hate digging for it.
One of the cool features is the use of AI within the Whoop app. With access to all of your data, the Whoop AI can tell you what you “should” be doing and give you better answers about what you did and how it impacts your health.
As a casual user, I appreciate this. Without digging through the app, I can ask things like, “How much time did I spend in Zone 2 this week?” and “How much time should I spend in Zone 2 this week?” and I get direct answers based on my data.
Even better, the daily insights usually provide the most relevant answers before I even need to ask them. I can see how much I should push myself today. It even provides recommendations of what workouts to do based on my past workouts. It’s pretty useful.
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A quiet week at work, a good time to reflect
Last week was pretty chill at work; everyone was wrapping up their tasks so they can start their time off for the holidays. You can tell nobody wants to start something new as they try to clear their plate. I do the same.
I find it’s a good opportunity to clean up systems and reflect on what’s working and what’s not.
I’ve been making heavy use of Azure DevOps lately. Not only for managing our project tasks, but also utilizing the Wiki for documentation, and even dabbling in Pipelines for some automated deployments. I’ve been cleaning up our projects in Azure DevOps and creating new processes to streamline our work.
It can be a challenge to find time to create and maintain documentation for work like mine (consulting work dealing with dozens of projects a year across several clients). Things tend to get forgotten or lost over time. I find a simple Wiki for each client is a great way to point the way, by containing documentation about how the solutions work, how to maintain them, and linking to any external documentation and resources.
