Drew Barontini's RSS Feed

Thinking in Notion

Tue, 29 Dec 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Productivity systems succeed only when they conform to your mental models for organizing information.

I’ve written extensively about Notion, my all-in-one system for goals, projects, notes, tasks, and a seemingly infinite collection of databases: books I’ve read and want to read, quotes I like, links I collect from around the web, movies and TV shows I’ve watched, and words and phrases I like. While I’ve spent the past few years constantly curating, refining, and evolving my system, I’ve watched a larger swath of people begin to adopt Notion, struggling to find the right setup for their own system.

The blank page can be overwhelming, which is where the Notion journey begins. Some newcomers will often try to adopt a drop-in solution from popular YouTube personalities, through inspiration from the Notion subreddit, or by poring over templates in the Template Gallery.

I think that’s the problem.

Notion excels when it becomes a reflection of your mental model for how you organize information. You can only realize that vision once you learn the fundamentals of "Thinking in Notion" — learning how to leverage Notion’s power and fluidity to transform new insights into effective systems.

When I open my Notion, it's like peering into my own brain. Notion becomes a reflection of my mental models for my own organization system. It’s mine. When I have a new thought, idea, project, or goal, I know where it goes, and I know how it ties to the larger system.

Whenever I help someone with their Notion setup, I show them mine as an example. I explicitly tell them to organize their Notion in a way that makes sense for them. Otherwise, it becomes another forgotten piece of software in our already-cluttered digital spaces.

Through the exploration of advanced Notion user’s setups, you can realize what’s possible in Notion. That, however, is not a replacement for the time it takes to build your own system. To do so effectively, you'll have to start, iterate, and evolve your system by Thinking in Notion.

Here are three rules I follow in regards to the idea of Thinking in Notion:

Everything is in one place.
Everything is a database.
Connections cultivate creation.

Everything is in one place.

Until 2019, I was using Notion for nearly everything. The primary holdout was task management, as I was still using Things for managing to-dos. Eventually I gave in, acknowledging the trade-offs of no recurring to-dos and the lack of a pre-built system for task management. However, I figured out a system for managing recurring to-dos in Notion, built my system for task management, and slowly evolved the system as it made sense.

There's real staying power in having a single source of truth. While there are applications better at task management than Notion, having my tasks in Notion means they're stored alongside my notes, projects, and goals.

Everything is a database.

At its most basic level, Notion is a collection of text-based pages. You can create text notes and format them with the usual WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) suspects like bold, italics, and underline. You can organize your notes into pages and nest them to your heart's content.

But where Notion really shines? Databases. You can think of these much like spreadsheets, equipped with superpowers of opening each record as its own page (and content), and viewing the data in different ways (views).

Types of database views

Here are the views in Notion:

Table — A spreadsheet-style database view with rows and columns.
Board — A Kanban board view.
Timeline — A Gantt chart view.
Calendar — A (monthly) calendar view.
List — A minimal list view.
Gallery — A visual gallery view.

You can visualize the same information in multiple ways. For example, let's say we have a database for our to-dos. We can view those in a Board, grouped by the status of each to-do (Next, In Progress, Complete, etc.). Or we can view them in a Calendar to show the to-dos with their respective due date.

Relations

The next level of power in the form of databases in Notion stems from the ability to relate separate databases together. The seminal example being projects and tasks. Typically you'll have a database for your projects and a database for your tasks, with a relation drawn between each in order to organize them separately — with their own properties and views — but connected to one another seamlessly.

Connections cultivate creation.

With specific views of our data and the ability to relate (or link) them together, connections are then drawn throughout the Notion system. These connections can seamlessly draw connections, achieving the ultimate goal of effortless creation through the cultivation of connection.

While viewing a task you can jump to its project, its goal, and then weave your way through the Notion system like the synapses firing in your brain. Your Notion becomes the neural network by which ideas turn into clear plans, alleviating stress, increasing trust, and driving creation through connection.

Start by Thinking in Notion.

Active Analysis

Wed, 02 Dec 2020 00:00:00 GMT

I recently watched The Social Dilemma and, although it contained information I was mostly already aware of, it generated new insights I've been struggling to articulate. I've intellectualized those insights by systemizing a process to combat the deeply engrained habits we've formed around acquiring information. I call this process Active Analysis.

Active Analysis is the process by which one proactively seeks out information rather than passively ingesting information from an algorithmically generated source.

In the current Attention Economy, the Facebooks, Instagrams, YouTubes, Twitters, TikToks, and you-name-it social platforms are competing for our attention. Why? Because our attention drives engagement which, in turn, drives ad revenue and, therefore, profit. America is a capitalist-driven country where profits triumph over all other priorities. Corporate behemoths are beholden to their shareholders to make money. And if Social Platform A doesn't spend every waking moment curating its algorithms to garner your attention, then Social Platform B will. So maybe it doesn't matter if that content is even true so long as it confirms our bias, opinion, or belief. Because, for every individual bias, opinion, or belief, there is a seemingly credible source of information that will confirm that bias, opinion, or belief.

For every individual bias, opinion, or belief, there is a seemingly credible source of information that will confirm that bias, opinion, or belief.

This has led to an epistemological crisis, creating a massive rift in how we view the validity of information — that is, how we perceive the objective truth. Gone are the days of fact-checking (what are your sources!?) and published retractions from reputable sources. This is the Internet, dammit! Everything is true! Walter Cronkite — coined "the most trusted man in America" — is no longer the source of trusted news. We're no longer operating on the same plane of truth, wielding our own versions of the truth as if we’re living in parallel versions of reality.

You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Eventually it hit me: Why not insulate myself from these algorithms and, instead, seek out the information I want to obtain? I don't need to stay a passive bystander to the degradation of objective and critical thinking. I have a choice, and I choose to actively analyze information by seeking out credible sources, contrasting to alternate viewpoints, and extracting digestible parts to improve my knowledge base.

Here are three tactics I’ve developed in my Active Analysis strategy:

Actively curate content to build intentional habits. This means seeking out answers to questions I pose myself, subscribing to specific newsletters, RSS feeds, and publications that I manually select. I don’t let the algorithm dictate my viewport, which means I can objectively evaluate the validity of each source.
Filter information through a verification and analysis process. I save articles into a database in Notion, where I can then process by reading, tagging, highlighting, and distilling the information into another Notion database I use as for collecting and synthesizing these sources into topics I aim to learn more about.
Dig deeper to uncover alternate viewpoints and contrast them against my own biases. I refuse to fall victim to feeding my own bias and mental models without opposition, which deepens empathy and understanding of the overall topic.

If we do not have the capacity to distinguish what’s true from what’s false, then by definition the marketplace of ideas doesn’t work. And by definition our democracy doesn’t work. Barack Obama

Plan Your Day

Tue, 25 Aug 2020 00:00:00 GMT

After much experimentation, I've settled on the following method for planning my day. And this method works at all time horizons (weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly).

1. Answer "What will make today successful?"

Review your goals and objectives to gain alignment. Determine which goals you need to move forward today. Where do you need to make the most progress?
Write outcomes that you'd like to see for a successful day today. An outcome is written as what you want to be true in order to work backwards against what you need to do in order to make it true.
Try and keep the list to 3-5 items. This depends on the time you have available — as well as the size of your to-dos — but in general it's a good rule-of-thumb to follow. Keep it manageable.

Example

I have written two chapters of my book
I have talked with Dave about the release
I have designed the book cover

2. Break the work down into tasks.

Create tasks to help you reach the outcomes you defined. With the end in mind, you can write out digestible to-dos to reach the outcomes.
Set appetites to define how much time you're willing to spend. An appetite is different than an estimate in that it defines how much time you're willing to spend on a to-do. It is a constraint that helps control and manage your time.
Prioritize the list based on what is most important (related to outcomes). Sort the list by what's most important so you can focus on the highest-priority item first. The priority order should correlate directly to the priority of the outcomes defined in the first step.

Example

Write Chapter 1 (2 hours)
Write Chapter 2 (2 hours)
Call Dave (30 minutes)
Design Book Cover (1 hour)

3. Commit time on the calendar.

Based on the appetites, create blocks in the calendar for each task. If you don't hold yourself accountable to a specific time in the day, it's easy to let things slip by. Add it to your calendar, and make any necessary adjustments as the day unfolds.
If there's not enough time, reassess your tasks or move to tomorrow. If you run out of time to complete the to-dos (based on the appetite), reassess the tasks, the appetites, or move it to the next day.
If something changes, reassess and update your calendar. Plans almost invariably shift, which is fine (and expected). Continue to reassess your calendar, tasks, and outcomes, reconfiguring accordingly.

Example

(9:00-11:00am) Write Chapter 1
(12:00-2:00pm) Write Chapter 2
(2:30-3:00pm) Call Dave
(3:30-4:30pm) Design Book Cover

Why does this method work?

The first step helps you align to your goals, which orients your work and planning against only the most essential and high-value work.
The second step helps you break down what you want to happen into digestible blocks of work as actionable tasks.
The third step forces you to constrain yourself against time, holding yourself accountable with realistic expectations.

This works for planning weeks, months, quarters, and years, too.

Although the focus is here on planning your day, you can use the same steps to plan next week, month, quarter, or year. Identify what would make the time unit successful, break the work down, and schedule time to do it.

When looking at longer time horizons (months, quarters, years), breaking the work down will often result in a project, which is a collection of tasks that work towards a single objective. And scheduling time will often result in recurring events, which can come to life as habits.

Year Example

1. Answer "What will make this year successful?"

I have run a 5k.
I have published a new book.

2. Break the work down into tasks.

5k Training (project with tasks like "Buy running shoes", etc.).
New Book (project with tasks like "Decide on title", etc.).

3. Commit time on the calendar.

(M-Th from 6:00-7:00am) Running
(Every day from 8:00-9:00am) Writing

No Regrets

Thu, 21 May 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Regret is a funny thing. Nearly all situations we encounter in life are replayed and dissected, each one's essence distilled into a "How could we have handled it better?" response. Sure, this is great for growth and learning from our experiences. But one could argue (I am!) that we would not have learned the lessons we needed to learn without regrets.

Don't think about them as "regrets."

What about learnings? Or experiences? Instead of thinking "I wish I would have done this," why not think "I'm glad I did that because I learned this."

Life is all about perspective.

Glass half-empty vs. glass half-full.

Looking on the bright side.

Optimism vs. pessimism.

There are endless phrases and expressions to talk about the contrasting perspectives in life. Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, in his book How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big puts it best:

The short answer is that over the years I have cultivated a unique relationship with failure. I invite it. I survive it. I appreciate it. And then I mug the shit out of it.

Failure and regret are two sides of the same coin generally. We usually can't have one without the other. The failure leads to regret. The regret came as a result of the failure.

But only if you don't embrace failure, and if you choose to live in your regrets.

Change your perspective. Embrace failure, learn from it, and make a decision to avoid feeling any regret because everything that happens to you happens because it needs to in order to get you where you need to be.

Living with regret is a needless time-waster. Live with life, experience, and the ability to look on the bright side.

Invest in Relationships

Wed, 20 May 2020 00:00:00 GMT

How you categorize and prioritize your relationships is important. I believe quality over quantity applies to relationships as much as anything else.

I'd always prefer a few close friends over a lot of "sort of" friends and acquaintances. But that's me. You need to decide for yourself what you want.

Either way, though, investing in the relationships we care about is what's important. But my quality-over-quantity principle does help here because there's less investment overhead with a smaller group of relationships.

Your family is always #1

But this is also another hidden land mine because family size varies drastically. Maybe you have double-digit siblings or cousins, or a lot of extended family.

But this is the best place to start. Focus on your immediate family and the closest relationships within your family. Keep track of birthdays, when you last talked to everyone, gift ideas, and little nuggets of information.

I'm notoriously bad at keeping up with my parents, sister, and brother. I'm great with my wife, son, and step-daughter because they are always right in front of me. But the rest of my immediate family isn't as much. So I have to make a concerted effort to track these things and reach out regularly.

It takes two

Don't invest in relationships that do not give anything back. If you're the only one making an effort, it's probably time to call it a day on that relationship — or at least until they reciprocate. The exception to that rule is children (and maybe your significant other). These are the types of relationships you should over-invest in, and work through the times when it feels one-sided.

Surround yourself with kindness and love

You should nurture relationships with people who make you laugh, smile, and feel like your best self. They should know you through and through, and you should feel comfortable in their presence. Don't waste time on drama. I hate it, and I've shed as much of it as I can.

We all have had those friends — and maybe still do — that just can't keep away from drama. They almost yearn for it. It's as if their very being and existence would shrivel up and die without the presence of effervescent drama. They crave it, and they want you to crave it, too.

Don't give into drama

Live a life free of it. Enjoy the healthy conflict that conditions growth. But don't confuse that with soul-sucking, narcissistic drama. It doesn't give. It only knows how to take.

Focus on the good. Cherish your best relationships. Enjoy your life.

Invest in Quality

Tue, 19 May 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Invest in quality products you need and actually use.

The older I've become, the more I've focused on owning quality items and products. I don't just want anything. I want something that serves the purpose, and serves it well — and is necessary to my life.

You may think this results in spending more money, but it doesn't. One hundred one-dollar items gets you to the same place as one one-hundred-dollar item. But only in terms of money — you will have a higher net-benefit with the quality item vs. the myriad of "junk".

I think this is why I like Apple products so much.

Yes, they are outrageously expensive — and growing with each passing day. But they're also well-made, high-quality products I know will last. And I know they will serve a clear purpose.

Quality > Quantity

Optimize for Energy

Thu, 14 May 2020 00:00:00 GMT

The two biggest learnings I've had about productivity and effectiveness are centered around the two most important components we have: time and energy.

The strength and vitality required for sustained physical or mental activity.
The definition of "Energy"

Most people assume the physical component of energy, but they'll often overlook the mental side of it. And that's the most important side when it comes to getting things done.

Identify your energy levels.

The first step is to identify your own energy levels. When are you most alert? When are you the most productive and effective? When are your sluggish? These are the types of questions you need to answer, and you need to be in tune with yourself to identify this.

Optimize your time around your energy.

Once you identify your energy levels — the highs and the lows — you'll be able to determine which blocks of time in your day are best-suited for specific tasks. For example, if you're most energetic during the morning, maybe that's the time to focus on more highly cognitive tasks: design work, development or coding, strategy, writing, and brainstorming. If, on the other hand, you are more sluggish after lunch (aren't we all?), then you can put some of the lower-energy tasks in that block: email, chat, administration, etc.

There's no sense wasting time on tasks when you don't have the time or energy. Focus on how you feel, identify where your energy levels are at its peaks and valleys, and then plan your day accordingly. Also, realize that not every day will be the same. Maybe you have less energy in the morning than usual because you didn't sleep well, so you need to perform different tasks.

Adapt, evolve, and focus your day.

Assume the Best

Tue, 12 May 2020 00:00:00 GMT

I do my best to believe other people are inherently good; that is, they want to do the right thing. And this is more tightly focused within the context of your particular environment.

I work at a company where we adhere to core values. These values are at the root of everything we do — we hire, fire, and promote based on them. So in the context of my work, I feel confident assuming the best in other people and their intentions.

When I go into a meeting with another person who has said something I didn't receive well, I assume no malcontent, and there was simply a misunderstanding. This is almost always the case.

I'm trying to do this more with other people and, particularly, with my children. My eleven-year-old step-daughter regularly partakes in activities that bring her psyche into question. The phrase "I don't understand." is regularly uttered in our household (by me and my wife). It's become so common, in fact, I think t-shirts — or a massive poster on the wall — would be a more efficient delivery vehicle for the phrase.

Even if the other party does indeed have malicious interests at heart, starting from the assumption that they don't is still the best move. Innocent until proven guilty, right?

The danger in assuming the worst is the story we make up in our heads. We build elaborate labyrinths of lies and misinformation, purely based upon a foundation of speculation and imagination. You can convince yourself of anything if you really want to. And other people and their intentions — rooted deeply in a primal instinct of self-preservation — is no different. We are competitors, genetically wired to stave of extinction.

So don't fight it. Force your brain to assume the best in other people and their intentions, and you can reframe the situation to one where you are in a position of power.

Introspection

Thu, 07 May 2020 00:00:00 GMT

My effectiveness and ability to get things done derives (partly) from being completely in touch with how I'm feeling at any given moment. This doesn't mean I always understand why, but I'm at least asking the questions to better understand why I'm feeling a certain way.

I don't think people do this enough.

I know it's not easy, but it's vital to self-health. And you can't really empathize or be more in tune with others feelings if you're not in tune with your own. This means thinking about the emotions you're feeling, understanding your energy levels, and, in a way, being there for yourself. Occasionally ask yourself "What's up?"; or just think more deeply about how you're feeling.

"I don't know." is a fine response. At least you're asking the questions. And that's the start.

Journaling is a fantastic way to try the process. The act of writing and exploring one's subconscious leads to a whole new avenue of mental thought and recognition. I do it every day.

You don't need to follow any format to start journaling. Pick a time each day, sit down, and just write everything in your head. You will find yourself exploring and asking questions that may have laid dormant before that moment it's called into question. That's great! Keep doing it.

There are no rules to journaling.

You can do it for as much or as little as you want. What matters is going through the exercise. We, as humans, are quick to acknowledge the necessity of exercising our bodies, but that same acknowledgement is infrequently proffered for mental exercise. Journaling, writing, and thinking are mental exercises that you should do to keep your mind sharp.

It's also great for recalling information later on.

I love being able to look back in my journal to uncover how I was thinking, what was going on, and how I was wrestling with it. This is great.

Now go write. And then keep writing.

Time

Tue, 05 May 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Time is the most important and valuable resource in life.

This is the recurring lesson I provide to anyone I give advice about productivity. Time is finite — it's our most finite resource. Productivity and effectiveness is about maximizing the time we have, which means it's about minimizing the time we spend on nonessential tasks.

But this also applies to general life stuff.

We only have one life, and we only get a limited amount of time with the ones we love. I've watched my son be born and — what seems like overnight — turn into a 18-month-old who is walking around the house and wreaking havoc. It's amazing, but also terrifying.

Things are going to end abruptly.

Death is a certainty. It's what makes life beautiful, but also tragic in the sense that we don't know when, and we really don't know how much time we have.

Cherish every second.

I do my best to maximize every second I have with the ones I love. And I work extremely hard to only spend time on what bring me the most value.

I encourage you to do the same.

One In, One Out

Thu, 30 Apr 2020 00:00:00 GMT

After reading The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo — a book about how to tidy up by discarding items that don't "spark joy" — I adopted a simple strategy: when I buy something new, I get rid of something old.

Anytime I buy something new, I will get rid of (via donation) a similar item. For example, if I buy a new jacket, I will give away an old jacket. It's essentially an upgrade system, but it encourages a minimal approach where you only have 1-2 items per category.

I've become increasingly tired of "stuff." I used to love buying new clothes, but now I absolutely hate it. I want a curated set of quality items I actually wear and enjoy. Everything else is a waste of money and space.

I like this system, and I've adopted it for everything, even technology. It helps me focus on the items that spark joy for me, and rid myself of unnecessary items that someone else could use.

Understand First

Tue, 28 Apr 2020 00:00:00 GMT

A common mistake I see in junior software developers is prescribing a solution before understanding the problem. You need to ensure you're solving the right problem with the right solution, which starts with understanding.

If you don't understand, ask questions.

There is no harm starting by asking more questions. Questions are the best way to learn more about anything. Even the act of thinking up questions will help you understand the domain of the problem.

With a clear problem-definition, we can then discover the right solution.

This is something that happens when we do Discovery Meetings with potential client partners at Differential. We don't say "Okay, thanks for telling us the problem. We'll figure out a solution and get back to ya." We ask a lot of questions to affirm our understanding of the problem. And through that exercise, we often uncover missing components of the problem — pieces that even the client didn't fully see before we asked.

The best solutions come from clearly defined (and narrow) problem definitions. But sometimes it takes work and time to get there.

Take the time to ask questions to gain a better understanding.

Don't Dwell

Thu, 23 Apr 2020 00:00:00 GMT

When someone says something that bothers you, don't dwell on it; follow up immediately.

Perception is everything. We all hear and perceive things in different ways. While this is normal, it's important to acknowledge so we can deal with it when we don't like what we hear or perceive. This happens to me on a regular basis in the working world.

I'm in a meeting and someone says something a particular way I perceive as hurtful. Or I read a comment in some project-management software or chat app that I react the same way to. No matter where and when it happens, my reaction is to immediately assume the worst — or, at least, it used to be. I think the other person meant it maliciously, and I start making up stories in my head about their intention.

DO NOT DO THIS.

The first step is to pull that person aside one-on-one and tell them how you perceived their comment. I guarantee it will be a misunderstanding to be immediately clarified. They will tell you they didn't mean it that way, you'll work through it, and move on. If that's not the case — and they did mean it maliciously — you don't want to work with or talk to that person anyways.

The alternative is much, much worse.

You will continue to dwell on what was said, making up stories, and your perception of what happened will grow uncontrollably.

If you work with good people, then it's almost always a misunderstanding to be clarified. We're human, and we say and perceive things differently. Acknowledge it, address it, and move on.

Tomorrow

Tue, 21 Apr 2020 00:00:00 GMT

I can't tell you how many times I've struggled with a problem at the end of the day only to solve it within 5-10 minutes the next morning. I don't know why that's the case, but it works. It could be the "sleep on it" method where our brains continue churning on the problem. It could be just walking away and coming back to gain a new perspective.

Now that I have this knowledge, I try and stay sensitive to it. If I'm ever in the position of trying to push through solving a problem at the end of the day, I'm quicker to call it a day and tackle it again in the morning.

Sometimes tomorrow is better than today.

Walk Away

Thu, 16 Apr 2020 00:00:00 GMT

One of the best ways to solve a problem is to walk away from it. Change the environment in which you're attempting to solve the problem. Give your brain space to think outside the narrow focus you've occupied.

Take a breath.

Whenever you take a deep breath in through your nose and out through your mouth, it's a refresher for you brain. It gets the juices flowing again — or can calm you down if the problem is a source of stress.

Take a walk.

I love taking a walk to think through a problem. It gives my brain time and space to breath. And it forces me to exercise and get the creative juices flowing. I can't tell you how many times a walk has given me just the solution or realization I needed.

Sleep on it.

There is science behind "sleeping on it" because our brains continue to think through the problem while we sleep. Now if that isn't the most efficient thing you can do, I don't know what is.

Breaking It Down

Tue, 14 Apr 2020 00:00:00 GMT

I believe most people fail to accomplish goals because they don't break them down. If you want to read 20 books this year, you need to find the first book, read the first chapter, etc. It's about breaking down the biggest item into the smallest step you can take forward — you may call this the "next action".

But you also don't need all the steps at once.

When I work on a new project or goal, my only initial step is to determine what is the one next thing I need to do. That's the most important. And when that's done, find the next one, and the next one, and so on and so forth.

Break it down to the single smallest unit to move forward.

The Little Things

Thu, 09 Apr 2020 00:00:00 GMT

In situations like the one we currently find ourselves in, it's an opportunity to focus on the little things. An opportunity to cherish every moment with your loved ones. When there is so much bad, we must focus on the good.

Whether it's a thoughtful note from my step-daughter, wishing me a good day. And this comes at a time when she has every right to be annoyed, frustrated, bored, and upset, an 11-year-old stuck at home, missing her friends, missing the outside world. But she took the time to share that with me and make my day.

Or it's watching the garbage truck with my son. We waved and thanked them for their service during these trying times.

Or taking a picture of my step-daughter for "School Spirit Day", a valiant effort by her school trying to make progress, to move forward.

Or my son relaxing and watching Toy Story (for the 100th time).

Or just taking pictures and making funny faces.

It's the little things.

Learning About Habits

Tue, 07 Apr 2020 00:00:00 GMT

There are two books I recommend for learning about habits: "The Power of Habit" by Charles Duhigg and "Atomic Habits" by James Clear. The Power of Habit explains the science behind habit-formation — including the formula we can use to build our own habits — while Atomic Habits provides a practical approach to habit-formation in our daily lives.

The reason I recommend these books so regularly is because of the power of habits. Their importance cannot be understated. They are fundamental building blocks to living our best, most-productive lives.

For each goal I set, there is almost always an associated habit to help me achieve it. For example, if I set a goal to read 12 books this year, then I need to build a reading habit. Or if I want to run a marathon, then I need to build a running and exercise habit.

Scott Adams, the creator of 'Dilbert', has famously said "Goals are for losers." While I don't entirely agree with his sentiment, I do believe the focus on goals over habits (systems) is where people miss. If you want to lose 10 pounds, setting the goal won't get you there. The habits — or "systems" as I like to think of them — will help you lose those 10 pounds.

Learn about habits to establish systems and hit your goals.

Should I Use?

Thu, 02 Apr 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Good ideas always come back. You don't forget about them. They sit in the corner of your mind, craving your attention. For me, Should I Use? was one of those ideas. This is the story behind the idea, building it, and finally releasing it.

Should I Use? is a web application that aims to help developers evaluate what JavaScript packages to use based on a baseline set of criteria.

The idea came to me years ago while using Can I use..., an indispensable resource for identifying which features are supported across browsers and versions. With the expanding popularity of JavaScript — and the explosion of third-party packages released on NPM — I felt a significant need for a tool to help evaluate which packages to use in projects. But instead of building it, I sat on it, waiting for someone else to build it.

And I waited...

And waited...

But it never happened.

Fast-forward to our 2019 company meetup...

I was talking with a few of my coworkers at Differential, explaining the idea stewing in my head for years. To avoid the headaches of releasing it under my personal brand (feedback, maintenance, support, etc.), I spoke with folks at Differential about releasing under Differential's brand.

Before I got the "green light", I decided to finally get it out of my head and build a very basic MVP of the product. I spent every spare minute I had building it. And once I received the official "green light", I built a more refined first version, opening up an Alpha version for internal testing. After getting feedback, I iterated and released the Beta. The feedback slowed, and we made plans to polish and officially release the v1.

https://shouldiuse.app is now officially live! 🚀

It's actually been live for some time, but we're officially announcing it, which is why I'm talking about it here and now.

I'm incredibly thankful to work for a company that invests in passions that align with the overall company vision. It's been a blast to build it, get feedback, iterate, and put something out into the world that will (hopefully) help developers everywhere.

While this is a tool for helping developers evaluate which packages to use, I hope, too, that it helps the open-source community by identifying projects in need of additional support. We're looking at more ways we can promote those aspects within the app. Stay tuned.

Some nerdy technical notes

It is hosted on Netlify.
The app is built in React using Create React App.
It uses a plain, vanilla style.css file with CSS variables.
It uses the npms and GitHub GraphQL APIs to fetch all the data.
It uses Apollo to connect to the GitHub API and run GraphQL queries.
It uses Downshift for the autocomplete search input.
It uses a state machine via XState for managing all of the logic.

This is the state machine, visualized courtesy of XState and its killer visualizer.

Scheduling Creativity

Tue, 31 Mar 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Creativity is free-flowing, open, and spontaneous work that cannot be confined, right? While occassionally true, creativity can be scheduled. You can dedicate a set time to being creative. And you can time-box it, too.

I regularly block off time in my calendar for "brainstorming." While it is a structured time for an individual focus, there are no rules around how I spend that time. I can sketch, write, walk outside, lay on the floor, and anything else, really. It's time to let my brain wander and explore new ideas and opportunities.

I've found this helpful when developing an idea or building a strategy. If I can't get through it by writing, I will schedule time to brainstorm, and then the activity is fulfilled by whatever I'm feeling on that given day/time.

Try it. Block off time on your calendar to think. It's wonderful.

Coping in Times of Uncertainty

Thu, 26 Mar 2020 00:00:00 GMT

The world is facing a pandemic: the novel coronavirus is spreading exponentially, most people are isolated, our daily lives have radically changed, and we don't know when it will end. Each day beckons an endless stream of bad news, offering nothing short of tremendous anxiety.

It's overwhelming.

This is my strategy for dealing with isolation and the stress of the unknowns in front of us. You might say I cope by developing a strategy for coping.

Habits & Routines

Stick to a schedule and routine

It's important to stick to a schedule and routine, particularly in times of uncertainty. You need to control what you can, which is why I double-down on my scheduling, habits, and routines during times such as this.

My step-daughter has no school, but we still take the morning walk (with my son in tow on his wagon). We follow a similar route past the school and head back home. And we're keeping the same school schedule at home, too. This consistency helps provide stability for the children (and us parents as well).

I work from home, so my weekly routine is the same. On the weekend we're not going out, but still maintaining as much consistency as we can.

Consistency is important.

Build new habits

There are already articles exploring what life will look like once the pandemic loosens its grips on the planet. The world is rapidly changing, and habits are invaluable for forcing positive changes.

I'm building a better habit for when and how I wash my hands. Before I eat and whenever I come back in from being outside, I wash my hands rigorously, following the appropriate guidelines.
I'm building a new habit for keeping up with the news. I check Twitter and news sources I trust at the beginning and end of the day.
I'm building a new habit for getting outside. I'm walking my dog morning and night, taking my kids out in the morning, and trying to get outside with the family more on the weekend.

The world is changing rapidly, and habits are invaluable for forcing positive changes.

These are only a few examples. I hope to continue and grow positive habits that I can carry forward in my life post-pandemic.

Exposure Management

Stay informed, but don't mainline the news all day

The news wants you to believe there are new breaking developments at the top of each minute. There are not. You don't have to stay glued to a screen to be informed. In fact, doing so increases your anxiety levels.

You don't have to stay glued to a screen to be informed.

Find the right balance for yourself.

Don't continually check the news, but don't ignore it, either. I check it at the beginning of the day (morning) and the end of the day (night). I subscribe to a few email subscriptions that deliver breaking-news alerts, but I can control when I check my email. That way, I can get the latest information without it dominating my mental health (and attention).

Evaluate the content you ingest

All news is not created equal. And, sadly, all news is not even the truth. For any bias or opinion we hold, there is a source of information out there to confirm or deny that bias or opinion. Make sure you properly vet and research any article you read.

For any bias or opinion we hold, there is a source of information out there to confirm or deny that bias or opinion.

I've found success in following data sources and a small contingent of reputable news sources for deeper learning on the pandemic. In order to keep my family safe — and do my part as a citizen of the world — I need to be informed and aware of the situation.

Gratitude

Be grateful for what you do have

It's easy to focus on what is bad right now. There's a lot of bad right now; there's no denying it. But we need to refocus our attention towards what we are grateful for, the good we have in this moment.

I live in Florida. It's warm and the sun is shining nearly every day.
I have a happy and healthy family, all things considered.
I get to work from home.
My wife has the capabilities to take care of my son and continue schoolwork with my step-daughter so she doesn't fall behind.
We live in a community that makes it easy to walk outside and practice social distancing.
We have power and internet. Having lived through several hurricanes, being locked inside with no power is no fun.
We live in a world with doctors, nurses, health-care professionals, grocery-store workers, factory workers, couriers, waste-management professionals, and many more valiant people risking their lives to help us maintain a semblance of our routine lives.

I encourage you to answer "I am grateful for…", listing three things you are grateful for each day.

Focus on the good things

In addition to being appreciative for what we have, it's also important to try and focus on the good. One might contrast this as being pessimistic vs. being optimistic, but I like to view it as finding the good in the bad.

This won't be the last pandemic we face. This experience will hopefully help us better understand the next enemy in the future.
We could potentially learn better societal and culture habits, like proper self-care, appreciation for in-person time with extended family and friends, and so on.
Ben Gibbard from Death Cab for Cutie has been livestreaming himself playing songs on acoustic guitar, which is a delight.

One might contrast this as being pessimistic vs. being optimistic, but I like to view it as finding the good in the bad.

Connection

Leverage technology to connect with family and friends

Another new habit we've built in our household is FaceTiming with my parents every night after dinner. We talk about our days — as boring and isolated as they may be — and connect with one another to continue our solidarity amidst this crisis. Isolation doesn't have to be isolating when we have modern technology to bring us together.

If you haven't, send a text to your mom, dad, grandparent, brother, sister, or any other family member or friend you don't connect with regularly. Ask them how they are doing.
Use an online platform to join or create a new digital community.
Find additional ways to leverage technology to keep from feeling isolated.

Isolation doesn't have to be isolating when we have modern technology to bring us together.

Practice deep empathy towards all humans

COVID-19 doesn't care about your gender, your geography, your political leanings, your sexual orientation, your religion, race, or creed. We are all humans persevering together.

We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.
Martin Luther King Jr.

When you look at the latest data, don't just focus on where you live. Look at China and how they are recovering. Learn from how well South Korea has handled the pandemic. Keep Italy in your thoughts and read about their struggles. Connect with anyone you know in different parts of the world.

This is all our world.

Narrow Focus

Take it one day at a time

Although it's an oft-used cliché, take it one day at a time. We don't know what it's going to look like in a week, month, or year. It's not important right now. What matters is focusing on the here and now: today.

Do your part

Our job right now is to stay home and practice social distancing when we leave the house out of necessity. And we do this to "flatten the curve" and prevent the health-care system from being overwhelmed. We do this to slow the spread and save lives.

We will do our part.

I will continue to reiterate this message to my family. We will do our part.

Nothing in Perpetuity

Tue, 24 Mar 2020 00:00:00 GMT

I struggle with stopping what I start. It feels like quitting; not following through; leaving a trail of unfinished work. But that's not the case. Time is too finite and too short to spend on activities you don't enjoy.

Several years ago, I established a schedule to publish a new article every two weeks. I enjoyed the routine for awhile, but I continued far past the expiration date. It felt like homework; it felt like a chore. And after a year of writing and publishing articles every two weeks, I called it. The activity was no longer providing me fulfillment and value.

It was time to move on.

I continue to struggle with letting things go. But I'm getting better at realizing things don't have to be done forever, in perpetuity.

It definitely has a lot to do with goals.

I enjoy goal-setting, breaking down projects, creating tasks, and establishing habits. But the Future Drew doesn't always agree with what Past Drew set out to do (hey, that rhymed!). Sometimes I set a goal for the next year, but by the time I'm deep into it I realize I have no energy and desire for it.

That's when it's time to call it.

Perhaps I need to start thinking about how far I set my goals out. Maybe I don't go past 1-3 months. Maybe yearly goals aren't as valuable as I think if they are a forcing-mechanism for activities that become a burden.

Don't burden yourself with inessential activities you don't enjoy. Spend time on the things that matter. And if you set a schedule or goal that is no longer serving your energy, let it go.

Find the next thing that will.

Reaction

Tue, 17 Mar 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Sometimes we think we have control, but we really don't. And sometimes we really want control, but we can't have it. And I believe those situations are the most stressful — the ones where we want control, but it's unattainable.

The only thing you can truly control is your reaction to what happens.

There's power in controlling your response when something bad happens. If you respond poorly, you're going to compound it and make it worse. But if you respond well to bad things, you're telling the Universe that you can handle it, and you know it happened for the right reason.

There is learning in failure. There is no sense in dwelling on the past or holding regrets. It's not worth it. Those things happened and, presumably, are the only reasons you're sitting where you are right now, today. Don't take that for granted. All the experiences we go through lead us to the next one and the next one. They are important parts of our journey.

So the next time something bad comes up, think hard about how you want to respond. Because that could be the difference between stunting emotional and intellectual growth versus evolving into a better version of yourself.

Control your reaction.

Staying Focused

Thu, 12 Mar 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Glowing screens beckon for attention, chat applications bounce with new messages, notifications effortlessly slide onto the screen, and the endless list of to-dos continue to pile up. The only way to perform deep, quality work is through focus. And in order to stay focused, we need more than turning on "Do Not Disturb".

Focus is about attention and energy. In order to stay focused, we need to give adequate attention with the appropriate energy level.

But how?

Batch tasks.
Create review routines.
"Time Block" in your calendar.
Create a focus routine.
Practice, practice, practice.

1. Batch tasks

"Batching" is a concept for completing similar tasks together. For example, if you were to batch household tasks, you might do the following together:

Do the dishes.
Start the laundry.
Take the trash out.

Batching allows you to group your tasks, which makes it easier for the following steps.

2. Create review routines

I have three review routines I run each day:

Morning Review — The first checklist I go through each morning when beginning work.
Afternoon Review — The checklist I go through after my second focus block of work.
Evening Review — The checklist I go through before shutting down for the day.

These review routines allow me to batch specific tasks into prescheduled times throughout the day. They are each a 30-minute calendar event. Since they are during the work day, I have these in my work calendar, which means they show me as "Busy" during these times, which I am.

Morning Review

There are four parts to my Morning Review:

Reset — Clear out my email, notifications (Basecamp, GitHub, Slack), and all of the links I've collected in my "Links" database in Notion from the night before.
Reflect — Review my notes, thoughts, ideas, wins, and write my daily journal entry.
Review — Go through my tasks in Basecamp and GitHub, review my calendar, weekly objectives, current projects, and the tasks for the week.
Respond — Go through any additional routines on this day (beginning of the month, end of the month, blog routines, etc.), follow-ups for emails that are in a "Follow Up" label in Gmail, prep for any meetings, and write my "Day Plan" (what I'm focused on for the day).

This review is the longest and most important of the review routines.

Afternoon Review

There are two parts to my Afternoon Review:

Reset — Same steps as the Morning Review.
Review — Same steps as the Morning Review.

Evening Review

The Evening Review is the same as the Afternoon Review. This one is important because the objective is to leave a clean slate at the end of the day so I can go enjoy time with my family.

3. "Time Block" in your calendar

"Time Blocking" is a technique for carving out time to do your best work, all while keeping yourself accountable and on task. From "Time Blocking"

"Time Blocking" — in conjunction with batching tasks in review routines — allows you to both plan your time and defer your attention. You are planning your time by assigning a type of work to a specific time in your day. And you are deferring your attention by having scheduled time to review and catch up on what you've missed during your focused time.

Plan your time, defer your attention.

Planning your time and deferring your attention prepares you for deep, focused work, which brings us to the next step, creating a focus routine.

4. Create a focus routine

A "focus routine" is a set of steps you can follow any time you need to stay focused. This is entirely dependent on how you work best, but I can speak to my routine as an example.

When I have a "focus block" (at least one hour, at most two hours), I know I need to run my focus routine in order to get into the right headspace. And these "focus blocks" are based on my "ideal day" (I talk about this in "Time Blocking"), which means the review routines are conveniently situated around these "focus blocks" to maximize my energy and attention, the two critical components to staying focused.

Here's my focus routine:

I put my standing desk in the standing position.
I make sure I have plenty of water.
I turn on "Do Not Disturb" (on all devices).
I quit any applications that are not related to the work I'm about to do.
I put on headphones.
I fire up music to match my mood or the work I'm doing (coding, designing, writing, etc.).
I turn on the noise-cancellation in my headphones.
I get to work.

5. Practice, practice, practice

Even if you do everything exactly right, notifications and distractions will inevitably slip in during your focus time. They come in the form of external and internal distractions.

External distractions include people coming up to your desk (if you're in an office), people walking by outside (if you work from home), etc.

Internal distractions include remembering something you were supposed to do, thinking about something you saw on Twitter, the urge to check your email, etc.

Meditation is a great way to improve your ability to focus. I highly recommend implementing a daily ten-minute meditation routine, which you can do within any of your review blocks.

Distractions are impossible to avoid, but you can take steps to mitigate and control their negative effects. Group similar tasks by "batching", create review routines, block out time in your calendar, build a focus routine, and continue to practice and fine-tune these methods to stay focused.

Nobody is Ready

Tue, 10 Mar 2020 00:00:00 GMT

"Do you think I'm ready to be a leader?"

Whenever I'm asked this, I always answer the same way — "No." Nobody is ever ready to become a leader when the time comes. You don't get out of bed one day and say, "Yes, today is the day I am ready to lead!" That's not how leadership works. Hell, that's not how anything in life works.

If you aren't uncomfortable, you aren't growing.

With growth inherently comes discomfort. It means you are doing something you haven't done before — or doing something before you're ready. That's a natural part of the growth process. And it's a good thing!

There's an adage in building software that goes something like "if you ship when you're ready, then you've shipped too late." If you keep waiting until you're "ready", then you've waited too long. If you want to lead, just do it. If you want to learn a new skill, dive in. If you want to grow, get comfortable being uncomfortable. Embrace the discomfort.

Small Windows

Thu, 05 Mar 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Being a good partner is about knowing when and how to support your partner. It's about finding those small windows at just the right time. You don't need to move mountains. You just need to create small windows of time where your partner can catch their breath.

Identify the right time: the when. Listen and genuinely pay attention to your partner's words, mannerisms, and demeanor. Identify the point at which they need their small window.

Give them their window: the how.

Have they been spending all day with screaming kids? Take the kids out of the house and give them quiet for 30 minutes.
Have they spent all day cleaning up after everyone? Do the dishes and clean up the house while they get a chance to catch their breath.
Are they stressing about making a decision on something? Ask them if they want to talk about it, or if there is any support you can provide.

Small windows are different for everyone. We want different things at different times. What's important is identifying when it's time to provide someone their small window. And taking the right steps to deliver.

Appreciation

Tue, 03 Mar 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Appreciation was a big theme in 2019, and I've grown increasingly focused on it, particularly as a parent. It's an important concept when teaching kids about the "things" they get (and have) in life.

For my step-daughter, this is becoming increasingly difficult. Her friends have things, she sees things, and she wants things. Her perspective shifts to focus on everything she doesn't have.

This isn't good.

Appreciate what you have, or you'll never appreciate what you receive.

If she gets anything (phone, computer, car, etc.), someone will always have a nicer phone, computer, or car. And if you're living with wishful thinking, you'll never appreciate the phone, computer, or car you do have. More importantly, you won't appreciate the life you have that even allows you to afford a phone, computer, or car. Or even just being alive in general.

It's hard, though.

We live in a consumer world where we're constantly driven to believe we need the latest and greatest gadgets. If we don't, we must be living an unfulfilled life, right?

No.

A fulfilled life is one where your heart is full and you are with the people you love.

When we look back on our life, we're not going to think about all the "things" we didn't have. We're going to think about the time with our loved ones. We're going to ache for just one more day, hour, or minute with them.

That is what matters.

But it's okay to indulge from time to time. I love Apple products and the new-and-shiny things I can buy. However, it's all about maintaining perspective. Focus on what matters so you can appreciate what is in front of you.

And to do so before time runs out.

Time is finite. And it moves faster than we want. I'm watching my son and step-daughter grow and change in the blink of an eye. It's beautiful, but it's also terrifying. I cherish every second.

I hope you do the same.

Weekly Planning

Thu, 27 Feb 2020 00:00:00 GMT

When it comes to looking ahead, I don't care about the month, the quarter, or the year. I care about the week. I work hard to distill all my high-value tasks into a "Weekly Plan" to maximize my output. I do this through "Weekly Planning", the practice of crafting a plan for the week ahead.

Every Friday, I set aside an hour to perform Weekly Planning.

It's common to hear recommendations on doing Weekly Planning on Sundays. I don't. I believe strongly in removing myself from "the grind" and focus of the work-week on the weekends. I want to focus on time with my family. This also has the effect of heightened-focus during the week because I know the weekend is unavailable time.

There are two steps to my Weekly Planning:

Review. In order to look ahead, we first need to look behind. What went well last week? How are my goals and projects progressing? This serves as a retrospective for the past week in order to inform the structure and iterative improvements of the upcoming week.
Create. Now it's time to create our plan, which, for me, comes to life as a custom page in Notion, combining next week's objectives and a day-by-day breakdown of my tasks.

You don't have to use Notion to create a Weekly Plan. As I've proffered before, the tools matter far less than the underlying principles. What matters is taking the time to look ahead proactively vs. reactively responding to changes that arise.

Review

In the first part of Weekly Planning, I review:

Wins
Thoughts & Ideas
Notes & Learnings
Calendar & Events
Goals
Projects
Future Tasks

Wins

What are the accomplishments — big and small — from this past week? It's important to identify and track our victories to not lose the forest through the trees. Take time to appreciate the great work you've done.

I merged in a big Pull Request I was working on.
I had a great 1:1 with another team member.
etc.

Thoughts & Ideas

I have a Notion database (called "Incubator") for capturing thoughts, ideas, questions, and all the fast-and-loose minutia not quite ready for action.

Each item follows a Kanban-style flow through three phases:

Identify
Discuss
Solve

This is a method for solving problems from "Traction" by Gino Wickham.

The short version:

Identify the root cause of the issue.
Discuss possible solutions.
Solve the issue with a clear solution to test.

Regardless of how this manifests in your system, it's vital to document and review your thoughts, ideas, and notes. Don't disregard them to gather dust in the corner of the closet (of your mind?).

Take time to review all of these items to integrate into your mental model as you look ahead to next week.

Notes & Learnings

I have another Notion database (called "Mind Palace", a shout-out to Sherlock Holmes' "Mind Palace") for capturing learnings.

If I read an article that resonates with me, or listen to a podcast with nuggets of wisdom, or go deep into learning a new technical topic, I document it in my "Mind Palace" database. This is a place to regularly revisit and identify ideas, methods, and practices I can implement in the next week.

If you keep notes on the content and information you ingest, review it.

Calendar & Events

I review my calendar for the next week, both personal and work. I want a full understanding of my time. How many meetings and events do I have? How much time do I have for deep, focused work?

Before I decide on the what, I need to know the when.

Being realistic with your time puts you on the path to an effective week.

Goals

I'm flexible with goals. Some of my goals are short-term (a month out), some of my goals are long-term (by end-of-year). I add and remove goals regularly, constantly assessing each one's value to my vision and mission. They have clear objectives and key results (OKRs), which make it easy to know when they're complete.

A goal exists to provide guardrails for my time and energy on the most high-value work. If it's no longer serving that purpose — or circumstances change and redirect its need to exist — I get rid of it. Don't be afraid to remove goals that no longer serve you.

I review my goals to identify the right focus for next week.

Projects

Projects are encapsulated areas for tracking related tasks anchored on a single objective. They are the life-blood of my system, vehicles by which goals are completed.

My general rule of thumb is this: if there is more than one important task necessary to complete an objective, it's a project. I have these tracked in Notion — and through the power of Notion's relational databases — I link them directly to my goals in a separate database.

I review each project's objectives, key results, tasks, notes, and resources.

Future Tasks

While it's true I don't care about units-of-measurement beyond a week, reality necessitates keeping track of tasks further out. I use my "Horizon" database in Notion to hold all tasks across a timeline beyond the current week: next week, this month, next month, this quarter, and this year.

Having a dedicated space for these tasks allows me to remove the distraction of what is in front of me, and focus only on the current week.

I review this list, focusing on the tasks in the "Next Week" bucket, which is now relevant to the Weekly Plan I'm putting together.

Create

With all parts of my system reviewed, it's time to create the Weekly Plan.

Add events to my calendar. I block out my time for focus blocks through a strategy called "Time Blocking". At this point, I've officially "locked in" my week and will not accept new meeting invites unless there are extenuating circumstances.
Create new habits. If I need to establish a new habit in the next week — which is something I'm constantly experimenting with — I'll create the habit and set it up in my habit tracker.
Set highlights. I stole the term "highlight" from the book "Make Time" by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky, which recommends setting a "highlight" for each day to steer your focus. In that same vein, I like to set three highlights for the next week, which are written as outcomes based on the highest-priority goals I'm focusing on. For example, "Release the first version" could be a highlight. This would be tied to a goal and achieved through a project.
Update projects. I go through each project and add at least one action-item to move the project forward.
Add tasks. Finally, I add all my tasks across the week, focusing on Monday to Friday, occasionally working in household tasks for the weekend. I make sure each task is assigned to a specific day based on the focus blocks I have available that day.

Adapting to a change in the plan

Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. Mike Tyson

Having a plan is great, but how can we handle things going south? Do we abandon our plan and react to whatever hits us?

No.

The plan — and the activity of creating the plan — narrows our focus on the essential. When things change, we now have a barometer for handling it. We know our goals; we know our projects; we know our highlights; we know what time we have.

That is what matters, and it's how we adapt to whatever is thrown our way.

Saying No

Tue, 25 Feb 2020 00:00:00 GMT

At the beginning of 2017, I read the book "Essentialism" by Greg McKeown. The book covers, in-depth, the idea of focusing on only the most-essential tasks. In order to do this, you need to prioritize your time; you need to say "No."

If you don't learn to say "no" to what you don't want to do — and "yes" to the things you really want to do — then someone else will dictate your time and priorities. Your email inbox will fill up with requests; your chat application will shout at you; your calendar will be filled with meetings and events. Other people will control your time and attention.

Time is our most valuable resource. So why would we give it away?

Saying "No" to something is saying "Yes" to something else. Jason Fried

If we say "no" to something — or, more importantly, someone — we're not telling them we don't care about them. We're saying "yes" to what really matters to us. And once we get to that place, it's freeing, like the feeling of closing your eyes and taking a deep breath.

The next time someone asks you to do something — or invites you to an event (party, meeting, etc.) you don't have the time for — say "no".

Because "No." by itself is blunt (and potentially harsh), it's often helpful to provide transparency into your reasoning.

I'm sorry. I have existing commitments and objectives I'm focused on, so I won't have time to be in the meeting you invited me to.

If you don't prioritize your time, someone else will.

Working Remote

Thu, 20 Feb 2020 00:00:00 GMT

This is everything I've learned about working full-time remote (and at home) the past several years.

Have a dedicated workspace

If you work at home, this means having a real office. This doesn't mean your bedroom, the living room, or any other space within the house whose sole purpose is NOT for quiet, focused work.

This is important for a lot of reasons.

You need to be able to turn work on and off. Having a dedicated space means you can "go to work for the day," even without leaving the house and driving to the office. You're not just going to open your laptop wherever you may be in the house. You have a space to separate yourself, to truly and deeply focus on work. And when the day is over, you leave your dedicated space and you're done with work.

When you work, work hard. When you’re done, be done. Cal Newport

You need to be able to focus. You need a place where you can block out all distractions. I have two kids, one being a 16-month-old boy who likes to be a boy, banging, climbing, and, ~~ocassionally~~ regularly, yelling. And he should be able to do that without impeding my focus. Now this is possible, in part, due to the noise-cancellation on the AirPods Pro 🙏(bless you), but also because I have a dedicated, closed-off space.

You need to present yourself properly. When I was building my office, my goal was to have a visually pleasing backdrop for my video calls. I spend a lot of time on video calls. And a lot of those calls are with clients. So my space needs to be professional and appealing, unlike the disheveled, ill-lit backdrops I've occupied in the past.

You need fast and reliable internet. Hopefully your geographic location provides this affordance because it's a must. Video calls eat up a lot of bandwidth, so having fast and reliable internet is crucial. It's worth the extra money squeezing out every drop of speed you can.

You need to be comfortable in your space. Set up your workspace with comfort in mind. For me, that's with a nice chair, standing desk, and ergonomic keyboard/mouse. I am comfortable and productive when I'm working. It's my space, and that's important.

If any of these constraints are impeded, look for a co-working space in your hometown. There are a vast array of sites to help you find them, so this is always another option to explore.

Establish a routine

Establishing a clear routine and schedule gives me full control over my time. This is vital to successfully working at home because it's easy to fall victim to the whims of "things happening in the house".

This one comes naturally to me. I crave routines, habits, and schedules. So if you find it more difficult to do this, I recommend working on Time Blocking to more effectively plan your time.

Go outside

It's rare that I get in the car and drive somewhere during the work week. And since I'm spending all my time in the house, it's important to get outside.

I'm fortunate to live in a community with an abundance of parks, walking paths, and open areas. I walk my step-daughter (with my son in tow on his wagon) to school every morning. And my 16-month-old is obsessed with being outside, so that helps, too.

Make sure you're getting fresh air, even if that means taking a break during the day to walk outside. There are massive benefits beyond avoiding isolation, such as improved problem-solving. Don't avoid it!

Talk to other humans

My wife stays at home with my son, so I get most of my social interaction with them. I also connect regularly with my team members at Differential through meetings and pairing sessions.

Find the right balance of social interaction to keep you happy and healthy.

I'll never go back to working in an office that isn't my own. Me, nearly every day

I have never been happier and more productive. This is how I want to work.

Writing

Tue, 18 Feb 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Writing is fantastic for many things. It's a tool for communication, a vessel for gaining clarity, and a proving ground for ideation. But, most of all, writing is one of the most important activities for mental health.

Emptying your thoughts into words that can be read back, thought through, and more deeply understood is a freeing experience. It seems simple, yet it's quite powerful. I journal in the morning with a continuous flow of thoughts on "paper". I don't think — I just write. This allows my untapped thoughts to freely express themselves, which means I can unlock ideas and problems brewing under the surface.

You will be surprised how much you can uncover through writing.

Reflecting your thoughts in writing will uncover those hidden gems in your own mind — thoughts, ideas, "aha!" moments, and much more. It's freeing, and it's beautiful. It's an excellent habit for mental health.

But what if you don't know what to write about? How can you get started?

Create a list of prompts.

For example, here are the prompts I'm using in my daily journal. At the beginning of the day, I answer these three:

I am grateful for...

Daily Affirmation...

I'm thinking about...

At the end of the day — which usually means the following morning — I answer these two:

The highlight for today...

How could today have been better?

These work well as a more "guided journaling" experience. So if you struggle with what to write, try creating a list of prompts.

This also works for long-form writing on a single topic. For example, all of my 30 Lessons started from a one-sentence description. I took that and blocked off time to write freely. So, in that sense, it was a prompt, too.

Find what works best for you. Now go write something!

Development Principles

Thu, 13 Feb 2020 00:00:00 GMT

One of the great parts of software development is the ability to solve a given problem in a variety of ways. But that’s also an aspect that makes it challenging and, at times, frustrating. Just like core values can help evaluate and guide your choices, so, too, can a set of "Development Principles".

Here are my Development Principles.

Establish conventions.

Spend the upfront time establishing conventions and guidelines for how to write and organize code so you don't have to waste the cognitive energy later.

Ask questions.

There are no bad questions. Any question will help unlock more knowledge and insight into why something was done. The developer who wrote the code should be able to explain why they did it that way. If they can't, it's an opportunity to Strive for clarity.

Narrow the scope.

Continually refine the scope of the problem so that the solution is narrow in focus, making it easier to reason about, and easier to refine over time. The goal is to make the least amount of changes to solve the problem.

Strive for clarity.

Don't try and be terse for the sake of being terse. Name a variable what it is and does. Reading code should make sense. Make it clear to other developers what the code does and why it does it.

Be intentional.

When you do something, make sure your intentions are clear, and it is geared towards solving the root problem. Don't let your Pull Requests change 10 different things. Narrow the scope.

Don't overthink it.

Keep it simple, and make the solution as clear and as simple as possible. No code is perfect, and code, like any text, is an iterative function that evolves over time.

Favor real use-cases over edge-cases.

There will always be edge-cases and things lurking in the unknown, so make sure to err on the side of real use-cases that solve real user problems. Don't overthink it.

Focus on the user.

The code is meant to solve problems of an end-user. Keep the focus on them primarily, and secondarily on other developers — the users of the code itself. Think first that you're writing this code to solve a real pain a user is feeling, and you're also writing it so another developer can understand it and improve it in the future.

Principles

Tue, 11 Feb 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Throughout my career, I have experimented with a vast array of methodologies around productivity, organization, software development, and product management. The more experience I've gained, the more I've realized actual prescriptions matter far less than the underlying principles of those methodologies.

Why, though?

Because you create a more flexible and sustainable system when it has clear guiding principles. You're able to evolve and grow your system without abandoning the principles you fortified. And you can add new principles, change existing ones, and use that as your lens for building changes into the system.

Let's look at a quick example, shall we?

At Differential , we used ZenHub heavily for some time many moons ago. Because of this, a lot of our documentation for our Product Teams was centered around using the specific features and tools inside of ZenHub. But then we took a step back and thought about the underlying principles.

How do we handle "estimates" and scoping out work?
How do we think about the process of creating an issue to work on?
What is the overall flow (pipeline, stages) an issue goes through?

When we thought about these questions at a higher level, we ignored the tool. We didn't care whether it was in ZenHub or GitHub or GitLab or what-have-you. We only cared that the underlying principles were followed to achieve the most amount of value.

This applies in a variety of places. Try and think about the apps, products, and tools you use, and determine what the underlying, abstract principles are for that tool. You will then be able to create more flexible and sustainable systems.

Your Craft

Thu, 06 Feb 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Your work is a reflection of yourself, your values, and your commitment to what matters. Regardless of what you do in life, take pride in your work. What you do is far less important than how you do it. That is your craft.

There is an excellent crossing guard at my step-daughter's school. He excels at what he does, at his craft. The cross-walk he controls contains a four-way stop and kids funneling in from all directions. Florida is not known for its precision drivers, and humans are not known for their ability to comprehend the intricacies of a four-way stop. Yet somehow he orchestrates it all.

The adage about "not knowing what you have until it's gone" is never more evident than when he isn't working on a given day. He is replaced with either a random volunteer or a miscellaneous police officer. Sure, they get the job done. Traffic gets into the school, kids walk successfully across the cross-walks. But it is noticeably different. It just doesn't work the same way. His mere presence brings an aura of control.

And not only does the entire system run more smoothly, but kids, parents, and teachers love him. He gives "high fives" to kids, reminds them to wear helmets and walk their bike across, and asks about how they are doing.

He takes pride in his work. This is his craft.

While being a crossing guard may not seem like a glorious title you brag about, that's not what matters. What matters is how your carry yourself and take pride in your work.

I have an enormous amount of respect for him, and I'm not lying when I say I could just pull up a chair and watch his orchestra at work. It's a beautiful example of reflecting yourself and your values in your work.

You have to dance beautifully in the box that you are comfortable dancing in. My box was to be extremely ambitious within the sport of basketball. Your box is different than mine. Everybody has their own. It’s your job to try to perfect it and make it as beautiful of a canvas as you can make it. And if you have done that, then you have lived a successful life. Kobe Bryant

Kobe Bryant echoed this sentiment exactly. He took pride in his work through the game of basketball. And Jiro Ono, a master sushi chef many regard as the best sushi chef in the world says much the same.

Once you decide on your occupation… you must immerse yourself in your work. You have to fall in love with your work. Never complain about your job. You must dedicate your life to mastering your skill. That’s the secret of success and is the key to being regarded honorably. Jiro Ono

When you find your craft, take pride in it, commit to it, and master it.

Working Smarter

Tue, 04 Feb 2020 00:00:00 GMT

At the beginning of 2017, I had just left a job of 5+ years, I was exploring new opportunities, and I decided to spend some time building things — all those ideas sitting in the closet to be taken out, dusted, and put out bare in front of me. But that led me to a realization about the amount of time necessary to spend working before you hit diminishing returns. It taught me the value of working smarter and not harder.

So I worked. And then I stopped to eat and drink. And then I worked again. And then I stopped to go to sleep. And then I worked again. And this pattern repeated until I felt "burnt-out" — that is, like I had mentally and physically exhausted myself to the point of zero motivation to carry on.

But I did. I kept working — writing code, designing, building "things". But then I eventually realized my output was not matching the input. In other words, I wasn't getting out as much as I was putting in (in terms of time).

Fast-forward a bit and I found a new job working remotely as a developer for a new company. I slowed down some, but I pushed forward on a few lingering products I had started before the new gig. But they were wearing me down.

And then I read a book called "Essentialism" by Greg McKeown. This book drastically changed how I thought about the things I was spending my time on. The book's primary point is we need to focus on the most essential activities — those activities that provide the most value.

That's when I realized how little I was doing that. Sure, I was creating a lot, but I wasn't creating and spending time on the things I really cared about.

I'm not going to lie, though. It was hard. It was hard because it meant saying "no" to things. It meant telling people I cared about that I can no longer do this. It meant dropping some things I believed in, but just didn't have the time or energy for.

It changed everything for me. "Essentialism" is now a Core Value of mine. Every task or thing I work on needs to be of the most value (within reason), and tied to something larger that I care about. Time is far too short to focus on anything less.

And that's why it's more important to focus on working smarter than harder. Don't brute-force a solution to your problems. When you hit a wall, don't just keep walking into it. Think about how you can spend less time doing things to net more value. How can I take one step forward to reach this goal I've set for myself? How can I do more with less? These are the questions I ask myself now, and it's incredibly freeing. Yes, it means that you will have to say "no" to things, let people down, and miss opportunities.

But, as Steve Jobs put it…

"People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. Steve Jobs

Using Variables to Improve Conditionals

Thu, 30 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Programming and software development is replete with conditional logic. That is, creating a flow of the program based on certain events. And while this is natural, it can often lead to confusing branches in your code. That's why I like using variables — and the explicit names of those variables — to make conditional logic easier to read, understand, and reason about.

With good variables names in conditionals, reading the code in plain English should yield an understandable phrase.

Let's look at an example.

const getBooks = async () => {
  /* ... */
}
const books = await getBooks()

// EXAMPLE #1
// We want to return `null` if `books` is empty.
if (books.length === 0) return null

// EXAMPLE #2
// The same logic, but with a variable.
const noBooks = books.length === 0

if (noBooks) return null

Reading the code in plain English should yield an understandable phrase.

So how would we read these separate conditionals out loud?

"If the books length is equal to 0, return null."
"If there are no books, return null."

While this is a contrived example — and certainly a less-than-complicated conditional — I believe it effectively illustrates the primary point. The second example reads more naturally, which is going to make it easier to read, understand, and reason about.

Let's look at a different example. This time we want to not only return null if the books are empty, but we want to make sure the current user has access to the "Books" feature. Let's assume each user has an array of features to determine which features they have access to.

// We have a `useCurrentUser()` custom Hook to get the current user.
const currentUser = useCurrentUser();
const getBooks = async () => { /* ... */ }
const books = await getBooks();

// EXAMPLE #1
// We're being fancy and using the optional-chaining
// syntax (in newer versions of JS).
if (books.length === 0 || !currentUser.features?.includes('Books')) return null;

// EXAMPLE #2
const noBooks = books.length === 0;
const userHasAccessToBooks = currentUser.features?.includes('Books'));

if (noBooks || !userHasAccessToBooks) return null;

So how would we read these separate conditionals out loud?

"If the books length is equal to 0, or the current user features doesn't include "Books", return null."
"If there are no books or the user doesn't have access to "Books", return null."

Again, the second conditional feels more natural. And we could take it further, if we wanted.

const noBooks = books.length === 0;
const userHasAccessToBooks = currentUser.features?.includes('Books'));
const shouldNotRenderBooks = noBooks || !userHasAccessToBooks;

if (shouldNotRenderBooks) return null;

"If should not render books, return null". Even more simple. But, as with all things, use your discretion to find the right balance for you and your team.

Additional benefits to the approach

There are additional benefits to explicitly named variables in conditionals:

It's easier to log out the value. The value is now assigned to a variable, so console.log()-ing (yes, I'm making it a verb) is easier to work with and debug.
We can seamlessly combine it with additional logic. As we see in the second and third examples, adding additional conditions is more trivial when we encapsulate each condition in its own explicitly named variable.
Tracking down the conditions via global search is a cinch. With these explicitly named variables, it's a lot easier to do a global search for the exact variable name.

Productivity vs. Effectiveness

Tue, 28 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

In the productivity world, the terms "productivity" and "effectiveness" are largely conflated, but I define them differently. And I believe the distinction is important.

You can be productive, but not effective. However, you can't be effective, but not productive.

So what is "productivity"?

Productivity is "the state or quality of producing something." I think the former — "the state" — is more heavily emphasized than the latter. But I think that's wrong. I believe "the quality of producing something" has a greater impact on the work we do.

Why?

I can complete 100 tasks today. Does that make me productive? Maybe. But what is the quality of the 100 tasks? Are they high-value tasks whose output produces something of quality? Or are they just 100 miscellaneous low-value tasks that elicit the state of productivity? That matters.

It's about working smarter, not harder. Every task you tackle in a day — within reason — should be tied to a larger project, goal, mission, vision. It should move the needle in some way. If you're working towards goals (yearly, quarterly, monthly), you need to be doing a bunch of small things to achieve that bigger thing. So your list should always contain tasks that "bubble up" to that higher-level initiative (goal) you're working on.

"Successful in producing a desired or intended result."

The desired or intended result, in this instance, is completing a task that helps me achieve my larger goals and, thus, my larger vision. That is being effective.

How can we tactically combat this?

For me, it's using an application called Notion where I'm able to create relations between the different parts of my workspace. For example, I have a database of "Goals" I can relate to my database of "Projects" and "Highlights" (weekly objectives). And then my Projects and Highlights can relate to my "Tasks". And I can visual this. I can see what project or highlight each of my tasks relates to. I can look at my projects and highlights and build tasks from them. I can look at my goals and build projects and highlights from them. And so on and so forth.

This is my brain connecting the dots, but in software. And that's powerful. That is what heightens and weights my effectiveness over productivity. And that is why I care about being more effective than I am productive. Or, at least, looking at productivity in that light.

Now go out there and have a productive and effective day.

Time Blocking

Thu, 23 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

If you don't account for your time, plan for what's unavailable, and optimize the time you do have, you're going to waste time on inessential activities. "Time Blocking" is a technique for carving out time to do your best work, all while keeping yourself accountable and on task.

I have three types of events on my calendar on any given day:

Events. These can be meetings, appointments, or any other timed events that occur in a specific place at a specific time. All-day events would fall into this category.
Habits & Routines. Waking up, exercising, getting ready, breakfast, my Morning Review, etc. These are all habits and routines that take place at fixed times throughout my day.
(Focus) Blocks. 1-2-hour blocks of time to dedicate to Deep Work, which means blocking out distractions and focusing heavily on cognitively demanding tasks.

Start with your "Ideal Day"

An important exercise for crafting productive days is to start by designing your "Ideal Day". If you were 100% in control of your time in a day, what would your schedule look like? What would make you the most productive and effective you could be? That is your "Ideal Day".

As an example, here's my "Ideal Day":

5:00am - Wake up and go exercise 🏃‍♂️
6:00am - Take my dog out 🐶
6:15am - Get ready for the day 🚿
7:00am - Breakfast with the family 🍳
7:30am - Morning Review at the computer 👨‍💻
8:00am - Walk my step-daughter to school 👧
8:30am - Make coffee and hang with my wife and son ☕
9:00am - Focus Block (2h) 🚀
11:00am - Lunch 🥗
11:30am - Focus Block (2h) 🚀
1:30pm - Coffee, snack, and time with my wife/son ☕
2:00pm - Afternoon Review 👨‍💻
2:30pm - Focus Block (2h) 🚀
4:30pm - Evening Review 👨‍💻
5:00pm - Dinner and after-dinner playtime 🥘
6:00pm - Bedtime routine for my son (clean up, bath, bed) 👦
7:00pm - Open for whatever cleaning is left to do 🧽
7:30pm - Read 📖
8:30pm - Take my dog out 🐶
9:00pm - Get ready for bed 🛏
10:00pm - Be asleep 😴

Based on my "Ideal Day", I get 6 hours of focus blocks, which is more than enough for all the high-value essential work I need to do. This is a day crafted through several years of iteration and experimentation, but you'll find the right balance for yourself. And then keep iterating.

Take some time to write out your "Ideal Day". Think about your habits, routines, and the blocks of time where you are most productive and focused. Your blocks of focus time should be at least an hour, but preferably 1.5-2 hours. That's the sweet spot for most people, but your mileage may vary.

Set up your calendar

Once you feel good about your "Ideal Day", move this into your calendar.

Create a "Habits & Routines" calendar. If you have both work and personal calendars, create two calendars: one "Habits & Routines" calendar for personal habits and routines that occur outside work hours, and one "Habits & Routines" calendar for your work calendar with the habits and routines that happen within work hours. And make sure to set these events as recurring (they are habits after all). You'll be able to alter individual instances, should you need to make daily adjustments.
Create a "Blocks" calendar. This is where you will block out the 1-2 hours intermixed with your habits and routines. While you certainly can set these as recurring, I usually block them out for the following week during weekly planning where I plan the next week.

Use whichever colors you like, but I recommend picking a nice green for your "Blocks" calendar to accentuate its happy importance 😌

Bring reality into the equation

We both know our actual day isn't always (read: most of the time) going to reflect our "Ideal Day" as we've outlined it above. We have meetings and appointments that will interrupt. Regardless, though, it's important to start from the baseline and vary from there. Doing so allows us to better understand how effective we will be on a given day (as best as we can approximate).

Assuming your calendar already holds all your meetings and appointments — and you set up your "Ideal Day" within your calendar — you should immediately see overlapping events. That is, all the places where the reality impacts the ideal.

Don't be alarmed! This is normal. It's how we start structuring our days to more closely match the "Ideal Day" we outlined above.

But it won't be pretty at first. You'll have to bend, flex, and push your "Ideal Day" as you work around your meetings and appointments. That's great! It's the path towards intentionality.

Be more intentional with your time

Rather than getting to "real work" whenever we can, we want to dedicate time to focused work — and, inversely, balance the time we're putting towards other, less-essential activities. Maybe it's time to set a threshold on meetings for a day or week. Or maybe this meeting next week in your prime focus block on Tuesday can hold for the following week.

These are the decisions "Time Blocking" puts in front of you. It is a forcing-mechanism for making choices about how to spend your time. Make intentional choices and create freedom through a clearly defined schedule.

Through order we find control.
Through control we find freedom.
Drew Barontini (this is awkward)

Time Budgeting

Tue, 21 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

I've found it useful to think about managing time just like managing money. This is beneficial because the concept of budgeting — in the finance world — is commonplace. It's also a simple and effective mental model.

We don't always think about time as money, but it's genuinely our most-finite resource. Each day slips by, and if you don't use your time wisely, you will have none left — just like money. When we go to the grocery store, we need to know we have money before we spend it. When we plan our day, we need to make sure our time is budgeted appropriately.

There's a budgeting philosophy where "every dollar has a job," meaning you assign an explicit "job" for every dollar you take in. For example, if I have $1,000, then I need to give each $1 of that $1,000 a "job" to do. $100 for internet, $200 for gas, etc.

Managing your time is no different.

Look at your calendar right now. You'll most likely see some all-day events or reminders, meetings you have, and (hopefully) some free spaces or blocks. Those free spaces are time, and you need to give each block a job — what am I going to accomplish in this time? How am I going to use my time wisely?

If we think about time this way, it can help us schedule and prioritize the things we do.

Control

Thu, 16 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

One of the biggest learnings I've had in my career around leadership is the idea you must give control in order to get control. I've seen this happen to other leaders, and I know it's happened to me (a lot). I assume I have to control all situations for my team in order to ensure the team's success. I believe they want me to do that, and I am, in fact, helping them by taking more control.

But I'm not. That's a leadership fallacy.

What happens, instead, is you acquire more control, develop more team dependence (you are now the dependency!), create a sense of distrust, and lose sight of the forest through the trees. Why? Because now all the ins and outs run through you instead of through the team. Your sense of control becomes a distortion of reality, which prevents you from focusing on the right things as a leader, and letting your team grow.

But how does giving control help?

Because your team now grows, learns, and assumes deeper responsibility and accountability for all the functions of the team. Doing so allows you to teach, train, mentor, and focus your time on the high-value activities you should be focusing on. You gain more clarity and time, which is invaluable when you are leading a team.

That is control.

When you try and control everything, you are now losing control of your time and ability to concentrate on the most important tasks. When you relinquish control to your team, you are now in a position to delegate, growing your team — and the individuals of that team — to a higher level. This gives you time. This gives you control.

Embrace it, and you will be a leader (human) who is more in control.

I Don't Know

Tue, 14 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

"I don't know." is a perfectly acceptable answer.

I've regularly encountered this in the tech industry, particularly with leaders in the tech industry. There is a false expectation that all leaders need to know everything. And once you are put in a leadership position, you must know all.

Why is this the case?

I don't know. Ha, see what I did there?

While I genuinely don't know the full reason, I do hypothesize, however, it's due to the cultural expectation put on leaders in any field. You can't possibly rise to be the leader of a company without knowing lots of things, right? Surely lots of people come to you with questions that you must know the answer to?

But I think that's the problem. Being a good leader isn't about having all of the answers. Being a good leader is about asking the right questions so the people you lead can find the answers for themselves. It's a reflection. Powerful leadership comes from having the confidence to say "I don't know.", or to ask other people for help. That's not weakness. That's strength.

And that is why I see a strength in saying "I don't know." That's admitting you don't know everything, and that you're able to see your gaps in knowledge, where to grow, and what else you have to learn. Nobody knows everything. We all have different interest, skill, and knowledge-levels. What matters is we know our deficiencies and we get help, either from other people, or by spending the time learning and growing ourselves.

This is a funny parallel to kids. I have a 10-year-old who thinks she knows everything. And I've tried to dig into why that's the case, and determine if that is a leading indicator for the future apprehension of saying "I don't know." Are we conditioned to have the expectation of all the answers? Is it that we're put in school and tested so young? Is it the pressure of standardized testing or education? I'm really curious.

But you know what, I don't know. And I'm okay with that.

Validation

Thu, 09 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

I recently read “I Hear You” by Michael S. Sorensen. The book discusses the act of validating someone else’s emotions. That is, acknowledging how they feel and not trying to tell them to feel a different way, or present them with a solution to their problem — just validating they have those emotions.

This is really powerful.

In the book, Michael explains that validation has two main elements:

It acknowledges a specific emotion.
It offers justification for feeling that emotion.

I have started doing this more in conversations, and it has significantly improved my conversations and relationships with other people. For instance, my wife and I both read the book, and it's helped our communication a lot. Instead of trying to tell each other not to feel a certain way, we just acknowledge one another's emotions.

The truth is there’s nothing inherently good or bad about any emotion. Emotions just are. They’re simply reactions to a situation. Michael S. Sorensen

One of the biggest learnings I had is to not try and immediately solve a problem for someone else. Frequently, someone will come to you with a problem — and while you may think they need your help solving it — they already know what to do. They're just looking for someone to validate that they are experiencing these emotions. "I Hear You" is based on that premise, and it's quite powerful.

Next time someone comes to you, try telling them "That sucks." and "What are you going to do about it?" before you try and give them a solution. You will be amazed at how differently people will respond. They will offer more context, open up, and will feel heard and validated. And that's a huge component to building great relationships.

When we sympathize, we feel for someone because of his or her pain. When we empathize, we feel the pain with them. Michael S. Sorensen

Preemptive Reflection

Tue, 07 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

I don't know where I picked up this technique, but I've found it to be a powerful method for assessing the priority of a situation, or conflicting situations. Let's just start with an example of how it would apply to a real-world scenario, and then talk about it.

I'm close to finishing up work for the day — let's say around 4:45pm — but I see I can start a new task that I anticipate will take around 30 minutes to complete. That means I'm going to work until after 5pm (around 5:15pm). That also means I'll delay leaving my office and going to eat dinner with my family.

Now, I could do this task the next day, but it's also Friday, and I'd really like to wrap up this task before heading into the weekend.

What do I do?

But first, a tangentially related analogy. We do team retrospectives at Differential where our Product Teams get together at a regular cadence to talk about what's been going well, and how we can improve. We follow a format called the "Lightning Decision Jam" where we identify problem statements, vote, reframe those problem statements into "How might we…" questions, vote, write solutions, and then determine the best solutions to the highest-voted problem (or "How might we…") we will tackle.

What does this have to do with the initial proposition? I know, I know. Stay with me.

One of the key methods to the "Lightning Decision Jam" is reframing the problem statements into the "How might we…" question equivalents. This is because the simple act of rephrasing can drastically impact our interpretation and, ultimately, response.

Pull Requests take far too long to get approved.

vs.

How might we speed up Pull Request reviews?

I imagine you, like I, have a drastically different reaction to these two statements. One is framing a problem, and the other is rephrasing an opportunity. Problems and opportunities, by definition, are seemingly opposites.

A "problem" is defined as "a matter or situation regarded as unwelcome or harmful and needing to be dealt with and overcome". And an "opportunity" is defined as "a set of circumstances that makes it possible to do something".

"to be dealt with" vs. "makes it possible." This is why the phrasing of an opportunity instead of a problem is so powerful. I'm sure you've heard the expression about "looking at the situation a different way." This is the simplest way to do that. Take the problem and rephrase it as an opportunity. It opens up everything. There are now possibilities where, before, there were limitations. We can now tackle the challenge appropriately.

Okay, now back to the original problem of trying to decide if I should wrap up this task before 5pm, or just call it and go eat dinner with my family. The format of the question we need to ask ourselves goes like this:

When I look back on my life, will I think I should have [option 1] OR [option 2]?

Before we try it, a little advanced advice: we want to extrapolate the fill-in-the-blank spots to phrase it as if it were a repeatable pattern of behavior. For example, in our case, it would be about working later vs. spending more time with family.

Okay, back to it…

When I look back on my life, will I think I should have worked later OR spent more time with my family?

When you say it that way, the answer seems pretty obvious, doesn't it? I will absolutely think I should have spent more time with my family — or at least I hope I don't say that because I'm making wiser decisions in the here-and-now. But we can only do that when we face the choices in front of us, and decide how we should prioritize our time.

Let's try another example, but this time, let's go with something a little less obvious — i.e. the choices are more comparable. I'm in the same position of wrapping up work at 4:45pm on Friday with the one 30-minute task left. But this time, I don't have the conflict of dinner because my family is on vacation. Wait, are they trying to get away from me? Why am I not on vacation with them!? Focus, Drew, focus.

So now the question is different because there isn't an entirely direct conflict. However, if we think about it, working later on this task does conflict with not working; or taking a break; or going to read. So, at some level, we can still weigh priorities here. Let's try it.

When I look back on my life, will I think I should have worked later OR spent more time for myself?

That's obvious! I would want to spend more time for myself. So we can still objectively look at the competing priorities for our time — and ascertain what will provide the most value — even when the choices may seem equal by comparison.

Time is the single most valuable and finite resource we have. We need to use it wisely. We need to spend it on the essential — activities that directly correlate to the highest-value activities we want to partake in: spending time with family, reading, drawing, being outside, etc. The lists we all have are endless (Yeah, I'm talking about you, too! You over there. No, not the red shirt… the blue. Yeah, you.). The only thing we can control is how we use our time. Because there's no stopping time. It's relentless.

Time is going to run out before we know it. Don't waste it. Make smart decisions about the priorities in your life. Use a method like this one — and surely many others — to easily decipher which behaviors, activities, and choices provide the most value and joy.

You know why? Because life is too short for anything less.

30 Lessons

Fri, 03 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

For the month of November last year, I participated in National Novel Writing Month — abbreviated as NaNoWriMo — to write 30 lessons, one lesson for each day. This amounted in over 10,000 words. The distillation of that work is shared here, and I will be posting longer posts for each lesson.

Implementing Dark Mode

Thu, 02 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

I'm a big fan of Dark Mode. I use all the dark variations of applications (where possible), and I wanted to bring Dark Mode to my site. Here's how I implemented it.

Styles setup

First, let's talk about how I have my styles structured in my codebase.

styled-components for writing my CSS-in-JS.
styled-system for allowing CSS props on my components.

Managing colors in the theme file

const theme = {
  // ...
  colors: {
    light: {
      // ...
    },
    dark: {
      // ...
    },
  },
  // ...
}

theme.colors is split into a light and dark version with the same set of keys. I wanted to keep a simple palette, so this is the set I came up with:

primary for the primary brand color.
bg for the background color.
fg for the foreground text color.
medium for the medium gray color.
border for the border color.
light for the lightest gray color.

ModeProvider

I created a ModeProvider component for holding the state of the current mode, as well as allowing it to be updated throughout the codebase by leveraging React Hooks.

import React from 'react'
import PropTypes from 'prop-types'

const ModeStateContext = React.createContext()
const ModeDispatchContext = React.createContext()

const KEY = 'db_mode'
const DEFAULT_MODE = 'light'

function ModeProvider(props = {}) {
  const defaultValue = getDefaultValue()
  const [mode, setMode] = React.useState(defaultValue)

  function getDefaultValue() {
    // We're doing this check because of GatsbyJS's server-side rendering.
    if (typeof window !== 'undefined') {
      return window.localStorage.getItem(KEY) || DEFAULT_MODE
    }
    return DEFAULT_MODE
  }

  React.useEffect(() => {
    // We're doing this check because of GatsbyJS's server-side rendering.
    if (typeof window !== 'undefined') {
      window.localStorage.setItem(KEY, mode)
    }
  }, [mode])

  return (
    <ModeStateContext.Provider value={mode}>
      <ModeDispatchContext.Provider value={setMode}>
        {typeof props.children === 'function'
          ? props.children(mode)
          : props.children}
      </ModeDispatchContext.Provider>
    </ModeStateContext.Provider>
  )
}

// const state = useModeState();
function useModeState() {
  const context = React.useContext(ModeStateContext)
  if (context === undefined) {
    throw new Error(`useModeState must be used within a Provider`)
  }
  return context
}

// const setState = useModeDispatch();
function useModeDispatch() {
  const context = React.useContext(ModeDispatchContext)
  if (context === undefined) {
    throw new Error(`useModeDispatch must be used within a Provider`)
  }
  return context
}

// const [state, setState] = useMode();
function useMode() {
  const context = [useModeState(), useModeDispatch()]
  if (context === undefined) {
    throw new Error(`useMode must be used within a Provider`)
  }
  return context
}

ModeProvider.propTypes = {
  children: PropTypes.oneOfType([
    PropTypes.element,
    PropTypes.node,
    PropTypes.func,
  ]),
}

export { ModeProvider as default, useMode, useModeState, useModeDispatch }

This uses React Context to store mode and setMode that are then passed down to any consumers who call it via useMode(). It also handles storing the currently selected mode in localStorage so users will keep the same setting when they move to different pages (or when they revisit the site).

If you're interested in learning more about using React Context — and building provider components like this one — I highly recommend reading 'How to use React Context effectively' by Kent C. Dodds.

Passing the mode to the theme

In order to get the mode to the ThemeProvider (to set the correct theme color), we use the render-props pattern:

<ModeProvider>
  {mode => ({
    /* ... */
  })}
</ModeProvider>

Now we can use mode to set the appropriate colors in the theme:

<ModeProvider>
  {mode => (
    <ThemeProvider
      theme={{
        ...theme,
        colors: theme.colors[mode],
      }}
    >
      {/* ... */}
    </ThemeProvider>
  )}
</ModeProvider>

We're overwriting theme.colors to only have the single set of colors, which will result in either the light or dark set of colors based on the mode.

Toggling between light and dark

In order to toggle between the modes, we grab our useMode() hook:

function DarkModeToggle(props = {}) {
  const [mode, setMode] = useMode()
  const newMode = mode === 'light' ? 'dark' : 'light'

  function handleModeClick(event) {
    event.preventDefault()
    setMode(newMode)
  }

  return <button onClick={handleModeClick}>{newMode}</button>
}

And that's it!

But what about prefers-color-scheme?

prefers-color-scheme is a CSS media feature for detecting if a user has the dark or light version of their system (OS) set. We can use this to set the mode of our site to match the user's setting. But I opted not to implement this.

So you can decide which version you prefer.

A New Decade

Wed, 01 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

With the ushering of a new decade, I've decided to start from scratch once again on my little corner of the web. I've archived all my old posts and content, redesigned my brand, and rewritten the codebase from scratch with GatsbyJS.

The old content

v2018.drewbarontini.com lives on, and you can easily peruse and find older content there. I've also set up redirects for this site to take you to the relevant link in the 2018 version.

Moving forward

My plan is to:

Write about topics I enjoy.
Continue adding to and refining this simple iteration of the site.
Write shorter, more precise posts.

Until next time...