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As mentioned in an earlier post , a comment on my emacs plain text workflow versus systems that emphasized collaboration and sharing (ok, really GDocs), and my coinciding annual re-assess sent me down a survey on the important versus the improvable in my GTD flows.

TLDR

After trying all systems in great detail for a few weeks of real-life testing, often side-by-side or duplicating days, I am still wavering between Notion and sticking with org-mode + org-roam (and a few other emacs improvements I picked up in research.). So, I’ll spend January using org-roam and Notion in a real life shootout to make the determination. Right now, I really seem to like writing in Notion, but managing tasks in org-mode, but I have to choose just one, I think. Roam I had to reject due to exceptionally weak and manual task management despite loving its in-context bi-directional linking (which I’m hoping emacs’ org-roam will match). Basically, I wish I could have the baby of all three of the systems since they all have different strengths (and weaknesses).

One of my biggest beefs with productivity and GTD advice on the internet is its provision by content creators rather than people who have, well… have jobs like the rest of us.

Don’t get me wrong, some of their advice is great and I’ve cherry-picked from the best and profited, but in a sense the connection between some of them needing to produce constant, monetized content (to the point I’ve even seen productivity people interviewing other productivity people) sometimes makes you feel like its simply not applicable to me in my context of my work and life.

Starting a new role is always a litmus test for any GTD system you have. What may have worked in old roles may not work in new roles (though the holy grail is a system that is adaptable anywhere). While my emacs org-mode system has served me very well from a task (and life) management perspective, it has its shortcomings.

With my new role, my workplace is even more Google docs driven than my last workplace, and vastly more collaborative and global (with the added challenge of everything being remote in these covid times). One of the shortcomings with emacs for me previously was sharing work, and I have to admit the idea of a more web-integrated, cloud syncing, browser-based workflow (as long as it will also work offline) is attractive. Since it’s getting close to that time of year when I review what’s working and what’s not (and my new boss nearly fainted when I sent him a plain text formatted table from emacs org-mode of my onboarding plan), I decided to look at the good and bad in my workflow and start some GTD experimenting over the last weekend.

The Financial Independence portion of my COVID career advice post was surprisingly popular. I’ve received a lot of other questions about more easy rules for getting to FI and money advice.

The ironclad law of taking care of yourself financially is you must spend less than what you earn.

Whether salaries, assets, dividends, and interest - that is your upper ceiling (Credit is not earnings. It is simply a way to move future earnings into the present by incurring cost to consume things ie. interest rate charges.).

[This is part 3 of a series on managing Data Science teams based on hard won experience running one of the larger data teams in SouthEast Asia from one of its unicorns. YMMV and advice here should be sanity checked to make sure it’s appropriate to both your corporate structure, culture, and situation. No solution is one-size, fits-all. This is to guide CDOs, VPs, and data executives and give an alternative viewpoint on organizing.]

This is part 2 of a series on managing Data Science teams from the trenches and based on hard won experience running one of the larger data teams in SouthEast Asia from one of its unicorns. YMMV and advice here should be checked to make sure it’s appropriate to both your corporate structure and situation. No solution is one-size,fits-all. This is to guide VPs, CDOs, > and data executives and give them a possible alternative viewpoint on unambiguous wins for our teams (and may help you and your organization.).

Rofi Org-mode TODOs is a simple script for use with the Rofi dmenu replacement to hotkey and then directly enter emacs org-mode TODOs and dispatch and append them to an inbox file. It’s simple, very fast, and designed to help you stay in flow while having ubiquitous collection of your TODOs for your GTD flow.

This first release in Python simply takes the text and tags from your input, formats the TODO in the proper format for emacs org-mode with a proper :DESCRIPTION: drawer with creation date, and appends in the proper format to your inbox file. Future versions will parse for notes, deadlines, or scheduled items, but this first version is functional and works right now. You can grab it here on Github

The pandemic has thrown a lot of people’s roles into uncertainty if not eliminated them entirely. While not everyone will have a choice because of financial or right-to-remain circumstances, it’s a good time to remind yourself that taking charge of your career is still an important aspect of life design. Choices here have effects that reverberate through your current and future quality of life. Play the long game.

There’re 3 things you should be keeping in mind if you’re thinking about a next role:

In a year where the entire world seems to be on pause for the pandemic to burn itself out, it’s perhaps a bit strange to be thinking about humanity’s accomplishments considering the collective bloody nose our ego took from COVID, but for me, thinking about these things is a natural antidote to the doomscrolling I see people doing (and constantly trying to talk to me about.). Dust ourselves off and take stock of what we’ve accomplished collectively. We do live in an age of miracles and wonders. And we could use a bit of bigging up here in the bottom half of 2020 after a humbling by one of our oldest foes.

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The 2020 14" LG Gram laptop is a surprisingly great, trouble-free Linux laptop to use as a daily driver and worthy replacement to a Macbook Air or Pro. It’s lighter, quieter, and seems more performant than comparable Macbook Air’s or Pros for such a slim machine, has a ridiculously long battery life, and a gorgeous screen. It has yet to overheat despite a lot of heavy lifting genomics, software engineering, and data science heavy lifting (unlike my Macbook Air). When the fans do spin up, they are very quiet. Virtually no downsides to this machine and I have to admit it’s a worthy and cheaper replacement for a Macbook Air which I wish I’d risked buying earlier. I don’t understand why more professional reviewers in the Linux community are not pointing at this machine. Details below.