Dec 06, 2025: rounding third

I started the day with a bit of inspiration and cleaned up my project plan by parking anything non-card related to the side. Since getting a real job, my sprints, and overall project planning has suffered. It's also become apparent that I need to be focused on smaller incremental improvements rather than larger sweeping ideas.

My professional brain leaves just about zero electricity left for any of the fun stuff so I'm starting to adapt and find pockets of inspiration I can use to recharge when I'm on empty.

Anywho, all that to say that I'm working on some simple components to help me highlight the breadth of work I've put in here so far, because while I haven't spent a ton of time coding lately, I'm writing constantly. I want to show that to myself, and perhaps help you find a few things you might have missed along the way.

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When I say that I am writing constantly, I mean constantly. Emails, Teams messages, blogs, documentation, code, project plans, and on and on it goes. Constantly. When I'm not attached to a keyboard, I got myself a leuchtturm1917 notebook so I can more quickly capture my thoughts on paper as well.

I use this notebook for work and probably spit out a page or two a day, maybe three if it's a particularly crazy day. It's often not more than a word or two at a time, and is barely legible, but the right squiggly line from here to there, or asterisk to let me know how super important that is over there, keeps me in line at work. It has two bookmark ribbons and I use one to hold the most current page and another to hold the last page I consider archived. Anything prior to that bookmark is either expected to come back up later, or is already addressed in one form or another.

Example: today I opened to the current-page-ribbon, then flipped back to the page that was Monday of this week and holding the start-of-the-week-ribbon, read the page, pulled out anything that wasn't done, logged somewhere, or otherwise accounted for and wrote a new something on the most current page. Now go back again, grab Tuesday, pull anything still needed forward......rinse & repeat.

Theoretically, I read as I write the thing, I read it again to close the day, often read it another time to start the next day, and minimally read it again when I close the week to write the thing again. Now that idea is read to start the next week, and on and on it goes. As I think on it while I write about it today, this is an excellent tool for memorization and deep thinking on a wide range of topics.

Now 10x that math because I'm constantly reading whatever two pages are open in front of me. Often just staring at a garbled mess, lost in thought. And that math doesn't include what happens once it gets off of the page. Another intentional set of feedback loops aiming to generate sharp and efficient action.

Turns out, I love to write. Few things help me more.

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Tomorrow, some volleyball, and maybe a new thing or two if I play my cards right.