Friday, December 23, 2022

Writing and Labelling in a Journal

I have a monthly gathering at work with other bakers. We each bake something at home and bring it in to share. I unequivocally know this is one of the most important parts of my job. I know this because I told myself – in my journal.


Journaling is conceptually very simple: write things down. It doesn’t need to be much more complicated than that. However, there are some points to keep in mind to make the most of your journaling, ranging from how you take the notes to what you do with them once you have them. If you do it well you will be more present in your day, remember more details from your day, be more creative (with more and better ideas), and be happier. And all of that is before you ever even read your journal. Reading your journal can take those to the next level, helping you better understand the big picture of your life and improve it. 


This is the second of a two part series on journaling. This post focuses on the power of writing things down in a journal and how to do that well. The previous part focused on making the most of your journal after you have written things down, including the end to end value of journaling and reviewing your journal.


Pad of paper with a pen on it. The paper is Rhodia dot grid paper. The pen is a fountain pen with clear sides. You can see the ink inside of it. The pen is in the center of the pad at an angle.
You only need a pad of paper and a pen to get started journaling.

 

Monday, December 19, 2022

The Power of Journaling

I have a monthly gathering at work with other bakers. We each bake something at home and bring it in to share. I unequivocally know this is one of the most important parts of my job. I know this because I told myself – in my journal.

Journaling is conceptually very simple: write things down, and look at it later. It doesn’t need to be much more complicated than that. However, there are some points to keep in mind to make the most of your journaling, ranging from how you take the notes, to what you do with them once you have them. If you do it well you will be more creative (with more and better ideas), be happier, and have a better understanding of and control of the big picture of your life.

This is the first of a two part series on journaling, covering how to journal and how to review your journal. We start in this post on the latter point: making the most of your journal after you have written things down. The second post returns to the writing, focusing on the power of writing things down in a journal and how to do that well.

Journaling is valuable in and off itself – you should do it. For this post, I assume you are already writing things down. Reviewing your journal enables three other useful things: seeing (and changing) the big picture of our lives, improving the important things in our lives, and making ourselves feel better. I’ll discuss each item in turn, but it starts with reviewing your journal.

Monday, October 31, 2022

Special Places

Oil painting of a cafe scene by Edouard Manet. Man at table with top hat in the foreground. Waitress drinking behind him. Another woman in the distance in the background.Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Edouard_Manet_-_At_the_Caf%C3%A9_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg from Google Art Project and on display in Walters Art Museum.
At the Café by Edouard Manet from the Google Arts & Culture via Wikipedia

Los Alamos, SRI’s Augmentation Research Center (ARC), Café Guerbois at the beginning of Impressionism. For the right person, each was a special place. What must it have been like to be at Los Alamos with Fermi, Feynman, and others for the Manhattan Project? Or to be at the Augmentation Research Center for the development of the future of personal computing including the mouse, the graphical user interface, and video conferencing (culminating in the Mother of All Demos)? Or to be in the Café Guerbois with Manet, Degas, Monet, Renoir, and others for the birth of Impressionism? Just imagine the ideas and excitement that must have been in the air in each place.

You cannot go to any of those places today. Sure, there’s still a research lab at Los Alamos and the ideas of ARC are everywhere. But those exciting, special times are in the past. Special places don’t just exist in a place, they also exist in a time. It is easy to mourn that these special places no longer exist. I think this is misguided. Instead, we should celebrate that they ever existed!

Tuesday, September 6, 2022

Defining Your Own Job

I have spent the past 2 years, since I stopped being a manager, trying to define my job. No, that’s a lie, I’ve been trying to define my own job for much longer than 2 years. I’ve been trying to do it for many years. Specifying both what is and what is not my job. I suspect many (but not all) of my peers are doing something similar. If you are happy with your personal status quo, with your existing structures and roles, with doing what you are told, you can skip this post (maybe read this one on community instead). However, if you are still interested, join me on a journey of self-definition.

Wednesday, July 6, 2022

Peer Groups in the Workplace

I have learned a lot through peer groups, both industry wide and company internal ones. Company internal peer groups offer a unique opportunity to help you get better at your job. However, there are not yet good resources for running company internal peer groups. This post includes what I have been able to learn on the topic so far. My hope is that this post can serve as a starting point, and we can, as a community, develop those resources.

Tuesday, May 17, 2022

Creating and Fostering Communities at Work

Some days I feel that the most valuable thing I’ve done at MongoDB has been to create slack channels. 


I know that may sound absurd to those who know me professionally (I have done a lot at MongoDB, for example, developing our performance testing infrastructure and changing the way we spot performance changes in our testing environment), but bear with me for a moment. I have started a lot of slack channels, such as: #fountainpens, #greatoutdoors, #cookie-club, #staffplusengineering, #academic-research, #writing, #performance. And I spend time on those channels sharing pictures and stories with colleagues as well as talking shop.  My wife has said she wants to join MongoDB just so she can join the slack channels. However, the channels themselves aren’t important – what’s important is creating and fostering communities.