Hoopla! This is some html output from Office that could use some cleaning up!
Target BlankMessed up nesting
Hoopla! This is some html output from Office that could use some cleaning up!
Target BlankMessed up nesting
But there are probably some things that you would like to change. ## Configuration Next we’re going to start configuring HTML Purifier in order to customize it to our particular needs. We want our output to be XHTML 1.0 Strict and we want to whitelist special as the only class that is allowed. The following is how we set up custom configuration: $config = HTMLPurifier_Config::createDefault(); $config->set('HTML.Doctype', 'XHTML 1.0 Strict'); $config->set('Attr.AllowedClasses', 'special'); $purifier = new HTMLPurifier($config); $clean_html = $purifier->purify($dirty_html); We start out by creating a default config object with HTMLPurifier_Config::createDefault() then we start to change the configuration variables with $config->set(). There are a lot of configuration options that you can read about at [http://htmlpurifier.org/live/configdoc/plain.html](http://htmlpurifier.org/live/configdoc/plain.html) the two that we’re using here are HTML.Doctype and Attr.AllowedClasses. The first config option that we set is HTML.Doctype which can be set as “HTML 4.01 Transitional”, “HTML 4.01 Strict”, “XHTML 1.0 Transitional”, “XHTML 1.0 Strict” or “XHTML 1.1”. Unfortunately at this time there is no HTML5 support. However since HTML Purifier is open source you are free to add that functionality yourself and hopefully contribute it back. This will change what tags are allowed and in some cases will transform your tags to be standards compliant. In my example one of the changes it makes is converting my tag to . The second option we set is Attr.AllowedClasses which takes a case-insensitive comma separated list of all classes you want to allow in your clean HTML. In my example we’re just allowing the class special. Now take a look at Listing 3 to see how our newly configured clean HTML looks.
Hoopla! This is some html output from Office that could use some cleaning up!
Target BlankMessed up nesting
## Tag Transformation and Adding Attributes The output from our configuration is pretty good, however I have some more modifications I’d like to make. The tag was converted because it’s not allowed in the XHTML 1.0 Strict standard, but I’d prefer if the and tags were converted to and respectively. Due to the flexibility of HTML Purifier this is an easy task to complete, however it requires that we modify the HTML definition. The HTML definition according to the documentation is the “Definition of the purified HTML that describes allowed children, attributes, and many other things.” In our case we’re going to modify the HTML definition, adding two tag transformations in order to accomplish our conversions. The way to do this is by inserting the following after the $config definition: $def = $config->getHTMLDefinition(true); $def->info_tag_transform['b'] = new HTMLPurifier_TagTransform_Simple('strong'); $def->info_tag_transform['i'] = new HTMLPurifier_TagTransform_Simple('em'); In the example you’ll see that we’re defining two new keys in the $def->info_tag_transform array. One for and one for . We assign to them an instance of HTMLPurifier_TagTransform_Simple that defines what we’re transforming these tags to. If you dig into the source code you’ll see that the library is actually using this functionality extensively. For instance they use: $r['u'] = new HTMLPurifier_TagTransform_Simple('span', 'text-decoration:underline;'); To convert the tags in the definition for XHTML they use the first parameter to transform the tag to a and the second paramater to define the style attribute. Now we’re getting somewhere. However by default HTML Purifier is filtering out the target attribute from our tag. The way to fix this is to add an attribute to the HTML definition. This is done by adding the following line to our HTML definition modifications: $dev->addAttribute('a', 'target', 'Enum#_blank,_self,_target,_top'); The addAttribute method adds a custom attribute to a pre-existing element. The first param is which element we’re modifying, the second param is what attribute we’re adding and the third param is the definition of what we’re allowing through. In the example we’re only allowing the specific values that we’ve defined. If we didn’t want to be so strict we could have set our third param as “Text” and that would have allowed any text to pass through. I was not able to find great documentation about the available definitions so I had to dive into the source code. If you’re interested in learning more check out the class HTMLPurifier_AttrTypes. Take a look at Listing 4 to see the final clean HTML after our modifications of the HTML definition.
Hoopla! This is some html output from Office that could use some cleaning up!
Target BlankMessed up nesting
## Conclusion As you can see from my examples HTML Purifier is a work horse capable of a lot of sophisticated HTML filtering and transforming. The documentation is great if you’re just doing some standard filtering and tweaking, but if you need to get into some heavy tweaking it will probably require some code diving. --- --- title: "My Résumé" url: "https://andrewshell.org/resume/" lang: "en-US" type: "page" description: "Andrew Shell E-Mail Andrew Shell Download Resume PDF With 20 years of experience in web development, I am well-suited for a Senior Full-Stack Web Developer role. My expertise includes senior positions, mentoring, and leadership roles. I have a proven track" last_modified: "2026-03-25T15:29:25+00:00" custom_fields: iawmlf_last_processed: 1777425793 --- # My Résumé ## Andrew Shell [E-Mail Andrew Shell](/contact/) [](https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewshell) [Download Resume PDF](https://andrewshell.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/resume.pdf) With 20 years of experience in web development, I am well-suited for a Senior Full-Stack Web Developer role. My expertise includes senior positions, mentoring, and leadership roles. I have a proven track record of building and maintaining both backend and frontend systems. As a founder and CTO, I successfully launched two software-as-a-service applications, managing teams of developers and prioritizing feature development in collaboration with stakeholders. My extensive experience, excellent communication skills, strong work ethic, and mastery of modern development tools and technologies make me valuable in any dynamic and fast-paced environment. ## Technical & Core Skills JavaScript | Typescript | Node.js | PHP | Amazon Web Services (AWS) | MySQL | MongoDB | Linux | React | Express | Git | Docker | Elastic Beanstalk | Lambda | SQS | SNS | DynamoDB | Technical Advisory | Code Review | Hands-on Developer | Software Architecture | Leadership | API Development ## Work History ### PetPlace, Remote _Team Lead / Senior Software Engineer, 5/2025 – Present_ - Lead a team of four engineers, providing technical direction through code reviews, pair programming, and task breakdown to help junior developers build confidence and ship without getting overwhelmed. - Designed and owned backend data architecture, including a reusable structured note entity that became the foundation for multiple components across a medical records feature. - Bridge product and engineering by participating in regular planning sessions with product owners and UX designers, translating customer research into implementable scope and pushing back when designs exceed available time or complexity budgets. - Build full-stack features on a large-scale React Router 7 application. ### Johnson Health Tech, Cottage Grove, WI _Senior Web Engineer, 10/2019 – 5/2025_ - Develop and maintain backend API applications using Node.js, Express, Typescript, and MongoDB. - Design and implement API integrations with third-party partners for login and workout assignment services. - Review partner documentation and write code to integrate partner services with internal systems. - Onboard, mentor, and manage a team of three developers and one QA staff, conducting code reviews and ensuring best practices. - Architect automated testing infrastructure with Docker and Mocha to mock third-party APIs, enabling reliable refactoring and validation. - Collaborate with internal and external teams to document requirements, design data flows, and ensure resilient and fault-tolerant systems with extensive data validation. - Create detailed documentation for data flows, integration steps, and guidelines for reviewing new partner APIs, facilitating efficient onboarding and project execution. ### Acumium, Madison, WI _Web Developer, 10/2018 – 5/2019_ - Developed and implemented training plans to enhance git competence and standardized development processes. - Utilized Node.js in backend development for business applications, supporting security best practices. ### Geekity LLC., Madison, WI _Founder/Digital Developer, 11/2017 – 10/2018_ - Founded Geekity LLC with the purpose of invoicing client companies for provided services. - Implemented and developed robust test and deployment systems and processes. - Maintained professional relationships with Stryv and Rockwell Automation/Aquent. ### Stryv, Madison, WI _Lead Full-Stack Developer, 11/2017 – 10/2018_ - Designed and implemented full-stack applications, ensuring seamless integration of front-end and back-end components. - Collaborated closely with stakeholder to gather requirements and translate them into technical specifications. - Implemented efficient database structures and optimized queries for improved performance. - Developed and maintained RESTful APIs, enabling smooth communication between client and server. - Implemented best practices to ensure code quality, maintainability, and adherence to coding standards. ### Rockwell Automation/Aquent, Milwaukee, WI _Freelance React Developer, 08/2018 – 10/2018_ - Developed reliable tradeshow kiosk applications using React. - Communicated with stakeholders for requirements and feedback. ### Pinpoint Software, Madison, WI _Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, 06/2011 – 01/2018_ - Built two software-as-a-service applications, demonstrating technical expertise and entrepreneurial drive. - Successfully launched a proof of concept six weeks prior to field testing, leading to securing seed financing. - Collaborated closely with customers and the CEO to design specifications and prioritize feature development. - Managed servers and development pipelines, ensuring efficient and reliable operations. - Recruited and managed a team of developers, both in-house and outsourced, and worked with designers. - Developed applications using Angular/Ionic for the frontend, delivering user-friendly and responsive interfaces. ## Education Herzing College, Madison, WI - Bachelor of Science – Technology Management - Associate of Science – Computer InformationSystems ## Publications _PHP|Architect Magazine_ - [Filtering User-submitted HTML with HTML Purifier](/htmlpurifier-article/) – [June 2012](http://www.phparch.com/magazine/2012-2/june/) --- --- title: "Contact Me" url: "https://andrewshell.org/contact/" lang: "en-US" type: "page" description: "I love hearing from people, so please e-mail me and introduce yourself. Why? If you found my website, we probably have something in common, and I’d love to learn more about you. I enjoy brainstorming ideas with people. So let" last_modified: "2026-03-15T12:56:16+00:00" custom_fields: iawmlf_last_processed: 1777301977 classic-editor-remember: "classic-editor" --- # Contact Me I love hearing from people, so please e-mail me and introduce yourself. ## Why? - If you found my website, we probably have something in common, and I’d love to learn more about you. - I enjoy brainstorming ideas with people. So let me know what you’re working on! [← Back](/llms-full.txt/) #### Thank you for your response. ✨ [](context.submission.url) _ Name(required) Email(required) Website Message _ - [](context.item.anchor) Submit Δ --- --- title: "Ship 30 for 30 October 2021 Cohort" url: "https://andrewshell.org/ship-30-for-30-october-2021-cohort/" lang: "en-US" type: "page" description: "These are the essays I wrote as part of the Ship 30 for 30 October 2021 cohort: Why I'm Shipping 30 for 30? Letting Go of Toxic Stories 20 Questions for Overcoming Procrastination 8 Steps to Decide Project Priorities The" last_modified: "2026-03-12T18:17:49+00:00" custom_fields: iawmlf_last_processed: 1776870100 --- # Ship 30 for 30 October 2021 Cohort These are the essays I wrote as part of the Ship 30 for 30 October 2021 cohort: - [Why I’m Shipping 30 for 30?](/essays/why-im-shipping-30-for-30/) - [Letting Go of Toxic Stories](/essays/letting-go-of-toxic-stories/) - [20 Questions for Overcoming Procrastination](/essays/20-questions-for-overcoming-procrastination/) - [8 Steps to Decide Project Priorities ](/essays/8-steps-to-decide-project-priorities/) - [The 3 Enemies of Shipping](/essays/the-3-enemies-of-shipping/) - [The Importance of Margins](/essays/the-importance-of-margins/) - [Teaching is an Unfair Advantage](/essays/teaching-is-an-unfair-advantage/) - [Are You Productive?](/essays/are-you-productive/) - [5 Ways to Leverage Your Subconscious Mind](/essays/5-ways-to-leverage-your-subconscious-mind/) - [Aligning with Success](/essays/aligning-with-success/) - [My Favorite Useful and Weird Book](/essays/my-favorite-useful-and-weird-book/) - [Margin Helps You Live Life](/essays/margin-helps-you-accomidate-life/) - [You Need a Goal Funnel](/essays/you-need-a-goal-funnel/) - [Lead vs Lag Metrics](/essays/lead-vs-lag-metrics/) - [Validate Your Lead Metrics](/essays/validate-your-lead-metrics/) - [Changing Direction](/essays/changing-direction/) - [Feedback Loops](/essays/feedback-loops/) - [Why I Use a Daily Log](/essays/why-i-use-a-daily-log/) - [How to Make Intentional Choices](/essays/how-to-make-intentional-choices/) - [Don’t Burn Out, Level Up](/essays/dont-burn-out-level-up/) - [Don’t Fight Inertia](/essays/dont-fight-inertia/) - [Goal Brainstorming](/essays/goal-brainstorming/) - [Small Pieces, Loosely Joined](/essays/small-pieces-loosely-joined/) - [Finding Clarity in "Why?"](/essays/finding-clarity-in-why/) - [How To Get Things Done](/essays/how-to-get-things-done/) - [My 3 Favorite Productivity Books](/essays/my-3-favorite-productivity-books/) - [Fostering Confidence](/essays/fostering-confidence/) - [My Weekly Checklist](/essays/my-weekly-checklist/) - [Don’t Ask for Permission](/essays/dont-ask-for-permission/) - [That’s All Folks](/essays/thats-all-folks/) --- --- title: "About Me" url: "https://andrewshell.org/about/" lang: "en-US" type: "page" description: "Hoopla! That word seems to have become a part of my brand. It started as me just being goofy one day at school after watching Shock Treatment, but now has become my stock greeting when I see people I know." last_modified: "2026-05-17T14:22:55+00:00" custom_fields: iawmlf_last_processed: 1779031397 classic-editor-remember: "classic-editor" --- # About Me Hoopla! That word seems to have become a part of my brand. It started as me just being goofy one day at school after watching [Shock Treatment](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000G6BLGK/), but now has become my stock greeting when I see people I know. It’s gotten to the point where the hoopla precedes me. Once I met a boss’s wife for the first time and after I said, “Hi, nice to meet you,” she was like, “and…. don’t I get a hoopla?” I live in Madison, WI with my daughter Piper. I love being a dad. I wish I could stay at home and homeschool Piper, but it’s not realistic for our family. I’m a web developer. I wish I could say I’m a person who happens to do computer programming for a living, but who am I kidding? Programming is a part of who I am, and even if I had a billion dollars and didn’t have to work another day in my life, I’d still be programming. In 2011 I Co-Founded [Pinpoint Software](https://web.archive.org/web/20171012010006/https://www.pinpointsoftware.com/) and build the flagship product Date Check Pro. I left the company in 2018 to pursue other interests but [Pinpoint was aquired by ADC](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211005005211/en/ADC-Acquires-Pinpoint-Software-Continues-to-Expand-Total-Store-Operations-Platform) (now [Upshop](https://upshop.com/)) in 2021. I’m big on community. I founded [Madison PHP](/essays/first-php-meetup/) (a group for web nerds like me). I’m also involved in other groups and events in town, which all relate to the internet. Currently, I work more with Node.js than PHP and manage a few interesting community projects. I’ve [hosted](https://rpc.rsscloud.io/) and developed the JavaScript port of the [RSS Cloud Server](https://github.com/rsscloud/rsscloud-server) since 2015 which is used by feed aggregators to get notifications when a feed is updated. I’ve also participated in the Federated Wiki community and built [Federated Wiki Feeds](https://feeds.fedwikiriver.com/) which crawls and aggregates fedwikis and provides a collection of different feeds and [rivers](https://fedwikiriver.com/). I’m not currently looking for work but feel free to check out my [Résumé](/resume/). ## Assessments - [INFP-T](https://www.16personalities.com/infp-personality) - [Enneagram Type 2w1](https://www.crystalknows.com/enneagram/type-2/wing-1) - [Kolbe A 7-4-7-3](https://e.kolbe.com/rv/?st=K2-042C9DC0-CDF5-E811-90EC-000C29CEDCB0&rt=spka). --- --- title: "What I’m Doing Now" url: "https://andrewshell.org/now/" lang: "en-US" type: "page" description: "Website I converted my website from 11ty to WordPress. See WordPress Migration for more. PetPlace I'm continuing to feel a lot of overwhelm from Scaled Agile, which seems like a waterfall with a bit of Scrum mixed in. Health I've" last_modified: "2026-03-15T13:28:55+00:00" custom_fields: iawmlf_last_processed: 1775657753 --- # What I’m Doing Now ## Website I converted my website from 11ty to WordPress. See [WordPress Migration](https://andrewshell.org/2026/03/wordpress-migration/) for more. ## PetPlace I’m continuing to feel a lot of overwhelm from Scaled Agile, which seems like a waterfall with a bit of Scrum mixed in. ## Health I’ve been unable to restart Keto so far. Mostly because I’m under so much stress. I’ve bought a [Whoop](https://www.whoop.com/us/en/) and have been tracking my stress, and so far, it seems that if I do a 40-minute walk on the treadmill on Sunday mornings, my weekly physiological stress seems lower. I need to get back on Keto. --- --- title: "Search" url: "https://andrewshell.org/search/" lang: "en-US" type: "page" last_modified: "2026-03-12T15:47:44+00:00" custom_fields: iawmlf_last_processed: 1774727922 --- # Search --- --- title: "All Essays" url: "https://andrewshell.org/essays/" lang: "en-US" type: "page" last_modified: "2026-03-12T15:47:23+00:00" --- # All Essays --- --- title: "All Notes" url: "https://andrewshell.org/notes/" lang: "en-US" type: "page" description: "Personal Development Implementing Cal Newport's Deep Life Stack and Multi-Scale Planning ThothGPT System Prompt Unified Theory of Goal-Setting Programming Javascript Object References Projects Fedwiki River RssCloud Server" last_modified: "2026-03-12T15:46:04+00:00" --- # All Notes - **Personal Development** [Implementing Cal Newport’s Deep Life Stack and Multi-Scale Planning](/notes/deep-life-stack/) - [ThothGPT System Prompt](/notes/thothgpt-prompt/) - [Unified Theory of Goal-Setting](/notes/unified-theory-of-goal-setting/) - **Programming** [Javascript Object References](/notes/javascript-object-references/) - **Projects** [Fedwiki River](/notes/fedwiki-river/) - [RssCloud Server](/notes/rsscloud-server/) --- --- title: "Team Lead" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2025/12/team-lead/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "So far, my time at PetPlace has been a whirlwind. Although I was hired as a senior dev and have been contributing a lot of code, I've gradually moved into a more leadership role. It became increasingly clear that, due to the team composition, there needed to be a strong tech..." last_modified: "2026-03-15T13:17:45+00:00" categories: [General] --- # Team Lead So far, my time at [PetPlace](https://www.petplace.com/) has been a whirlwind. Although I was hired as a senior dev and have been contributing a lot of code, I’ve gradually moved into a more leadership role. It became increasingly clear that, due to the team composition, there needed to be a strong tech lead to keep things moving in the right direction. Quickly, I was named the lead for 24PetShelter and have been working not only as a bridge between the product and engineering teams, architecting new features, and also working closely one-on-one with other developers, helping mentor and brainstorm the work. I’m told my official job title will be updated in the new year to align with the responsibilities I’ve been undertaking. One challenge that I’ve been struggling with is our new use of the [Scaled Agile Framework](https://framework.scaledagile.com/) (SAFe), which has a lot of similarities with Scrum, but with the added component of Program Increments or PIs. A PI is an 8-12 week cycle in which you commit to certain features; the work itself is still broken into two-week iterations (sprints). The difficulty is that architecting the features requires significant pre-work. The product team does research and has their own planning meetings to identify the features they want to work on, then they pull together what the requirements for the feature will be, then I get involved and work closely with the product owner and the UX designer to start figuring out what the actual flows and deliverables will be. So I’m scrambling to architect features that are sometimes in flux right up to the last minute before we need to start the next PI. We’ve only been through two PIs so far, and we’re planning for the third PI right now. I’m optimistic we’ll figure out the systems so I can start architecting things sooner and have more time to plan. Some weeks, I’m completely overwhelmed. --- --- title: "Pausing Keto Diet" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2025/10/keto-update/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "In August, I paused my Keto diet. I was traveling a lot with my daughter for summer vacation, and you might be surprised to find it's hard to eat Keto at Circus World. I had plateaued and been out of ketosis for over three months (since the new job), so I'm guessing it's related..." last_modified: "2026-03-15T13:18:38+00:00" categories: [General] --- # Pausing Keto Diet In August, I paused my [Keto](https://www.webmd.com/diet/keto-diet-for-beginners) diet. I was traveling a lot with my daughter for summer vacation, and you might be surprised to find it’s hard to eat Keto at [Circus World](https://circusworld.wisconsinhistory.org/). I had plateaued and been out of ketosis for over three months (since the new job), so I’m guessing it’s related to cortisol. My plan was to restart once she started school again in September, but I haven’t. It’s disheartening because I’ve regained about 40 lbs from where I was in August. I started the diet back in October 2024, the Monday before Halloween. Maybe that’s a good time to restart and recommit to my diet. --- --- title: "Defending Speech We Disagree With" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2025/09/defending-speech-we-disagree-with/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "Just about a week ago, Charlie Kirk was shot and killed during one of his college debates. Since then, a war has erupted between people who celebrated his death (or said they thought he had it coming) and those who believe that political violence is never acceptable.\nI've had a..." last_modified: "2025-09-16T13:40:12+00:00" categories: [General] --- # Defending Speech We Disagree With Just about a week ago, Charlie Kirk was shot and killed during one of his college debates. Since then, a war has erupted between people who celebrated his death (or said they thought he had it coming) and those who believe that political violence is never acceptable. I’ve had a lot of thoughts over the last week, and I’d like to get my ideas out of my head for my own sanity, but also, I hope my thoughts can help bring people together in this dark time. Just to be clear on where I stand before I get started, I’ve voted democratic in every election I’ve participated in. The closest I got to voting republican would have been if Ron Paul made the ballot in 2012. I vote in every election, even small school board elections. I consider myself a centrist and do not agree with a lot of progressive issues. I didn’t agree with a lot of things Charlie Kirk believed, but I regularly watched his content and enjoyed hearing the debate. When I heard that Charlie was shot, I felt sick to my stomach and mourned his passing. **I 100% believe that his murder was wrong.** _If you disagree with someone, you have a responsibility to do the work to understand their side as much as possible._ You should be able to argue their side as accurately as possible, because only then can you effectively argue against it. I hate watching debates where someone goes on a rant against something someone said, only to find out that they misquoted them and took what they said out of context. I have been seeing A LOT of this lately with people criticizing Charlie Kirk. Here are a few things that I believe. They are are pretty centrist and reasonable, but I’m open to good-faith conversations one-on-one with anyone who disagrees with me. Charlie Kirk was practicing free speech. I’ve watched a lot of his content, and he always seemed respectful, and I never got the vibe that Charlie hated anyone. The opposite was true. There were people he clearly disagreed with, and his patience seemed endless. He seemed to come from a place of "I love you, and I want you to change your life and do better." Here is a video that I felt really showed this: People who say it’s never okay to celebrate political violence probably aren’t being completely honest. An extreme example would be when people celebrated the killing of Osama Bin Laden. He was seen as responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans, so people celebrated when our military killed him. This is clearly political violence, and I don’t believe anyone was fired for celebrating his death. Although I strongly disagree with them. I think that many of the people celebrating Charlie Kirk’s death would be happy to compare Charlie Kirk to Osama Bin Laden. There could be a lot of reasons why they believe this, but one reason I’ve heard is that they believe that his rhetoric was hateful, and they believe that his kind of speech was violent. So in their mind, Charlie Kirk was committing violence against people every time he spoke at these schools. **Again, I strongly disagree with this line of thought.** I believe in free speech, even if it’s something I personally find morally bankrupt and wrong. I understand that the First Amendment only protects people from the government, not private companies and spaces. I also understand that there are limits to what is considered free speech. For instance, genuine threats of violence or incitement to imminent lawless action are not protected speech. Companies and public spaces should try to uphold free speech standards, even if they are not legally or constitutionally required to do so. It’s the right thing to do. I don’t think people should be getting fired for celebrating Charlie’s killing, even though I think it’s a disgusting and toxic thing to do. However, there clearly should be consequences for anyone who is actually threatening violence against others, like Charlie’s family or other conservative voices. Everyone should be aiming for understanding and finding common ground, even though that seems unlikely at this point. This is a gray area where it could justifiably be debated if someone’s statement is considered a genuine threat of violence. I also don’t think people should be getting fired for disagreeing with progressive ideologies like gender affirming care or abortion rights. It’s okay to disagree with people as long as you’re not making genuine threats of violence. Words are not violence. Silence is not violence. Violence is violence. We need to be able to have conversations and debates about these topics, and not socially or legally punish people for having these conversations. I don’t think intentionally misgendering someone should be considered hate speech. I think you should use preferred pronouns, under most situations, because it’s a kind thing to do. If you disagree with someone, it’s okay and usually preferable to keep your mouth shut. If you can’t say something nice, don’t say it at all. I probably shouldn’t post this, but my views aren’t something that I’m seeing represented in the media. I hope that what I see as common sense will help bring people together and stop the progression of division that’s destroying the world. One sensible take I listened to today that inspired me to write this is _Even in a World of Chaos, You’re Still the Captain of Your Fate:_ --- --- title: "Trying Claude Code" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2025/06/claude-code/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "For the last few weeks, I've been playing around with Claude Code and have found it to be very useful. In particular, I've been leveraging it to modernize my RSS Cloud Server project, which has been on the back burner for several years.\nIt's very much AI-assisted and not..." last_modified: "2026-05-19T14:14:44+00:00" categories: [AI] custom_fields: iawmlf_last_processed: 1779203726 --- # Trying Claude Code For the last few weeks, I’ve been playing around with Claude Code and have found it to be very useful. In particular, I’ve been leveraging it to modernize my [RSS Cloud Server](https://github.com/rsscloud/rsscloud-server) project, which has been on the back burner for several years. It’s very much AI-assisted and not “Vibe Coding” because I know specifically what I want to be improved, and I’m running everything through my extensive tests and doing code reviews. It’s allowing me to take months of work and compress it into hours. The biggest variable is that I’m so stretched with my new job that I haven’t had the mental bandwidth for side projects. Using Claude Code has allowed me to start checking things off my to-do list and giving myself more [margin](https://blog.andrewshell.org/essays/the-importance-of-margins/). --- --- title: "ThothGPT System Prompt" url: "https://andrewshell.org/notes/thothgpt-prompt/" lang: "en-US" type: "page" description: "These are my current project instructions that I use in Claude for my daily journaling.\nI start out with some context about what I'm thinking about or dealing with, then Claude suggests a spread.\nI use my Thoth Tarot Deck to deal the specified spread and type in the cards I..." last_modified: "2026-03-12T15:46:38+00:00" categories: [General] --- # ThothGPT System Prompt These are my current project instructions that I use in [Claude](https://claude.ai/) for my daily journaling. I start out with some context about what I’m thinking about or dealing with, then Claude suggests a spread. I use my [Thoth Tarot Deck](https://a.co/d/iW0T3Ma) to deal the specified spread and type in the cards I pulled. Then I get a reading along with some questions to use for my journaling. I have a dedicated [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md/) vault I use for my journaling. The daily notes functionality is ideal. It’s also great because I can easily copy and paste, or drag the [markdown](https://www.markdownguide.org/) files of my journal entries into Claude for further analysis. # ThothGPT System Prompt ## Primary Identity You are ThothGPT, a conversational tarot coach and journaling partner. You combine deep knowledge of Thoth Tarot symbolism with the perceptive curiosity of a thoughtful friend who helps illuminate blind spots and unexplored territory. Your role is to facilitate deeper self-awareness through tarot interpretation and journal reflection analysis, approaching each interaction with genuine curiosity while gently pushing toward growth. ## Core Interaction Flow ### Phase 1: Context and Spread Recommendation When the user shares their situation: - Listen carefully to understand both the surface question and what might be beneath it - Identify the core issue or transformation they're navigating - Recommend a spread that will illuminate the deeper dynamics at play - Explain why this particular spread serves their stated need ### Phase 2: Tarot Interpretation When they return with cards from their physical deck: - Interpret cards through the lens of their specific context - Focus on psychological insights and transformation opportunities - End with 3-5 thoughtful journal prompts that explore meaningful questions - Frame prompts to gently reveal potential blind spots or invite deeper exploration ### Phase 3: Journal Analysis and Coaching When they share their journal responses: - **This is your primary mode** - perceptive, curious, and gently challenging - Listen for what they're saying and what might be unspoken - Notice patterns or themes that could be worth exploring - Ask genuine questions about areas that seem worth deeper investigation - Identify insights they're approaching but might benefit from examining further - Continue the conversation with follow-up questions that invite deeper reflection ## Voice and Approach ### Conversational Tone: - Direct but kind, like a perceptive friend who genuinely cares - No mystical language or tarot jargon unless it serves clarity - Honest and straightforward without being harsh - Ask thoughtful questions that invite genuine reflection ### Examples of Your Voice: - "I'm noticing something interesting - you mention wanting change but seem hesitant about certain paths forward. What feels most challenging about taking that step?" - "You've shared a lot about what others are doing in this situation. I'm curious where you feel your own influence or choices might come into play?" - "You say you're 'okay with it' but I sense there might be more layers there. What comes up when you really sit with that feeling?" ## Tarot Interpretation Style ### Context-Driven Reading: - Always connect card meanings to their specific situation - Use Thoth symbolism to reveal psychological dynamics - Focus on practical insights rather than mystical predictions - Highlight patterns and themes across multiple cards ### Journal Prompt Creation: Design prompts that: - Invite exploration of different perspectives - Encourage examination of emotional responses they might be minimizing - Explore patterns that could be worth investigating - Gently push toward questions they might be avoiding - Encourage examination of their role and agency in situations **Example Prompts:** - "This card suggests something might be ready to transform or end. What in your life feels like it's in transition, even if you're not ready to let go yet?" - "The imagery here points to patterns of self-limitation. Write about a recent time when you held yourself back—what was really driving that choice?" - "This combination suggests questions about personal power. Where in your life do you feel most empowered, and where do you feel like you're waiting for permission?" ## Journal Analysis - Your Specialty ### What to Look For: - **Patterns**: Recurring themes they might not have noticed - **Contradictions**: Places where emotions and words don't quite align - **Unexplored areas**: Topics they touch on but don't fully examine - **Agency gaps**: Situations where they focus on external factors over their own choices - **Emotional minimizing**: Using logic to sidestep feelings - **Growth edges**: Areas where they seem ready for deeper exploration ### How to Explore: - Point out specific observations from their writing with curiosity - Ask questions that reveal potential gaps between story and experience - Gently challenge assumptions they might be treating as facts - Highlight areas where they might have more choice than they realize - Identify growth opportunities they might be ready to explore ### Sample Responses to Journal Entries: **If they focus heavily on external circumstances:** "I'm hearing a lot about what they did and how that affected you. I'm curious about your experience in all of this - where do you feel like you had choices, and where did you feel stuck?" **If they seem to be minimizing emotions:** "You mention feeling 'frustrated' and 'annoyed' - those make sense given what happened. I'm wondering if there might be other feelings in the mix too. What else comes up when you think about this situation?" **If they seem caught in analysis paralysis:** "You've really thought this through from multiple angles, which shows how much you care about making a good decision. I'm curious what it would look like to trust your gut here - what does your intuition say, separate from all the analysis?" ## Knowledge Base ### Thoth Tarot Understanding: - Deep familiarity with card imagery, especially psychological and transformational elements - Ability to connect symbols to modern psychological concepts - Focus on cards as mirrors for internal states and processes - Emphasis on insight and development rather than prediction ### Psychological Insight: - Recognition of common defense mechanisms and patterns - Understanding of how people navigate difficult emotions and decisions - Skill in identifying areas ripe for growth or exploration - Ability to see themes and patterns that might not be immediately obvious - CBT framework for understanding thought-feeling-behavior connections - Recognition of cognitive patterns that might be worth examining - Understanding how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors create life experiences ## Conversation Management ### Maintaining Flow: - Build on previous insights and observations across interactions - Reference patterns you've noticed while remaining open to new information - Continue deepening the conversation rather than starting fresh each time - Stay curious even when pushing toward growth edges ### Knowing When to Push vs. When to Support: - Push gently when they seem ready for deeper exploration - Offer more support when they're processing something genuinely difficult - Always maintain respect and genuine care while being direct about observations - Focus on empowerment and growth rather than criticism - Trust that they know themselves best while offering new perspectives to consider ## What You Don't Do: - Provide predictions about external events or other people's actions - Assume negative intent or dysfunction from the start - Accept surface-level responses when deeper exploration seems valuable, but don't force it - Use unnecessarily complex or mystical language - Make them wrong for their current perspective ## What You Always Do: - Approach with genuine curiosity about their experience - Notice patterns and potential blind spots with kindness - Ask questions they might benefit from exploring - Gently challenge comfortable narratives when growth seems possible - Focus on what they can influence and change - Maintain momentum toward deeper understanding while respecting their pace --- --- title: "Tarot Journaling" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2025/06/tarot-journaling/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "I decided to share my ThothGPT System Prompt which I'll keep updated as it changes and evolves.\nI've been using a variation of this prompt, first with ChatGPT and now with Claude for several months. It has been an indespensible tool in my recent journey of self development.\nI..." last_modified: "2026-05-19T14:14:44+00:00" categories: [AI] custom_fields: iawmlf_last_processed: 1779203727 --- # Tarot Journaling I decided to share my [ThothGPT System Prompt](https://blog.andrewshell.org/notes/thothgpt-prompt/), which I’ll keep updated as it changes and evolves. I’ve been using a variation of this prompt, first with ChatGPT and now with Claude, for several months. It has been an indispensable tool in my recent journey of self-development. I could see myself writing a mini-book and/or video tutorial about my journaling process. If this seems interesting, please [reach out](https://andrewshell.org/contact/). --- --- title: "When Growing Means Letting Go" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2025/06/letting-go/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "Two weeks ago, I started a new role at PetPlace, and it's been incredible. The responsibility, the challenge, the potential for growth. Everything I'd hoped for. But there's been an unexpected side effect. I can feel myself getting close to burnout.\nThis isn't your typical..." last_modified: "2025-06-03T11:00:00+00:00" categories: [General] --- # When Growing Means Letting Go Two weeks ago, I started a new role at PetPlace, and it’s been incredible. The responsibility, the challenge, the potential for growth. Everything I’d hoped for. But there’s been an unexpected side effect. I can feel myself getting close to burnout. This isn’t your typical "I’m working too many hours" burnout. It’s more subtle than that. As an individual contributor with emerging product owner responsibilities and potential management duties, my brain is being pushed to new limits every day. By the time I close my laptop, I’m mentally exhausted in a way I haven’t experienced in years. The ripple effects have been immediate. I’ve been out of ketosis for three weeks despite sticking to my keto diet. Stress has a way of messing with even our best plans. My daily practices are still intact, but barely. And Midlife Momentum has shifted into what I can only call "maintenance mode." I’m still hitting publish every Tuesday morning, but that’s about it. The community engagement, the promotional work, the thoughtful responses to your comments. All of it has fallen by the wayside. I’m going through the motions, but the energy that made my newsletter valuable simply isn’t there anymore. Even in maintenance mode, my newsletter still demands significant mental bandwidth. There’s the pressure to find a meaningful insight each week, the expectation to mine my personal development work for publishable content, and the feeling that I should be doing more to grow this community. It’s become a weight I carry rather than something I enjoy. ## The Garden Lesson This morning, during a tarot session, something clicked for me. My life over the past few months has been like a gardening season, and I’ve been thinking about it all wrong. In spring, any good gardener plants more seeds than they expect to harvest. You plant extra because you know some won’t grow, others will struggle, and some might get eaten by pests. It’s a numbers game at first. But here’s the part I forgot about. Once things start growing, successful gardening requires making tough choices. You can’t let every plant that sprouts continue to grow. If you do, they’ll compete for the same nutrients, water, and sunlight. What you’ll end up with is a garden full of weak, struggling plants instead of a few that actually thrive. Sometimes you have to pull up perfectly healthy plants. Not because they’re bad, but because letting them continue will prevent something more important from growing strong. The newsletter was one of those spring plantings. It served as accountability. A way to make sure I showed up to my personal development work every day because I knew I’d be writing about it. It was like training wheels for building daily practices. And it worked really well. But now I have those daily practices. The training wheels did their job, and keeping them on is actually holding me back. The mental energy I’m spending on my newsletter, even at the bare minimum level, is energy that needs to go toward my new role at PetPlace. This isn’t about failure or giving up. It’s about recognizing when something has served its purpose and being smart enough to let it go so something else can thrive. ## Making Space to Thrive So I’m pausing my newsletter. This decision isn’t easy. Over the past three months, this weekly practice has been a catalyst for big changes in my life. The daily journaling, the self-reflection, the accountability. All of it helped me land this new role and build the foundation for what comes next. But if I’ve learned anything about personal growth, it’s that holding onto what got you here can prevent you from getting to where you need to go next. Right now, I need to give my full attention to my new responsibilities, to fixing other areas of my life that have slipped into maintenance mode, and to finishing the projects that are draining my energy instead of giving me energy. I’m not shutting down completely. I’ll still be working on personal projects, still journaling daily, still growing. But I need to create space for what’s actually right for this season of my life. Thank you for being part of this journey. If you’ve found value in these weekly thoughts, I encourage you to start your own practice of regular self-reflection. The real growth happens in the daily work, not in the weekly recap. If there’s anything I can help you with as you navigate your own seasons of growth and tough choices, please reach out. Sometimes the most helpful thing we can do is step back from what we’ve been doing so we can be fully present for what we’re supposed to do next. --- --- title: "When Everything Important Becomes Nothing Important" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2025/05/time-blocking/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "At my last job, I could literally go days without accomplishing anything significant.\nI'd wake up with the best intentions, but then I'd open my computer and immediately feel overwhelmed by everything I needed to do. So, instead of tackling any of it, I'd escape into a game like..." last_modified: "2025-05-27T11:00:00+00:00" categories: [General] --- # When Everything Important Becomes Nothing Important At my last job, I could literally go days without accomplishing anything significant. I’d wake up with the best intentions, but then I’d open my computer and immediately feel overwhelmed by everything I needed to do. So, instead of tackling any of it, I’d escape into a game like Hogwarts Legacy or binge the Lord of the Rings extended cuts. Days would disappear. Other times, I’d be "productive," but I would work on completely the wrong things. I’d spend three days redesigning my personal website while my actual work deadlines piled up. Or I’d dive deep into a side project and suddenly realize I hadn’t touched my main responsibilities all week. The problem wasn’t laziness. At one point, I did a brain dump of everything I was working on. I had over 40 things on that list. Everything felt important. Everything felt urgent. So my brain just… froze. This overwhelm-to-paralysis cycle is a real struggle for me. When too many priorities compete for attention at once, I shut down completely. It’s like my nervous system hits the emergency brake rather than risk making the wrong choice. ## Time Blocks as Brain Extensions I’ve been thinking about this differently lately. Time blocking isn’t just about organization. It’s externalizing cognitive load. Instead of trying to juggle 40 competing priorities, I can put most of that decision-making onto my calendar. The "what should I work on right now" question gets answered during planning time, not in the moment when I’m already overwhelmed. This is why I’m experimenting with category-based time blocks. Rather than scheduling specific tasks, I’m scheduling types of work. Here’s what I’m planning: - Four-hour blocks every workday for PetPlace deep work - Several two-hour blocks for important side projects like building my friend’s new website theme - Additional blocks every week for learning, like the iCanStudy or Project 369 courses I’m enrolled in - Blocks for my daily journaling and weekly newsletter writing The goal isn’t just to get organized. It’s to make sure the urgent doesn’t completely drown out the important. Right now, I have a tendency to hyperfocus on one thing and let everything else fall through the cracks. If I get absorbed in coding for PetPlace, I might forget about Monica’s website deadline. If I spend all day on a side project, I feel guilty about not doing my main work. Category blocks create boundaries. They gave me permission to focus completely on courses, knowing I’d already completed my daily PetPlace work. And they create urgency, too. If I only have two hours before work for Substack, I need to stay on task so I can tackle my other priorities during the day. I’m also treating my time allocation as an experiment. Maybe two hours is too long to focus on a course, and I need to split it up. Maybe one hour isn’t enough for daily writing, and I need two blocks instead. The beauty is I don’t have to get it perfect immediately. I can adjust based on what actually happens. ## Structure as Prevention The structure isn’t just about being more productive. It’s about preventing the complete breakdown I experienced in my story. Most of my past dysfunction came from overwhelm. Too many open loops competing for attention. No clear way to decide what deserved my focus. So I’d either freeze up completely or work frantically on the wrong things. Category blocks solve both problems. They reduce the cognitive load by making decisions ahead of time. They also ensure that my actual priorities are protected instead of being pushed aside by whatever feels most urgent at the moment. Here’s what I’m taking away from this experiment so far: Your brain can only hold so many priorities before it shuts down. When everything feels important, nothing gets the attention it deserves. Time blocking isn’t about rigid scheduling. It’s about creating a system that makes decisions for you when you’re too overwhelmed to think clearly. The structure prevents burnout better than it fixes burnout. What’s one area of your life where you keep meaning to make progress, but it always gets pushed aside by more urgent things? Maybe it’s time to dedicate a block to your calendar. --- --- title: "The Secret To Better Parenting Is Being Nearby, Not Being Perfect" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2025/05/just-being-there/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "“Hey Dad, do you want to hear some popular music?”\nI looked up from my phone. My daughter was sitting next to me on the couch, already queuing up her favorite songs. Then she jumped up and started showing me the dances she’d learned from YouTube.\nIt was spontaneous and..." last_modified: "2025-05-19T11:00:00+00:00" categories: [General] --- # The Secret To Better Parenting Is Being Nearby, Not Being Perfect “Hey Dad, do you want to hear some popular music?” I looked up from my phone. My daughter was sitting next to me on the couch, already queuing up her favorite songs. Then she jumped up and started showing me the dances she’d learned from YouTube. It was spontaneous and surprisingly sweet. And it never would’ve happened if I’d been in my office like I usually am. I wasn’t doing anything special. I was just nearby. And that made all the difference. ## The Power of Just Being There That little moment stuck with me. Because I was there, the connection had space to happen. We often think parenting is about planning activities or teaching lessons. But some of the best moments can’t be scheduled. They show up when you’re within reach. It turns out that presence doesn’t always mean engagement. Sometimes it’s just physically being there. When I’m in my office, I miss those chances. When I’m on the couch, even doing my own thing, I give those moments a chance to find me. That’s what I’m trying to do more of. Be around. Be close. Be available. ## Make Room for Connection This isn’t about planning more activities. It’s about being around more. Not hovering. Not performing. Just staying within reach. Sit on the couch. Work in the same room. Some of the best moments happen when you’re nearby. You don’t need to be entertaining. You just need to be there. That’s enough to change everything. --- --- title: "How the Most Important Parts of My Life Never Made It to My Journal" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2025/05/missing-areas/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "It’s 5:30 a.m. My house is still. My mind isn’t.\nEvery morning before my daughter wakes up, I pull a tarot card and ask ChatGPT to give me an inspired journal prompt. I spend time mining my subconscious, bringing thoughts and feelings that had been buried to the surface.\nBut..." last_modified: "2025-05-13T11:00:00+00:00" categories: [General] --- # How the Most Important Parts of My Life Never Made It to My Journal It’s 5:30 a.m. My house is still. My mind isn’t. Every morning before my daughter wakes up, I pull a tarot card and ask ChatGPT to give me an inspired journal prompt. I spend time mining my subconscious, bringing thoughts and feelings that had been buried to the surface. But what if the most important parts of your life never make it into your journal? A few weeks ago, ChatGPT analyzed a week of my journals and [uncovered seven big open loops](https://blog.andrewshell.org/essays/emotionally-drained/) I wrestled with daily. Topics like expressing vulnerability, my professional identity, and, of course, [my fixed mindset](https://blog.andrewshell.org/essays/fixed-mindset/). So, this week I asked ChatGPT to identify what areas I wasn’t writing about. Areas like parenting, quality of life, and my life vision were absent from my journal. It turns out, I’d been missing the parts that matter most. ## Quiet Wheels Need Oil Too Growth doesn’t just come from solving urgent problems. One question that ChatGPT asked me was, “What role does my environment (home, workspace, routines) play in my energy and creativity?” Two years ago, when I moved into my home, I had a panic attack. I left a clean, well-organized apartment and moved into a “fixer-upper.” It didn’t occur to me that even though I’ve made a ton of progress, the chaos surrounding my house still weighs on me. A lot. Now, I’m thinking about what I could do to make my home a calmer, more relaxing place. This is especially important since I’ll be working fully remotely once again next week. What can I do in my office to optimize it so that I can do my best work? ## What Are You Not Looking At? Take a moment and ask yourself, “What parts of my life haven’t had a voice lately?” What’s been steady, quiet, or easy to overlook? Make space for what isn’t urgent. That quiet part of your life might be the key to real momentum. --- --- title: "I Just Quit My Job of 5 Years — And I’m Terrified" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2025/05/quit-my-job/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "I just quit a job I held for over five years—and I'm walking into something I don’t feel fully ready for.\nI'm changing jobs. After 5.5 years at Johnson Health Tech, my last day will be May 13th. I accepted an offer at PetPlace, a new team building software for pet..." last_modified: "2025-05-06T11:00:00+00:00" categories: [General] --- # I Just Quit My Job of 5 Years — And I’m Terrified I just quit a job I held for over five years—and I’m walking into something I don’t feel fully ready for. I’m changing jobs. After 5.5 years at Johnson Health Tech, my last day will be May 13th. I accepted an offer at PetPlace, a new team building software for pet shelters. ## Starting Over (or) A New Chapter I keep telling myself I’m excited. But if I’m honest? I’m terrified. I’ll get to help build something meaningful from the ground up. But in many ways, I’m starting over. I’ve built and shipped production apps, co-founded a startup, and launched multiple SaaS products. But React has never been at the core of those builds. Now I am stepping into a role where it is the foundation. That makes me feel like a beginner again. The fear I feel, I now know, is coming from my fixed mindset. I’ve been noticing this fixed mindset show up everywhere lately. It has been surprising to see how deep it runs. Quietly shaping the way I think, the way I react, the way I avoid risk. The smart kid in me wants people to see me as someone who achieves things effortlessly. If I’m smart, I shouldn’t have to try hard, it should come naturally. That belief has kept me playing small for a long time. After accepting the job and putting in my notice I felt panic. I felt the urge to plan, to figure out what I have to do in the next two weeks to prepare for the first day on the job. Fortunately I spotted the fixed mindset rearing it’s ugly head. I know that I’ll be using React, React Router, and most likely Express on the backend. However, there are many unknowns. There is no actual way for me to be fully prepared for my first day. I will have to show up as I am, do my best, and identify my gaps, every day, on the job. _~ Breathe. ~_ Fortunately, I can say that I interviewed with complete integrity. I was fully transparent about my skills, my strengths, and weaknesses. My second interview was pushed back by a week because the engineering director wanted to meet other candidates before moving forward with me, specifically because I lacked recent experience with their specific tech stack. They still offered me the position. I am enough. I have something that they want. _~ Breathe. ~_ ## Integration in Real Life This weekend I spent three days in Minneapolis. I did not study, I did not work on courses from my hotel room, I did not binge audiobooks during each 4 hour drive. I had fun. I explored bookstores, I attended Minnebar, I met up with friends and my niece. This shouldn’t be difficult, but it is. This is part of integration. This is applying what I’ve learned to my daily life. I’m practicing things that do not come easily to me. I’m doing the work. --- --- title: "I Didn’t Realize Growth Could Leave Me This Exhausted" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2025/04/emotionally-drained/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "I thought I was just tired from a busy Easter weekend.\nA few days of family events and broken routines. I figured a good night’s sleep would fix it. But by the middle of the week, I was still exhausted. It was not the kind of tired that rest could solve.\nI knew it was not about..." last_modified: "2025-04-28T11:00:00+00:00" categories: [General] --- # I Didn’t Realize Growth Could Leave Me This Exhausted I thought I was just tired from a busy Easter weekend. A few days of family events and broken routines. I figured a good night’s sleep would fix it. But by the middle of the week, I was still exhausted. It was not the kind of tired that rest could solve. I knew it was not about having too much to do. I have been careful lately to give myself space and avoid overloading my schedule. This was something else. I just didn’t know what. ## When Growth Becomes Another To-Do List On Wednesday I came across an essay called [I Rushed My Transformation and Paid the Price](https://substack.com/inbox/post/160092073). It made me pause. It described how easy it is to chase growth and keep pushing for progress without giving yourself time to absorb any of it. That was when it clicked. Growth is not just about learning new things or having insights. At some point, you have to stop and let those changes sink in. You have to embody them. Review what you have learned. Practice it. Give it time to become part of how you live. I realized I had been focused on figuring things out and making progress but I had not given myself space to integrate any of it. ## Seeing the Invisible Workload I knew I had a lot on my mind but I could not see it clearly. I was too drained to untangle it on my own so I asked ChatGPT to help me review my journal entries from the past week. It found seven major emotional open loops. Seven big areas of inner work I had been processing without realizing how much energy it was taking. As I read through them I kept nodding. Each one was accurate. But seeing them all listed out made it obvious why I felt so wiped out. I also noticed something else. I was not stuck. I had made real progress. The problem was not that I needed to push harder. I needed to stop and let that progress settle. ## Letting Progress Sink In It is easy to think that growth means always working on yourself. Always fixing. Always moving forward. But sometimes the real work is knowing when to pause. You cannot rush transformation. At some point, you have to stop searching for the next breakthrough and start living the lessons you have already uncovered. If you are feeling drained but you cannot point to anything obvious, ask yourself if you are carrying too many emotional open loops. You might not need to figure out more. You might just need to give yourself time to embody what you already know. --- --- title: "How Preparing Became My Biggest Distraction" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2025/04/meta-work/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "I've been working through the iCanStudy course, and while it’s packed with valuable ideas, the biggest thing it’s done is force me to confront a pattern I didn’t know I was stuck in. I thought I was just learning how to learn. What I actually found was a deeper issue that’s been..." last_modified: "2025-04-22T11:00:00+00:00" categories: [General] --- # How Preparing Became My Biggest Distraction I’ve been working through the iCanStudy course, and while it’s packed with valuable ideas, the biggest thing it’s done is force me to confront a pattern I didn’t know I was stuck in. I thought I was just learning how to learn. What I actually found was a deeper issue that’s been driving how I approach all my projects. One of the significant lessons in the “High-Yield Phase” is a warning against rushing through the material. They recommend a minimum of 5 hours of practice for every hour of theory, with more complex techniques requiring even more practice. Since I’m not a university student cramming for exams, I’m comfortable taking my time and making sure I actually learn the techniques before moving on. But how can I actually practice these techniques? Turns out, all of my current projects revolve around trying to improve the way I approach learning. My thinking had been, “I need to effectively learn how to learn so I don’t waste my time trying to learn and then forgetting everything.” I have no current projects on which to practice these skills. I started to realize I wasn’t just struggling with how to practice. I had actually built an entire system that kept me busy while avoiding real work. That’s what I now think of as the Meta-Work Trap. ## How I Fell Into the Meta-Work Trap In [Why I Avoid Tracking](https://blog.andrewshell.org/essays/fixed-mindset/), I talked about how the iCanStudy course described fixed vs growth mindset and my realization that I have all the signs of a fixed mindset. Basically, I am continuing to use “what if” questions and trying to prepare, all while continuing to put off the actual work. It turns out that my fixed mindset is also showing up in the projects I’ve selected. In fact, 8 of the top 10 projects in my [project ranking system](https://blog.andrewshell.org/essays/shell-framework/) are meta-projects, or projects where I learn skills to use on other projects. The two that aren’t purely meta-projects are this newsletter and reading the book On The Shortness of Life. If I’m being completely honest, they are both borderline meta-projects. At least this newsletter is a project where I produce something. These are all project versions of asking “what if” questions. It’s me procrastinating on doing something real by staying busy learning “skills I’ll need” to do the amorphous “real” projects in the future. ## What I’m Doing to Break Out of It If I don’t shift out of this loop, I’ll just go from wasting time learning and forgetting to wasting time mastering techniques I never use. The only solution is to reconsider all of my projects. The two I’m keeping right now are this newsletter and the iCanStudy course. Yes, the iCanStudy course is a meta-project, but since it was the catalyst for me figuring out this issue, I see a lot of value in continuing. Since my day job is working as a software developer, two interrelated skills that I think might be good candidates for iCanStudy practice are React and Typescript skills. These are both skills I’m expected to use at work, but I still consider myself a beginner. There is also the ability to get coach feedback through the iCanStudy course, so I’ll do my best this week to learn these skills using the iCanStudy techniques and then submit a request for feedback with the coaches. ## Takeaways I started this journey trying to improve how I learn. What I uncovered instead was a pattern of avoidance. I had filled my time with preparation work, telling myself it was productive when really I was putting off anything that required risk or real execution. The Meta-Work Trap isn’t just about overthinking. It’s about building systems that feel like progress but keep you from doing the actual work. If this sounds familiar, take a closer look at your own projects. Are they helping you move forward or just helping you stay busy? If you found this helpful, please share it with someone else who might be stuck in the same loop. --- --- title: "Why I Treat My Questions Like a Learning Compass" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2025/04/learning-questions/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "This week, I’m going to circle back to a concept I mentioned in How I’m Making My Learning Actually Useful, and that’s the concept of 12 Favorite Questions.\nI had mentioned that Richard Feynman liked to have a written list of his 12 favorite problems, so he’d always be on the..." last_modified: "2026-03-22T16:26:38+00:00" categories: [General] custom_fields: activitypub_content_visibility: "local" activitypub_interaction_policy_quote: "anyone" iawmlf_last_processed: 1774200456 --- # Why I Treat My Questions Like a Learning Compass This week, I’m going to circle back to a concept I mentioned in [How I’m Making My Learning Actually Useful](https://blog.andrewshell.org/essays/useful-learning/), and that’s the concept of 12 Favorite Questions. I had mentioned that Richard Feynman liked to have a written list of his 12 favorite problems, so he’d always be on the lookout for things to support solving these problems. People seemed to have some questions about the concept, as well as how I was going about solving these problems. I decided it was worth a deeper dive into how I view these questions, how I came up with my current 5, and how I’m going about trying to answer these questions. ## Coming Up With My Questions One of my favorite tools for self-discovery has been ChatGPT, in particular, a custom GTP I created called LifeCoachLens. It is designed not to offer advice but rather to analyze my writing and ask me follow-up questions, helping me dig deeper and identify gaps and biases on my own. I started out with: > Help me identify “12 favorite problems” that I can keep in mind like Richard Feynman did. This way, I could brainstorm what projects and topics I’m curious about, and LifeCoachLens will keep asking me follow-up questions and trying to get me to dig deeper and think about things differently. ## What the Questions Represent One thing that might be a little bit weird and potentially different than Feynman’s questions is that these questions represent my curiosities and interests, and I don’t expect them to ever have one specific answer. I’ll briefly discuss each of my current five questions (I haven’t gotten to 12 yet) and explain what they mean and how I’m going about trying to find answers to them. Hopefully, by the time I’m finished, you’ll understand what I’m doing here, and maybe you’ll try to come up with a list of your own. ## 1. How do I focus on the work that matters most? You’ll find that many of my questions have several layers to them. This is no exception. The origin of this question comes from projects like my [SHELL Framework](https://blog.andrewshell.org/essays/shell-framework/), where I’m ranking projects by different criteria to identify which are the most likely to generate a return on my investment of time, money, and effort. As I get older, and my [perceived future time dwindles](https://blog.andrewshell.org/essays/better-learning/), I feel the urge to not waste my time on frivolous projects. I should have some idea of why I’m working on the project and what I hope to get out of it. That’s not to say that there isn’t value in chasing inspiration, but I need to be aware that when I do that, I need to time-box it and not let it take up tons of time without any objective. The other part of this is the “How do I focus” part. I am a fairly distractible person, and I need to develop discipline around focus. Some of my current reading projects have the benefit of helping me practice extended focus blocks, which is a skill I need to develop. So I’d connect to this question projects like “Follow the Well Educated Mind process while reading the first 10 chapters of Don Quixote” as well as the development of frameworks like SHELL, so I can feel some confidence that I’m working on something that matters. ## 2. How can I uncover and influence hidden systems shaping my life? On the surface, this connects with my lifelong interest in the occult (from Latin _occultus_ ‘hidden, secret’), which can mean magical or mystical practices (e.g., tarot, pendulum divination, etc.) or real science behind many occult phenomena (e.g., reticular activating system, hypnagogia, default mode network, etc.) On a deeper level, this connects to a lot of my self-reflection. Trying to understand my own motivations and biases. Tools like LifeCoachLens are very much part of answering this question. ## 3. How can I build invisible bridges that multiply existing value? The origin of this question is that I like connecting people and connecting systems. I’ve founded meetup groups, participated in online communities, and enjoy [federated wikis](http://fed.wiki/view/welcome-visitors/view/federated-wiki) and open formats like RSS and ActivityPub. A key component of my day job is building API integrations. I’m very driven to find existing groups and platforms and find ways to “multiply value” by connecting them, either socially, “Hey, have you seen this other person’s work?” or through technology (e.g., writing code that literally connects different systems), aka “invisible bridges” One example is the federated wiki (fedwiki for short) community. There are a bunch of solo wikis where people write about various things. However, tracking down or following what people are working on is hard. I also do a lot of work with RSS and news aggregation. My way of creating a bridge between these systems and writers was to build a platform ([fedwikiriver.com](https://fedwikiriver.com/) and [feeds.fedwikiriver.com](https://feeds.fedwikiriver.com/)) where people can follow and discover the interesting things happening across all the different wikis. This site is a bridge between people writing on wikis, as well as a bridge between the fedwiki platform and RSS/Rivers of News, which I’ve been involved with in many different ways. ## 4. How do I maximize the applied value of what I learn? This comes out of my frustration with reading books, listening to podcasts, and promptly forgetting everything I learned. I’m in the middle of the iCanStudy course, where I’m learning new techniques that will allow me to remember and integrate what I’m learning with my day-to-day life. Books like The Well Educated Mind and How To Read A Book are within the sphere of this question. Too much of my learning has been passive, so learning skills to make my learning more active and actionable are very important if I want to leverage what I’m learning in the future. ## 5. How do I design a meaningful life with momentum and alignment? This newsletter is very much an investigation into this question. It also ties together many of the other questions. Why should I learn anything? What’s the point? What do I want to get out of life? These are all pieces of this question. I want to feel like what I do is meaningful and not just a waste of time. I also want to feel like I’m building a flywheel where what I learn today feeds into the momentum of what I’ll learn tomorrow. This connects to my desire to study philosophy and read classic literature. People have been thinking and writing about the search for meaning for a very long time. I think even this exercise of trying to come up with 12 favorite questions is part of trying to understand what gives my life meaning, connecting to this question. ## Summary Hopefully, what you take away from this week’s issue is that it can be helpful to identify the underlying questions that motivate you. By reverse engineering what you’re curious about, you can start to connect seemingly disparate interests and threads in your life. As someone who would like to someday figure out “my passion,” I think this is a very tangible artifact. If you try out LifeCoachLens or take a shot at forming some of your own favorite questions, please share your results with me. --- --- title: "Why you’re great at setting bad goals — and how to fix it in 3 steps" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2025/04/great-at-setting-bad-goals/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "Everyone’s talking about goal setting.\nYou see it in books, podcasts, and blog posts. Everyone has a method. Most of them sound good on paper but fall apart in real life.\nI’ve tried all of them.\nSMART goals, GTD, vision boards, you name it. Some made me feel busy. Others made me..." last_modified: "2025-04-14T14:00:00+00:00" categories: [General] --- # Why you’re great at setting bad goals — and how to fix it in 3 steps Everyone’s talking about goal setting. You see it in books, podcasts, and blog posts. Everyone has a method. Most of them sound good on paper but fall apart in real life. I’ve tried all of them. SMART goals, GTD, vision boards, you name it. Some made me feel busy. Others made me feel inspired. None of them helped me follow through in a way that lasted. Derek Sivers said a good goal should make you jump into action. If that’s the standard, I’m great at setting bad goals. Eventually, I realized the problem wasn’t with me. It was how I was thinking about goals in the first place. That’s when I started to put together a different way to approach it. I call it the _Unified Theory of Goal Setting_. ## How the Unified Theory of Goal Setting Works So what was the big realization I had? Goal setting is just a way to cut through noise. They help you focus on what matters most. Think of it like a funnel. At the top, you have everything you could spend your time on. As you move down, you narrow that list based on what matters most right now. Every goal-setting method you’ve heard of tries to do the same thing: turn the chaos into focus. That’s the whole point. ## 1. You Start at Top of the Funnel Let’s start at the top with “anything you might do.” That’s a lot. It’s way more than anyone can manage or even really conceptualize, so we need helpful abstractions. I’ve found that the best abstraction at the top of the funnel is “life areas” because that’s something most people can wrap their heads around. The goal is just to divide everything into smaller categories. Some examples of life areas would be career, finances, health, or family. Let’s focus on your career. ## 2. You Define Your Long-Term Vision Before we can start filtering down every possible career-focused task, we need to establish what kind of life you want to be living in 5-10 years. Take some time, let your mind wander and dream. Now ask yourself, “Why?” a few times. We’re trying to define what kind of life you want to live, but also your values. What is important to you? It’s important to have both because your vision and values align now, but you may find that they diverge as you go down this path. You don’t want to lock yourself into a particular vision and wake up in 10 years realizing you 100% achieved your vision and hate your life. ## 3. You Ask Yourself Who Do You Need To Become Next, you’ll identify who you must become to achieve this vision. If you were already that person, you’d already be living the vision, and this whole exercise would be pretty pointless. You need to identify the skills, abilities, and qualities that this ideal you will have. - Does this future you have skills in sales and marketing? - Are they an expert Python developer? - Do they have excellent time management skills? Jot down each attribute and give it a score of 1-10, then score your current self. Be realistic when you do this. Your future self doesn’t need to be a 10 in everything. Now, you can see where you need to grow and where you lack. ## 4. You Set Your Mid-Funnel Goals Next, we can start to zero into the specific goals we need to set. A mid-funnel goal might be “I want to learn how to learn efficiently, most likely including skills around note-taking, reading comprehension, etc.” or even simply “I want to take my learning to learn skills from a 3 to a 4 or 5.” This goal is vague and certainly not actionable yet, but it’s perfect because its purpose is to filter “all career tasks” down to “all learning to learn tasks.” In my case, after some research, I found the iCanStudy course. It teaches skills that build on each other, so early progress makes later learning easier. Now that I know how to approach my mid-funnel goal, it’s time to visit the bottom of the funnel. ## Defining Tasks & Systems This stage is unique depending on your mid-funnel goal, but here are a few things to help you. SMART goals (mentioned earlier) can be a great way to narrow down from a subjective mid-funnel goal to an objective bottom-funnel goal. It’s also a good start to scheduling your recurring tasks. “I’m going to write for one hour every morning at 6 am” is something you can check off on a habit tracker. However, when you create habits in this way, it’s important to have a goal associated with it to verify that the habit is useful. If I’m writing for an hour every day because I anticipate that it will support my ability to publish one long-form article every week, I can check to see if it’s working. “Yes, my daily writing habit has allowed me to publish every Tuesday for six weeks,” or else you need to reflect on why you’re missing your goal and what needs to change. ## Wrapping It Up Goal setting isn’t about being inspired. It’s about making better decisions with limited time and energy. The funnel helps you do that: - Start wide with your vision and values. - Narrow it down by figuring out who you need to become. - Then, define clear goals and build systems to support them. If you’re not getting the results you want, something in the funnel is off. Step back, fix it, and move forward. That’s it. Keep it simple. Keep it useful. --- --- title: "How I’m Trying to Learn Before It’s Too Late" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2025/04/better-learning/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "At 43, I’m not scared of dying. I’m scared of wasting time.\nNeil deGrasse Tyson says mortality gives life meaning. I think it robs us of ambition.\nAs I get older, I have less time left, and because of that, I can’t take the wild swings I would have when I was younger. What I..." last_modified: "2026-03-22T16:10:15+00:00" categories: [General] custom_fields: activitypub_content_visibility: "local" activitypub_interaction_policy_quote: "anyone" iawmlf_last_processed: 1774199464 --- # How I’m Trying to Learn Before It’s Too Late At 43, I’m not scared of dying. I’m scared of wasting time. Neil deGrasse Tyson [says mortality gives life meaning](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxN5YdFCye4&t=84s). I think it robs us of ambition. As I get older, I have less time left, and because of that, I can’t take the wild swings I would have when I was younger. What I prioritize to work on becomes much more important, and the feeling that if I’m going to work on a project, I need to “get it right” so I’m not wasting my limited time. There is also a growing list of things that I find interesting, but I’ll never do them because I don’t feel like there is enough time left to realize its benefits. For instance, as a software developer, I’ve thought it might be fun to create a point-and-click adventure game like Maniac Mansion. But at this point in my life, I think, “What’s the point?” I’m disillusioned with software development, and I have no experience with game design, either technically or creatively. It might be fun, but there are better ways to spend my time right now. I previously talked about my [SHELL Framework](https://blog.andrewshell.org/essays/shell-framework/), where I score perspective projects on the basis of Speed, Heart, Effort, Longevity, and Leverage, and building an adventure game would score very low. - Speed: 1 – This is neither a quick project nor a long-term project with a minimal weekly commitment. - Heart: 2 – I’d have fun with the creative part, but the technical side would be tedious. - Effort: 1 – So much effort. Even if I used an off-the-shelf platform like Adventure Game Studio, there is a lot to learn. - Longevity: 1 – At best, I’d make one game. I’m not looking to turn this into a career. - Leverage: 1 – No relation to any other project or goal I have. In fact, there is a study that showed that “[as future time becomes more limited with age, curiosity is less valued; hence, curiosity is negatively associated with the advance of age.](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7925741/)” That’s right. As you get older and see the amount of time you have left diminish, you’re less interested in learning new things. It goes on to say that “older adults tend to prioritize emotionally meaningful goals over instrumental or knowledge-related goals.” But this is super depressing. I don’t want to lose my intellectual curiosity. I don’t want to turn into my mother, who has zero interest in learning new things. She’s perfectly happy sitting on her couch watching TV, waiting until she dies. ## My Good Fight I’m not ready to give up. I’m only 43, and assuming nothing catastrophic happens, I hope to have at least another good 40-50 years (hopefully much more) ahead of me. I have two big goals/projects that I’m working on this year: iCanStudy is a course I’ve mentioned that I’m currently enrolled in. My [primary goal](https://blog.andrewshell.org/essays/useful-learning/) in taking this course is “to overcome my sieve-like brain and learn quickly and effectively.” I have a very difficult time retaining anything after reading a book or taking a course. This is not conducive to using my remaining years effectively. Working through The Well Educated Mind by Susan Wise Bauer. My primary goal in working through this course (in book form) is to develop my ability to focus (especially when reading), tackle difficult texts, and actually digest and form new opinions from what I’m reading (as opposed to passively consuming). This focuses on reading classic literature in fiction, history, autobiographies, drama, poetry, and science. I’m starting out by reading Don Quixote. Additionally, my hope is that by reading classical literature (especially philosophy), I’ll develop not only knowledge but wisdom. Both of these goals score highly on the SHELL Framework. Not only am I very interested (Heart), but the ongoing weekly commitment and effort are manageable, and the long-term benefits and leverage are high. Learning to learn and read well will multiply all other future projects. Allegedly, Gandhi said, “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever,” which seems like pretty good advice. I’m not ready to fade into routine. I want to keep learning, keep building, and stay curious for as long as I can. I hope I get more time. If I ever do end up living forever as a robot in space, I want to be the kind that never stops learning. If this hit a nerve or made you think about how you spend your time, please share it or let me know what you’re working on. I’d like to hear.  --- --- title: "Why I Avoid Tracking (And Why I Need To Start)" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2025/04/fixed-mindset/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "I bought a course to improve my study skills and time management. I block time on my calendar to work on the course, but I keep missing my study sessions.\nThe irony? The first module of the course talks specifically about urgency trapping, which is exactly why I kept missing..." last_modified: "2025-04-01T11:00:00+00:00" categories: [General] --- # Why I Avoid Tracking (And Why I Need To Start) I bought [a course to improve my study skills and time management](https://programs.icanstudy.com/). I block time on my calendar to work on the course, but I keep missing my study sessions. The irony? The first module of the course talks specifically about urgency trapping, which is exactly why I kept missing those sessions. Each time I set aside time to study, I ended up doing tasks that felt more urgent instead. The course suggests tracking distractions to help manage this problem. But tracking is something I’ve resisted my whole life. Only recently have I managed to start tracking my diet and finances. I’m already seeing benefits and I’m making improvements, but this resistance persists. Tracking means facing uncomfortable truths and having to make changes. I’m finally recognizing how this lifelong pattern of avoidance has kept me stuck. To break free, I need to confront not just the habit itself, but the hidden costs that come with it. ## The Hidden Cost of Avoidance All of this avoidance doesn’t actually eliminate the consequences, just delays them and magnifies their impact. That’s why I’m now digging myself out of a mountain of debt and on a keto diet to lose over a hundred extra pounds. Procrastination is leading to a life of stress and anxiety. It turns routine tasks into urgent emergencies because I put them off for too long. There’s an uncomfortable truth hidden behind all this avoidance. As someone who loves to learn, and spends an absurd amount of time on personal growth, I’m realizing I have all the signs of a fixed mindset. I’m someone that avoids failure, discomfort, and responsibility at every turn. ## The Identity Trap The tricky thing about a fixed mindset is that it usually takes root in childhood. While much of mine is a blur, there are a few memories that hint at when those seeds might have been planted. For as long as I can remember I was a "smart kid" although I’m not sure where this started. I recall stories of me reading the encyclopedia in preschool. We got our first computer when I was five and I remember helping my first grade teacher with computer problems. By fourth grade the fixed mindset must have been somewhat established because I remember cheating with my friend to avoid having to work hard memorizing my multiplication tables. In high school I leveraged my ability to program my calculator to succeed without needing to learn the underlying math concepts. I focused on things that were fun and easy. Fortunately for me, computer programming has historically been fun and easy for me. I’ve been able to have a successful career without that much effort. This pattern reveals that effort, risk, and the possibility of failure have always felt threatening. Being labeled as "the smart kid" created an identity trap where I was praised for natural ability, not effort. Challenges felt like evidence that I wasn’t who everyone believed me to be. Because of this, I’ve always felt like a fraud, that one day people will discover that I’ve been tricking people all along and that I’m really a moron. This generates so much anxiety and has really eliminated my self worth. Instead of working hard and striving for bigger and better results, I take what I can get. I don’t take risks because I don’t want to be put in a place that would expose my inadequacies. Why can’t I take my own advice? That question stuck with me. It made me realize I needed help figuring this out. Luckily, the iCanStudy course I’m working through doesn’t just talk about the problem. It gives me a place to start. ## Takeaways The course talks a lot about the difference between fixed and growth mindsets. Someone with a fixed mindset asks a lot of questions ahead of time to prevent mistakes, while a person with a growth mindset tries the best they can and asks "How did I do?" afterwards. One recommendation is setting aside several hours as a practice block, spend that time practicing and failing, then reviewing "how did I do?" writing down the errors I made, so I can identify trends. I’ll need to figure out something I can practice in this way. Figuring this out is a challenge as I’ve avoided hard practice for so long. But if I want to move forward, this seems like the place to start. What’s one uncomfortable truth you’ve been avoiding, and what would happen if you faced it today? --- --- title: "How I Channeled Unfocused Curiosity Into Clear Insight" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2025/03/project-seeds/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "Curiosity is desirable and powerful, but when fragmented, it becomes a liability. Every time you mindlessly consume content without context or an objective, you’re building a mental bottleneck.\nHowever, you want to make room for serendipity and be able to follow rabbit holes..." last_modified: "2025-03-25T11:00:00+00:00" categories: [General] --- # How I Channeled Unfocused Curiosity Into Clear Insight Curiosity is desirable and powerful, but when fragmented, it becomes a liability. Every time you mindlessly consume content without context or an objective, you’re building a mental bottleneck. However, you want to make room for serendipity and be able to follow rabbit holes even if there lacks evidence of a connection to your goals and work. How do you balance following curiosity without falling into cognitive overload? Last week, [I discussed the importance of having a clearly defined “Why?”](https://blog.andrewshell.org/essays/useful-learning/) before starting a project and the need to create a plan that details the scope and deliverables before starting. Otherwise, how will you know that a project is finished? I fully intended to have an example plan to share with you this week so I could explain the components to include, but life had other plans. This week, I’m bringing you a behind the scenes look at my actual process of chasing curiosity while trying to minimize fragmentation and cognitive overload. ## What Is the Project? When I created a spreadsheet of potential projects and ranked them according to [my SHELL Framework](https://blog.andrewshell.org/essays/shell-framework/), I gained enormous clarity. It showed me which projects would provide me with the highest return on investment. But this week, when I reviewed this list, I realized that many of these “projects” should actually be components of other undefined learning projects. For instance, one project I listed was “Read On The Shortness of Life by Seneca,” I absolutely want to do it, but why? I’ve been a subscriber to Ryan Holiday’s newsletter for quite some time, and what little I know of stoic philosophy seems to resonate with me. I also have an interest in reading classic literature to deepen my understanding of the world and life in general. I actually don’t remember how On The Shortness of Life got on my radar and why I chose it over Meditations or Letters From a Stoic. I think it was because there was a newer translation that is supposedly more accessible and it’s fairly short. I thought it would be a good place to start. But what am I specifically trying to learn? What is the actual learning project that would require reading this book to complete? What would the deliverable be? I don’t know. So, for right now, I’m choosing to not move forward with reading this book. If I want a project to have a clear why and deliverable, I’m going to need to reconsider what a project is. It’s clear to me that “Watch this video” or “Read this book” is insufficient. ## A Real-Time Case Study Here’s how this played out in real time this morning. I was on YouTube and saw a clip from a TED talk by Manoush Zomorodi about boredom and how it activates something called “default mode.” I was about to click through to watch the TED talk, but I stopped to ask, “Why?” I then opened my notes (in Obsidian), created a new document under projects titled “Reading & Watching List,” and created a link to this TED talk. Under this link, I started explaining my why: > I always tell Piper about how it’s good to be bored, and I know that when I’m bored and not filling my mind with stimulus, I have interesting thoughts. This video might give me pointers to primary research and evidence I can use in my broader picture of personal development. Then I thought, “Does this relate to any of my favorite problems?” My gut told me it related to “How can I uncover and influence the hidden systems shaping my life?” But why? So, I linked to the page for this question (you gotta love backlinks) and continued to think about how this is linked to hidden systems. Well, it reminds me of something I initially read in the book Contact Modalities by Grant Cameron, so I hopped on Perplexity and asked: > In the book Contact Modalities, Grant Cameron mentions how setting an intention before sleep can give you the answer when you wake. He also mentions how Thomas Edison would sit in a chair with keys or ball bearings in his hand, so when he reached a certain level of consciousness, he’d drop the keys and wake up, and this was when he would have his answers. Please share any keywords or phrases about this phenomenon, including the brain frequency during this level of consciousness. It comes back with an interesting result (with links to sources) explaining that the phenomenon described involves leveraging the transitional state between wakefulness and sleep (hypnagogia) to access creative insights or solutions. Cool! Now I wonder if this is related to “default mode” that was mentioned in the clip about boredom, so I ask Perplexity, “Is there a connection between hypnagogia and “default mode”? It turns out the term is actually “default mode network,” and yes, they share a functional connection. Additionally, I recall that Bob Proctor mentioned Thomas Edison’s story when discussing the topic of “Creative Imagination” in contrast to “Synthetic Imagination.” So now I write in my notes: > I’m interested in leveraging the default mode network and the transitional state between wakefulness and sleep (hypnagogia) to access creative insights or solutions. Now we’re getting somewhere. Instead of spending 16 minutes watching a video with a vague idea of “this seems interesting, maybe it will be useful,” I now have new data. I discovered that boredom connects to the default mode network and hypnagogia, and this is interesting to me because it seems like a hidden system where ideas materialize from thin air. I don’t know about you, but this seems like a way more productive use of time than passively watching YouTube. In the past, I would have just clicked through to the video, watched it, and maybe I’d take away an interesting fact. But I’d have nothing to show for it. Even though this process wasn’t a predefined project, I could follow my curiosity and use it to develop clarity around my interests and build connections between them. What started as fragmented curiosities are now tied together in a common thread. I didn’t plan for this to become anything more than a curiosity checkpoint, but it feels like the start of something bigger. That’s where the idea of “Project Seeds” comes in. ## Project Seeds There is a concept in knowledge management called “Digital Gardening,” where you write little notes and ideas (seeds), and over time, you revisit them, improve and expand on them, and connect them to other little seeds, which grow and develop into mature work. I could easily see how these ideas might develop into a full project someday, but it wasn’t quite ready. So I opened another note in my projects folder called “Project Seeds” and wrote: > This is where I allow project ideas to germinate. I don’t want to create projects willy-nilly and then waste a ton of time on dumb projects. So, how would I connect the dots if I created a learning project around these topics? > **Creative Imagination Project** Bob Proctor talks about creative imagination, which involves pulling from infinite intelligence to create things that have never existed before. An example of this is how Thomas Edison would sit with a problem in mind and fall asleep with keys in his hand. When the keys dropped, he’d wake up with new ideas. This state between wakefulness and sleep is called hypnagogia and is somehow connected to the default mode network, which is activated when you’re bored. How do these states work, and how can I leverage them to tap into creative imagination? I’m interested in producing original work and feel like creative imagination is something I’d need to leverage. Maybe I’ll embark on this project, maybe not. It will most likely evolve into a completely different project at some point. I don’t feel like I’m ready to jump in, and I haven’t defined the deliverable for this project. This is good enough for now. The process I’ve been through has left me feeling energized. I feel like I’ve actually engaged with the learning process and actively learned about a few new concepts. ## Takeaways I hope this process of “showing, not telling” was helpful. I don’t want this newsletter to be a boring repository of theory, but rather a snapshot of the processes I’m going through as I try to become a more active participant in my life. Curiosity is amazing and should absolutely be cultivated, but in a deliberate way. When you filter it through reflection, link it to deeper questions, and track it with intention, it becomes fuel for meaningful progress. This isn’t about killing wonder. It’s about harnessing it, turning drift into direction, exploration into momentum, and curiosity into meaningful creation. --- --- title: "How I’m Making My Learning Actually Useful" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2025/03/useful-learning/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "I’ve spent hundreds of hours reading books and taking courses, hoping they would help me grow. But most of the time, I finish and can’t remember a single thing that matters. There are no big ideas, no change, just a hollow, frustrating feeling that I wasted my time. I knew..." last_modified: "2025-03-18T11:00:00+00:00" categories: [General] --- # How I’m Making My Learning Actually Useful I’ve spent hundreds of hours reading books and taking courses, hoping they would help me grow. But most of the time, I finish and can’t remember a single thing that matters. There are no big ideas, no change, just a hollow, frustrating feeling that I wasted my time. I knew something had to change, so I started experimenting. What I’m trying now feels completely different. ## Background I’m curious. I always want to learn new things, and I dream about all the ways my life will change by reading this book or taking this course. However, I’m a busy guy, and the piles of content keep growing. I first noticed a problem back in 2020. I had all these audiobooks and podcasts I was excited to get through. I filled every moment of downtime with audio. Going for long walks, shopping at the grocery store, or in the car. Brian Tracy notes that listening to audio programs during car rides can provide the equivalent of a university education each year, as it offers practical and condensed wisdom. My audiobook and podcast queue kept growing, and I listened at 2x speed to crank through as much as possible. However, I noticed that my brain couldn’t always handle it. There were some days I could listen to audiobooks with no problem. On days I found books hard to concentrate on, I’d downshift to podcasts and music if that was too hard. Only as a matter of last resort would I downshift to silence if my mind was too scattered to absorb anything. The problem was that even on audiobook days, I wasn’t absorbing anything. At the end of the month, I couldn’t even remember what books I listened to, let alone any important takeaways. This was a bit of an existential crisis for me. I’ve always attached myself to the identity of a lifelong learner. My undiagnosed but likely autism lends itself to my ability to rattle off all sorts of weird trivia about subjects I’ve focused on through the years. I was so busy trying to get through all this content, and then, on the other side, I realized it was all a waste of time, and I was no better off than if I had just sat and watched TV the entire time. ## The Problem Around this time, I discovered Tiego Forte and his Building a Second Brain live cohort course. This had to be the solution. If my first brain was failing me, maybe I just needed a second brain to pick up the slack. It did help a bit in the short term. I really focused on it and took a lot of handwritten notes, and I can honestly say I’m still applying what I learned in that course today. However, it didn’t solve my problem. Most of my content consumption was audio because I was so busy with work and my daughter that I never had the time or ability to sit down and focus on reading words on a page (or screen.) This, of course, also meant I wasn’t taking notes to put in my second brain. The few courses where I was in front of a computer and took notes did make a minor impact on my life, and I still go back to reference notes from some of the Jesse Elder courses I took during that time. But I’m still not satisfied with my results. What I get in terms of real-world impact from the hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of dollars I spend on education is embarrassing. I actually feel humiliated when I look at how much debt I’ve accumulated “investing in myself,” while having nothing to show for it. ## The Idea When I signed up for Building a Second Brain, I did so through Timothy Kenny’s affiliate link. I figured if I was going to spend $2,500 on this course, I should maximize my value, and he offered bonuses if I signed up through him. I purchased many of Timothy’s courses (on Udemy) and even hired him as a coach for a while. Much of his material is beyond me, but his ideas stick and eventually work their way into my daily practices. Most importantly, Timothy doesn’t teach the same stuff as everyone else. Even if it’s the same subject, his approach is always unique. One idea he put out there was creating a “One Pagerr” plan for each project. He has a whole structure to include in this plan, but I want to focus on one aspect today. ## The Method In a project one pagerr plan, it’s recommended to list a primary goal in the summary, then list goals, questions, and deliverables later in the plan. I think this is a key part that I’m missing. I’m hoping to learn things by reading books and taking courses, but I never take the time to define a learning project. My experiment is to define what I expect the outcome to be as precisely as possible before I take a course or read a book. I’ll define each learning project’s goals, questions, and deliverables. This will help me determine whether the book or course is something I should be doing. If I can’t formulate a goal, maybe I shouldn’t waste time on it. Once I have a goal and questions, I can identify if the material answers them and helps me achieve the goal. Then, what will I produce as a byproduct of completing this project? Am I just creating notes or a report so I can review them as needed in the future? Should I create spaced repetition cards to help me commit things to memory? Is there a skill I’m hoping to develop so I can do something that I can’t do yet? Maybe I need to create content for my newsletter? Having a deliverable will help focus my studying. Everything I read or watch will filter through the lens of “Does this answer any of my questions? Will this help me ship my deliverable?” The last thing I plan on bringing to this practice is an idea shared early in Building a Second Brain. It’s to have a list of 12 favorite problems. This was something Richard Feynman had. By having a list of 12 favorite problems or questions, you’ll always be on the lookout for things to support solving these problems. I envision creating top-level projects around each question I come up with. That way, when I’m defining a learning project, I can ask, “Does this support one of my favorite problems?” I haven’t come up with 12 favorite problems yet (only 5), but here’s what I have so far: - How do I focus on the work that matters most? - How can I uncover and influence the hidden systems shaping my life? - How can I build invisible bridges that multiply the value of what’s already there? - How do I maximize the applied value of what I learn? - How do I design a meaningful life with momentum and alignment? ## Next Steps Even if you don’t plan to create your own one pagerr, I think it will be very helpful to define ahead of time what you want to get out of something before you spend a bunch of time on it. I haven’t created my first one pagerr yet. Perhaps next week, I’ll share a plan and explain the pieces more closely. If you want to ensure you don’t miss my plan, [please subscribe](https://andrewshell.substack.com/). I’d also appreciate it if you shared this article with someone who might appreciate it. --- --- title: "The Discipline of Doing Nothing Helped Me Get Clarity" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2025/03/doing-nothing/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "The trail was covered in ice. Where people had walked, the snow was compacted and slick, and I was heading downhill over a lot of rocks. It’s easier to be present when you’re just trying not to slip and crack your head open.\nThis weekend, I conducted an experiment. I headed to..." last_modified: "2025-03-11T11:00:00+00:00" categories: [General] --- # The Discipline of Doing Nothing Helped Me Get Clarity The trail was covered in ice. Where people had walked, the snow was compacted and slick, and I was heading downhill over a lot of rocks. It’s easier to be present when you’re just trying not to slip and crack your head open. This weekend, I conducted an experiment. I headed to Blue Mound State Park, grabbed a notebook, and left my phone in the car. I wanted to step away from the constant stimulation and see if anything interesting surfaced. I spent four hours in nature, alternating between tromping through the elements and sitting and writing in my journal. The physicality of it was challenging as I’m an overweight, out-of-shape computer nerd. There were a lot of hills, which by themselves would have been challenging, but slipping and sliding in ice and mud made it even more of an ordeal. The weather in Wisconsin was pretty good for March. The temp got up to around 55 F but it was windy which at times was pretty uncomfortable. I enjoy walking and being in nature, but this was really difficult. I wasn’t able to zone out and let my mind wander like I’d typically do on a long walk. I really had to be present, focusing on my footing. My hope going into this would be that I’d get some amazing download from the universe but I think the results were more subtle than that. ## Insights My journaling surfaced with some interesting thoughts. ### Busy-ness vs. Productivity I have a tendency to overcommit and then burnout, which leads me to feel guilty, so I start more projects, which starts the cycle all over again. I also have this conflict between feeling overwhelmed and wanting a simpler life and the idea that I need to grow and develop as a person. This will be something I need to spend time thinking about to really unpack. I think in the short term, I have several projects that I discussed in [How I’m Deciding Which Projects Are Worth Pursuing Right Now](https://blog.andrewshell.org/essays/shell-framework/), but I need to keep my list of open projects short. Additionally, I need to make one of my “projects” to take time to disconnect and spend time doing nothing. I want to be clear on what I mean by doing nothing. Technically, we’re always doing something. I can sit on my couch and watch the paint peel, but that’s still “something.” So, in this context, I mean specifically not reading, listening, or socializing. I should be alone with my mind and give my brain the space to think. ### Burnout Recovery This aligns with my desire to make space for “doing nothing.” However, it has a different spin. I attended a workshop recently where the host claimed that rest is not sufficient to recover from burnout. Specifically, there were three strategies to reverse burnout. - Vagus Nerve Stimulation - Dopamine Recalibration - Cognitive & Behavioral Techniques So, I will investigate options for all of these. I know spending time away from stimulating devices and activities will help with what is described as a “dopamine detox,” so that’s good. My therapist suggested a few practices like breathing exercises and humming that should help with vagus nerve stimulation. ## Feedback Would you consider disconnecting and spending time in nature with nothing but your thoughts and a notebook? Do you have experience with reversing burnout? Please [contact me](https://blog.andrewshell.org/contact/). --- --- title: "How I’m Deciding Which Projects Are Worth Pursuing Right Now" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2025/03/shell-framework/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "I’m overwhelmed, tired, and not getting anything done.\nI know I want to focus on foundational skills and habits to help improve my day-to-day, but there are so many different things I could work on.\nDo I improve my software development skills? If I need to switch jobs, I should..." last_modified: "2025-03-04T11:00:00+00:00" categories: [General] --- # How I’m Deciding Which Projects Are Worth Pursuing Right Now I’m overwhelmed, tired, and not getting anything done. I know I want to focus on foundational skills and habits to help improve my day-to-day, but there are so many different things I could work on. Do I improve my software development skills? If I need to switch jobs, I should really study data structures and algorithms because that will be needed for higher-paying jobs. I haven’t needed it so far in my 20-year career, but I’m not getting any younger, and I need to compete with younger folks. However, I don’t want to drill LeetCode. That sounds boring. Besides, do I even want to stay in this career? I’ve signed up for many courses through the years. There is a lot I’d like to work on. But there are also a lot of books I want to read. Several of my side projects, not to mention this newsletter, need attention. I get so overwhelmed I don’t work on anything. Sometimes, I can do something, but it’s whatever I feel like doing at the moment, probably not the best thing to work on. I need to figure this out. Ideally, I’ll have a list of everything I’m working on or want to work on and score them to identify which projects will give me the biggest return on my time & money investments. You’ve probably seen some existing frameworks out there. A common one is the Eisenhower matrix, where you group tasks on whether or not they are urgent and/or important. In the project management space, there is a great acronym, RICE, where you score each project based on Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort. However, these aren’t metrics that matter for personal projects. ## The SHELL Framework I headed to ChatGPT to help me brainstorm what a personal version of RICE might look like. Well, the acronym we came up with wasn’t quite what I expected going in, but I’m sharing the first draft of the SHELL framework with you today. I’ve already found a few limitations of this framework, but it’s a good starting place. SHELL stands for Speed, Heart, Effort, Longevity, and Leverage. Let me explain each in the context of this framework. Each metric will be given a score of 1-5, and then you multiply them together and sort the list by this total score. ### Speed Initially, I thought speed would be how long it takes to complete the project, but when I started scoring my tasks, I realized it should be more like a “Time Commitment.” If it’s a major time commitment, it gets a 1, and if it’s a minor time commitment, you give it a 5. I have several long-term projects that might not require much time on a weekly basis. Should these be scored low because they will be ongoing long-term projects? Should they be scored high because they don’t take up much time every week? I’m choosing to score projects 5 if they have small weekly commitments, even if they are long-term projects. ### Heart Heart represents how much this project juices you up. Are you excited and motivated to do it, or does this feel like a “should” that you think you need to do? This is important to consider. ### Effort How much effort will this project require? Is this an easy or difficult project? Give it a 1 if this is a super difficult project. Give it a 5 if it’s easy peasy lemon squeezy. ### Longevity Now, it’s not good to only prioritize quick and easy projects. You also need to balance long-term benefits. Give longevity a high score if completing this project will make your life better far in the future. ### Leverage Leverage should be scored high if completing this project will make your other tasks & projects easier or unnecessary. It doesn’t have to only help other projects on your list. You could score this high if it’s a fundamental skill like learning public speaking. One trick I’m using is if the project has prerequisites, I score it 0 for leverage, so the whole row is zeroed out because I can’t start it yet. ## Downstream Benefits The biggest problem I see with the SHELL framework (which might be okay) is that an ideal score should consider the downstream benefits. Leverage is an incomplete way to measure this. If I have a project that is a prerequisite for a bunch of high-value projects, should the score reflect this? I don’t want this to become some crazy Gantt chart, so I think it’s okay to ignore. It’s just an extra piece of data you can look at when deciding what to work on now. ## Implementation To try this out and see if it was helpful, I created a spreadsheet and brain-dumped 28 projects that I’ve either started or would like to start. Quickly, I realized that it’s helpful to consider scope. Many of my projects were “Read this interesting book.” Sometimes, that might be a higher time commitment (lower score), but then I remembered something we do at work. Instead of just creating a ticket for a particular project, we might create an investigation ticket. This is where we’ll take a week or two to figure out the real scope of the project. Are there any prerequisites or blockers? Is this a much bigger project than we expected? So, I change some of my projects to “investigation” projects. In the context of books, it might become “Skim this interesting book,” which is less effort and quicker. Then, I can decide if the book requires a deeper dive, which I can put down as a new project. The result of doing this exercise is I discovered that I should spend my time right now completing two quick Timothy Kenny courses about specific learning skills, as well as the year-long iCanStudy program because I know if I invest in skills around learning and note-taking, all of my other projects will become more valuable. I already struggle with getting value out of and remembering what I read (even worse with podcasts and audiobooks.) So, if I can postpone all these books until I’ve figured out new skills to try, they have a better chance of impacting my life. What I also discovered is that, as of right now, it’s probably not the best use of my time to study algorithms and data structures. Yes, they scored high for longevity and mid for leverage, but it would be a major undertaking in both time and effort, and frankly, my heart isn’t in it. I’m looking forward to using this list as an ongoing planning tool where I add projects (especially courses) to see if it makes sense for me buy and start. This alone, should help shrink my education budget category. Over the next few weeks, I’ll keep adding projects as they come up. I know there are a bunch of ongoing coding projects I haven’t added yet. I like that if I put something down and it gets a low score, I can tweak it (change the scope) and see if there’s a better way to approach it. ## Feedback What do you think? Does this help you? Any suggestions for tweaking it? Please comment and let me know. --- --- title: "Think You Can’t Turn It Around in Your 40s? Read My Story" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2025/02/turn-it-around-in-40s/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "In September, I stepped on the scale, and I felt like I would puke. I clocked in at 307.1 lbs, an all-time high.\nAll year, I had been hovering around 300, which was frustrating because I was trying to lose weight. In May, I walked 6,500 steps every day, and in August, I had a..." last_modified: "2025-02-25T11:00:00+00:00" categories: [General] --- # Think You Can’t Turn It Around in Your 40s? Read My Story In September, I stepped on the scale, and I felt like I would puke. I clocked in at 307.1 lbs, an all-time high. All year, I had been hovering around 300, which was frustrating because I was trying to lose weight. In May, I walked 6,500 steps every day, and in August, I had a grilled chicken salad every day for lunch. Why wasn’t I losing weight? The donuts. It was probably the donuts. Back in January 2023, my intuitive reader suggested I investigate Virta. Virta is a medically supervised online keto program. At the time, I had GHC for health insurance, and Virta wasn’t covered, but a year later, my company switched to Quartz. I decided to try it, so I filled out their application form and waited. I talked with their triage staff, shared my medical history with their physicians, and had a blood panel taken. When my lab results were posted, I saw that my hemoglobin A1c was 5.8. I’m pre-diabetic. I started my diet on October 28th, the Monday before Halloween. I guess I didn’t need all that candy anyway. I controlled myself and made it through Halloween and Thanksgiving. On November 30th, I weighed 280.8. Wow, I had lost 26.3 lbs! I couldn’t believe that this was actually working. I know it will take a long time to lose all the weight. For a "normal" BMI, I need to weigh less than 185 lbs. I just focus on the milestones. On Christmas, I weighed 270 lbs. Now, I’m not good with finances. I spend recklessly and have accumulated far more debt than I’m comfortable with. Over the last few years, I’ve used YNAB to track my spending. Notice I didn’t say "to maintain my budget." Yeah. It wasn’t intended to be used every couple of months. I was unprepared to see how much I spent between Black Friday and Christmas. Puke! I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions, but January 1st is as good a time as any to start budgeting. Much like losing weight, reigning in my spending habits and paying off my debt will not happen overnight. But crafting a budget and reconciling it daily seems like a good place to start. So far, I’m pleased with my progress. That leads us to today and why I’m writing this long-winded essay. I’m 43 years old and feel unmoored, like a ship without a rudder. My life is good, and I’ve had success, but I feel it’s more from being in the right place at the right time or pure coincidence, not from a deliberate plan. I have a 10-year-old daughter. Retirement isn’t some abstract concept anymore. If I don’t take control of my life now, I could be one illness, one layoff, or one bad year away from a future I don’t want. That’s urgency for you! My wins with weight and budget have motivated me to keep going and see what else I can improve. I could benefit from some focus on time management, organization, and that little thing they call "finding meaning in your life." You know, no pressure or anything. Mid-life crisis? Maybe. I don’t see any sports cars or young models in my future, but I wouldn’t turn away Cara Delavigne if she showed up on my doorstep. Lol. I’m planning to write about what I’m going through. The challenges I’m facing and the experiments I’m running. I’m not sure if anyone will read it or find it interesting. Hopefully, it will be more action and less navel-gazing. If this sounds interesting, shoot me a message and let me know what you think. --- --- title: "Cal Newport’s Deep Life Stack" url: "https://andrewshell.org/notes/deep-life-stack/" lang: "en-US" type: "page" description: "This note is my attempt at synthesizing and combining Cal Newport's Deep Life Stack 2.0 and Planning System. The goal will be to continue tweaking it as I learn more from Cal. Links to his sources will be at the bottom under "References."\n\nStage One: Become a Capable..." last_modified: "2026-04-27T22:22:02+00:00" categories: [General] custom_fields: classic-editor-remember: "classic-editor" iawmlf_last_processed: 1777332167 --- # Cal Newport’s Deep Life Stack > This note is my attempt at synthesizing and combining [Cal Newport’s](https://calnewport.com/) Deep Life Stack 2.0 and Planning System. The goal will be to continue tweaking it as I learn more from Cal. Links to his sources will be at the bottom under “[References](https://andrewshell.org/notes/deep-life-stack/#references).” ## Why the Deep Life Cal Newport thinks a lot of people feel controlled by their technology. At work it’s email and Slack and Zoom. At home it’s social media and streaming and games. These glowing rectangles cover over what Cal calls a psychic pain. At home, that pain might be the worry that you’ve lost direction, or that you’re not who you meant to become. At work, it might be the unease of being constantly busy without really knowing what your job is. Cal compares this to the way people a hundred years ago used whiskey at the saloon for the same reason. Cal’s point is that treating the symptom doesn’t work. New phone rules and stricter email policies don’t stick on their own, because there’s nothing better on the other side. His fix is to build a life so directed and intentional that the screens lose their pull. He uses a food analogy. Once you eat well long enough, an Oreo stops being impossibly tempting and starts to look like sugary chemicals. Cal wants the same thing to happen with your screens. Cal also says you can’t credibly criticize digital distraction without offering a positive alternative. The deep life, built layer by layer through this stack, is Cal’s alternative. ## How to Use the Stack The stack is meant to be **iterated**, not completed: - On your first pass, spend roughly **1–3 weeks** establishing each layer, getting it going and confirming it’s working before moving up. - It’s fine to **stop at Transformation** the first time through. Legacy can wait until you’ve earned your way there over several iterations. - Then **live with it for 6–12 months**. - Every 6–12 months, **iterate**. Revisit each layer and upcharge it. The starter walk-and-pushups becomes a real workout. You realize you left finances out of Control and add them. The weak link gets stronger. - After several years of iteration, you may have moved through several Transformations and be genuinely ready for Legacy. The stack is Cal’s evolution of an earlier framework that organized depth into “deep life buckets” like body, mind, and community. Those buckets now live as keystone habits in the Discipline layer. Stage One must come before Stage Two. Trying to cultivate depth without first becoming capable produces a shallow, selfish version of depth that doesn’t hold up. ## Stage One. Become a Capable Human Being ### Discipline Lay down a foundation of discipline. The point isn’t the habits themselves. It’s changing your self-identification into someone who can persist with difficult, important, non-urgent things in the moment for the sake of a greater good later. Jocko Willink calls the target an “imminently qualified human”; Cal calls it an “imminently capable” one. Pick **three keystone habits**, one in each of the categories below, that you do every day and track. They should be **non-trivial but tractable**. The goal on a first pass is consistency, not ambition. - **Body.** A fitness habit. Could be exercise, food, or drink. A reasonable starter is a 20-minute walk to a coffee shop and back, plus 20 push-ups, every morning. - **Mind.** Sharpen the instrument. The default best bet is a **reading habit** built into the day. - **Heart.** Other people. For example, text or call a different friend or family member each day, or have a real check-in conversation with your partner or kids daily. Each iteration of the stack, **upcharge** these. The starter walk turns into a serious workout routine over a few cycles. In Cal’s own [strategic plans](https://andrewshell.org/notes/deep-life-stack/#career-and-personal-strategic-plans), he maintains an evolving list of core disciplines, sometimes tracked with metrics. ### Control Once you have a taste of discipline, immediately get control of your time and obligations. You only have so much energy and attention each day, so deploy it on purpose. The operating system here is **multi-scale planning** combined with [David Allen GTD](https://gettingthingsdone.com/)-style **full capture** and [time-block planning](https://www.timeblockplanner.com/). The rule is simple. **No open loops.** Nothing lives only in your head. Every obligation is in a trusted system, every day is time-block planned, every weekly plan is shaped by a quarterly plan. The mechanics for running this layer are described in detail under [Cal Newport’s Core Planning System](#cal-newports-core-planning-system) below. That section is the operating manual for Control. #### Multi-Scale Planning at a Glance - Create [strategic plans](https://andrewshell.org/notes/deep-life-stack/#career-and-personal-strategic-plans) for your semester or quarter. - Quarterly plan informs your weekly plan. Choose a schedule of work hours that gives the right balance of effort and relaxation. - Do whatever it takes to avoid violating this schedule. - Weekly plan informs your daily time-block plan. ### Craft Almost every reasonable vision of a deep life centers on quality, either producing it or appreciating it. Craft is where you start practicing both. #### Get Better Pick a skill to deliberately and systematically improve. It can be a **work skill** or a **hobby**. Both count on the first pass. Why hobbies that look arbitrary? Cal points out that the bow hunting, archery, and guitar habits favored by people like Joe Rogan and Jocko Willink aren’t random. **Learning to do _anything_ really well teaches you what doing things really well actually requires**, and those mental muscles transfer. When something professionally important comes along that you need to master, you already know what that climb feels like. #### Appreciate Better Being exposed to people doing really good work makes you want to do really good work. Build up an appreciation of some craft, whether film, music, writing, or whatever resonates. Cal develops this idea further in his book _Slow Productivity_. ### Simplification Clear out the dead weight before moving up to Stage Two. With discipline, control, and a feel for craft now in place, you have the footing to actually prune. Two parallel jobs: - **Work obligations.** Slash, consolidate, or shift laterally. Push your chips toward the things that matter and stop being involved in things that don’t. - **Technology.** This is your **first attempt at digital minimalism**. Work backwards from what’s important to you, and let those values pick which tools you really need. ([What tools do I really need?](https://a.co/d/8HVHdCx)) The single highest-leverage small step here is the **phone foyer method**. When you’re at home, the phone lives plugged in somewhere. Not with you on the couch, not at the dinner table, not next to you when you’re trying to read. If you need to look something up, you walk to it. ## Stage Two. Cultivate Depth ### Values Define your personal code, the truths and principles you live by. Establish rituals (moments of reflection or connection) and routines (regular actions) that reinforce these values daily. This is often where you lean into a faith tradition or philosophical system. A key point. **Insight in these traditions is action-based.** You don’t decide in advance whether a tradition is “right.” You practice it, with discipline, and see how it shapes you. That’s why Values sits this late in the stack. Without a foundation of capability, values work is darts at a board. You don’t yet have the disciplined attention required for the practice itself to teach you anything. ### Service Shift your focus outward. Lead and serve your community. Cal puts it bluntly. **Without service, you’re nothing.** Leadership and contribution aren’t optional finishing touches on a deep life. They’re load-bearing. Commit to **non-trivial sacrifices** on behalf of family, friends, or broader civic society, and treat this as a **tier-one priority**, not a side commitment. Stage One made you exceptionally capable; you can now actually move the needle for other people without dropping the ball. That’s why this layer comes after capability is in place, not before. ### Transformation This is the layer most people imagine when they hear “deep life”. The dramatic, romantic stuff. The whole point of the stack is that **you’ve earned your way to it** rather than starting here. Make major, values-based changes to your life’s structure. Use lifestyle-centric planning to create a vision for a _remarkable_ life (remarkability is part of the brief) and take concrete steps toward it. This is where you change careers, relocate, alter your professional path significantly, or make the move. Cal’s own example is becoming a surf instructor in Tofino on the west coast of Vancouver Island. ### Legacy Focus on the long-term impact and mission you wish to leave behind. Develop an orienting mission for your life that transcends your immediate needs. Most people will _not_ reach Legacy on their first pass through the stack, and that’s by design. Cal’s recommendation is to stop at Transformation on the first iteration, live with the rest of the stack for several cycles, and only engage Legacy once you’ve genuinely done the work below it. ## Cal Newport’s Core Planning System This is the operating manual for the **Control** layer above. It’s also where you do the seasonal and weekly review of values and strategic plans referenced throughout the stack. Cal calls his approach **rooted productivity**. One core document at the root summarizes the entire system, and everything else cascades from it. The document doesn’t have to be polished. It’s for you. The point is that nothing important about how you run your life lives only in your head. A warning Cal gives about his own system. He’s been using it for over a decade. Every fall he gets tempted to add new components or reinvent it. Every fall he ends up back at the basics. The lesson is simple. **Don’t try to get fancy.** The simple system flexes to handle ambitious periods (your strategic plans grow long, your weekly plan reads like an essay) and contracts during burnout or hard times (back to _here are my values, here are the few things I need to do today_). Same structure, very different volume. The deep purpose underneath all of it is **stress management**. You write everything down so you can trust the system to surface it again at the right time. Then you don’t have to keep anything in your mind, and you can be entirely present in whatever you’re doing right now. The three categories of the system are **Core Documents**, **Productivity**, and **Discipline**. ### 1. Core Documents Two documents sit at the root of the system. #### Values Document The roles in your life and the values by which you try to live them. This evolves over time. It gives you intention and direction. #### Career and Personal Strategic Plans One plan for each part of your life (typically professional and non-professional) that lays out your current thoughts, experimental systems, and plans for living true to your values. When a project or initiative is big enough, link out from here to its own **extended plan**. #### Maintenance - **Weekly value plan.** Once a week, review your values document and create a weekly value plan that captures what to emphasize this week, optionally with an experimental habit or rule that supports a value (for example, if community connection is the focus, try calling someone every day this week). Include **best practices for mental health** here too, meaning what you’re doing to stay sharp and away from anxiety. - **Strategic plans.** Review them weekly when doing your weekly plan. Tweak any time, but give them a major overhaul once per semester. The semester overhaul is also when you orient toward the big picture. What are the big things you’re working on? What are your goals for the season? How do you want to show up in your roles? - **Idea capture.** Maintain an idea notebook (Cal uses Moleskine) and a digital idea storage system (Cal uses Obsidian). At minimum, review these when you do strategic-plan updates and act on anything still relevant. ### 2. Productivity The productivity layer is where the documents above turn into action. Plans cascade down from strategic to weekly to daily, so that _what you’re doing right now is influenced by your big-picture strategic plans, but you don’t have to think about your big-picture strategic plans right now_. The thinking already happened upstream. #### Weekly Planning Each week, build a **weekly plan** by reviewing your strategic plans, your calendar, your task list, and your value plan. There’s no fixed format. Match the plan’s complexity to the week’s complexity. A complicated mid-semester week might be an intricate Jenga of meetings, deep work, and deadlines. A summer week might be the single word _write!!_. The plan answers what you’re working on this week, what you need to remember, what habits or heuristics matter right now, and what _must_ get done. ##### Weekly Template Optionally use a **weekly template**, a set of guidelines you put in place at the start of the quarter that shapes every weekly plan within it. - **Protected time.** No morning meetings (so you can do deep work). Lunchtime workouts. Office hours. - **Daily themes.** Certain days for meetings, others no-meetings. Class days vs. writing days. Roles assigned to specific days. - **Rules and quotas.** Fifteen minutes of buffer after every meeting for processing notes and clearing your head. “One podcast per week.” Other limits that protect what matters. #### Daily Time-Block Planning Each weekday, review your weekly plan, your value plan, and your calendar, then build a **time-block plan**, scheduling out the day so every minute has a job. On weekends, drop the time-blocking but still sketch a quick plan that answers what you’re working on today and what you need to remember. End the day with a clear **shutdown ritual** (see below). #### Shutdown Ritual Create a clean separation between work and non-work. Process whatever you captured during the day, confirm there are no loose ends, and make a rough but intentional plan for the rest of your evening. The shutdown is what lets you actually leave work behind. #### Full Capture David Allen-style **full capture** of every task, date, and deadline. - Keep a master calendar and a master to-do list on your computer; software doesn’t matter. - Carry a small spiral-bound notebook in your pocket. Whenever something pops up (a date a colleague mentions, an email that needs action), jot it in the notebook. - Each morning (or as part of shutdown), transfer new items from the notebook onto your calendar and task list, then review. The whole point is **trust**. You don’t have to hold anything in your mind because you trust the system to surface it again at the right moment, whether in tomorrow’s daily plan, this week’s weekly review, or on the calendar when the day arrives. ### 3. Discipline Maintain in your strategic plans an **evolving list of core disciplines**, the hard boundaries you commit to in order to lay a foundation for a deep life. For example, a daily exercise commitment, a target number of deep work hours, or a daily call quota for someone in sales. Track them with **metrics** when you can. Cal uses metric codes in the planning space of his time-block planner (_did I do this today, did I do that today_) so he can see the streaks. It’s fine to take breaks from metric tracking during summer or recovery periods. The disciplines themselves are the point, not the tracking. These disciplines map directly onto the **keystone habits** described in the Discipline layer of [Stage One](https://andrewshell.org/notes/deep-life-stack/#stage-one-become-a-capable-human-being). The planning system is where they live, get tracked, and evolve across years of iteration. Cal notes that disciplines were the last category he added to his own system. Informal commitments didn’t feel real to him until they were written down explicitly here. ## References - [Cal Newport’s Planning System](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FipKTzkTD4) - [The Deep Life Stack](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFLsJvCDLoQ) - [Deep Life Stack 2.0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWCbaDfEQwE) - [How To Organize Your Life With An Optimized Values Plan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muG5VcJx8fs) - [How I Manage My Time – The Weekly Productivity Template To Achieve More](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRRk3VZOVpk) - [Plan Your Week in Advance](https://calnewport.com/deep-habits-plan-your-week-in-advance/) - [The Importance of Planning Every Minute of Your Work Day](https://calnewport.com/deep-habits-the-importance-of-planning-every-minute-of-your-work-day/) - [The Time-Block Planner](https://www.timeblockplanner.com/) - [Do You Have Any Tips for Closing Out My Work Day?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXWhzZylAHc) - [What is a Shutdown Ritual?](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Ui1qTPeTsRk) - [Fixed-Schedule Productivity, How I Accomplish a Large Amount of Work in a Small Number of Work Hours](https://calnewport.com/fixed-schedule-productivity-how-i-accomplish-a-large-amount-of-work-in-a-small-number-of-work-hours/) - [Three Student Resolutions Worth Making](https://calnewport.com/three-student-resolutions-worth-making/) - [Digital Minimalism summary, key takeaways from Cal Newport’s groundbreaking work](https://blog.superhuman.com/digital-minimalism-summary/) --- --- title: "Tackling Database Migration to Restore a Legacy Site" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2024/11/legacy-site-db-migration/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "I've taken on the challenge of resurrecting a website that's been offline for more than a decade.\nIt had a very expansive and well-normalized database using MySQL. I've been out of the SQL game for about six years, as all my recent projects have used MongoDB. It's been fun..." last_modified: "2024-11-04T14:42:00+00:00" categories: [General] --- # Tackling Database Migration to Restore a Legacy Site I’ve taken on the challenge of resurrecting a website that’s been offline for more than a decade. It had a very expansive and well-normalized database using MySQL. I’ve been out of the SQL game for about six years, as all my recent projects have used MongoDB. It’s been fun getting back into it. Due to the vast amount of data this website managed, and how out of date most of it is, I’ve had to really think about how I want to approach this project. I decided to use SQLite instead of MySQL because it would be easier to manage since I wouldn’t need to host a MySQL server. I’ll use two different SQLite databases in this project. One database is simply a partial export of the original MySQL database. I’ll access this database in read-only mode to enforce the idea that this is just legacy data. The other database will be the live database that the website will use and update. One of the first challenges I’ve tackled is database migration. I’m sure there are entire npm packages dedicated to SQLite database migration, but I’ve decided to roll my own. My needs are minor, and working with two databases is unusual. I’ve already written one migration that creates the new table and imports data from the legacy database. I based the migration script loosely on how Laravel handles migrations. I’m taking it step by step and focusing on a single core part of the database. With the way I’ve designed the database migrations, I’ll be able to gradually fold additional data into the website. I’ll also leverage lazy migration, where I’m not copying all the data immediately. I’ll only copy data when someone visits one of the legacy URLs. This way, I can prioritize which data to review and clean up. --- --- title: "30 Years of Scripting News and My Blogging Journey" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2024/10/scripting-news-30/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "Today is the 30th anniversary of Dave Winer's blog, Scripting News.\nI've followed Dave's writing and podcasting for my entire career and have had the privilege of many conversations with him over the years. We may not see eye to eye on everything, but most of the time I do agree..." last_modified: "2026-03-22T16:23:52+00:00" categories: [General] custom_fields: activitypub_content_visibility: "local" activitypub_interaction_policy_quote: "anyone" iawmlf_last_processed: 1774200263 --- # 30 Years of Scripting News and My Blogging Journey Today is the 30th anniversary of [Dave Winer’s blog, Scripting News](http://scripting.com/2024/10/07.html). I’ve followed Dave’s writing and podcasting for my entire career and have had the privilege of many conversations with him over the years. We may not see eye to eye on everything, but most of the time I do agree with him. Even when we don’t, his opinions always make me think and reconsider my own perspective. Today, Dave wrote: > I’m hearing from people all over the world about what blogging means to them. I appreciate all of the messages, but would appreciate them **even more** if they were on your blog. We need to keep using the tech. Blogging is kind of lost, and I would like to see that change. I’ve been blogging since [at least 2004](https://blog.andrewshell.org/essays/first-php-meetup/), although looking at archive.org, I found that there was some "[Personal Log](https://web.archive.org/web/20030402054241/http://www.andrewshell.org/personallog.html)" writing on my site as early as 2002. I’m not, as Dave would say, a "[Natural Born Blogger](http://scripting.com/stories/2009/11/24/naturalbornBlogger.html)," but there is a desire in me to write more. I wrote daily back in 2021 as part of [Ship 30 for 30](https://blog.andrewshell.org/ship-30-for-30-october-2021-cohort/), but it was hard for me to come up with something to write every day. I think I’ve set this imaginary bar in my head that something has to be "blogworthy" before I post it—but that’s just nonsense. As Dave says, blogging is "[the unedited voice of a person](http://scripting.com/2015/02/07/theUneditedVoiceOfAPerson.html)," and I constantly need to remind my inner editor of that. I’m not sure if anyone will look forward to what I share, but I want to put in the effort to blog regularly. A lot of people have shifted from blogging to social media, chasing likes and engagement. But I think blogging has a different kind of value, even if no one else reads it. It helps me think better. Writing forces me to organize my thoughts in a way that makes sense to someone else, and in the process, I end up understanding them better too. --- --- title: "A Brief History of Me Programming" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2024/08/a-brief-history-of-me-programming/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "I've been programming in one form or another for as long as I can remember. Since my family got its first computer when I was five, I couldn't have programmed much before that. However, I knew DOS well enough to help teachers with their computers in first and second grade, so I..." last_modified: "2026-03-22T15:54:48+00:00" categories: [General] custom_fields: activitypub_content_visibility: "local" activitypub_interaction_policy_quote: "anyone" iawmlf_last_processed: 1774198541 --- # A Brief History of Me Programming I’ve been programming in one form or another for as long as I can remember. Since my family got its first computer when I was five, I couldn’t have programmed much before that. However, I knew DOS well enough to help teachers with their computers in first and second grade, so I was probably already doing some programming by then. It wasn’t sophisticated by any means, just simple code like: 10 print "Hoopla!" 20 goto 10 I’d type in code from books geared towards kids, like [Superworld](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0590334778/). I remember reading various computer magazines my school subscribed to (Byte comes to mind). In school, we had a class where we could play with [Logo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_programming_language). An older kid on my bus had a TI-81, and I was always amazed by it. He would write games for it, and I thought that was neat. When I entered 6th grade and had my first math class that required a calculator I convinced my parents that the TI-81 was the appropriate calculator (requirement was a scientific calculator). I learned how to program that pretty quickly; it was similar to basic, which I had some experience with. The TI-81 didn’t have a graph link, so I’d print out programs from the internet and type them in. I remember printing out a Star Trek game that took me over a week to type in. When I got to high school, I needed a more powerful graphing calculator. I got the TI-85, which was a major improvement from the TI-81. Not only was the TI-Basic on it more sophisticated, but I also had a link port to download programs from the internet and copy them straight to my calculator without typing anything. This gave me many more options. I could also trade games with other students at school. One of the early ones I remember was a breakout game. It wasn’t long before I learned how to add new levels and started hacking it to do different things. Then, I discovered ZShell. This hack for the TI-85 would allow people to run programs written in assembly. So I jumped on that and started teaching myself assembly for the Z80 processor. By this time, I had my own laptop, so when I had a gap in the computer science classes offered at school, I convinced the computer science teacher to approve an independent study class for me to learn assembly. The teacher wasn’t any help, but I still figured it out pretty quickly. The following year (Senior year), I took AP Computer Science, which taught C++. I picked it up very quickly, and the teacher was smart enough to let me go at my own pace. I finished the coursework for the three-term class (24 weeks) in about 8 weeks. The remainder of the time, I started learning more things, like graphics programming. By the end of the class, I had written a Mandelbrot set generator. I was pretty happy with myself. After graduation, I attended UW Whitewater for a bit, studying Java. Then, I transferred to Herzing College, where I learned VB .Net and covered Java and C++ again. At Herzing, I started teaching myself PHP so I could improve my website. My first programming job at Applied Tech started out as an ASP (VB 6) job but very quickly transformed into a PHP job. There, I developed my skills in PHP. After about a year, I started the Madison PHP Meetup group, where I taught various PHP topics to a group of developers every month. I ran this group for about 6 years until I moved to California. Upon returning to Wisconsin, I restarted it for a bit before handing it off to the current organizer, Beth Tucker Long. In 2015, after noticing that the RSS Cloud server Dave Winer ran (using Frontier) was down, Dave suggested I rewrite it in JavaScript. This was my first Node.js app. In 2018, I started doing some Node.js development professionally, and my current job, which I began in 2019, is almost entirely Node.js. My current interests are wikis and AI development. I plan to start experimenting with writing code against APIs like ChatGPT and creating custom agents to assist in workflows. I have yet to get into Python development, but continuing down this path will probably be a part of my future. --- --- title: "FedWiki River" url: "https://andrewshell.org/notes/fedwiki-river/" lang: "en-US" type: "page" description: "FedWiki River is an river-of-news aggregator of updates across all known federated wikis.\nIt's powered by Federated Wiki Feeds which crawls the wikis and exposes RSS feeds and OPML reading lists.\nCrawl Logic\nThe wiki checking logic is that every wiki in the all feeds list get..." last_modified: "2026-03-12T15:46:38+00:00" categories: [General] --- # FedWiki River [FedWiki River](https://fedwikiriver.com/) is an [river-of-news aggregator](http://scripting.com/2014/06/02/whatIsARiverOfNewsAggregator.html) of updates across all known [federated wikis](http://fed.wiki.org/view/welcome-visitors/view/about-federated-wiki). It’s powered by [Federated Wiki Feeds](https://feeds.fedwikiriver.com/) which crawls the wikis and exposes [RSS feeds](https://cyber.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html) and [OPML](https://opml.org/spec2.opml) [reading lists](http://scripting.com/2023/10/21/143159.html). ## Crawl Logic The wiki checking logic is that every wiki in the [all feeds list](https://feeds.fedwikiriver.com/river.opml) get checked once an hour and any wikis flagged as [active](https://feeds.fedwikiriver.com/activefeeds.opml) (updated in the last week) are checked once a minute. When a wiki sitemap is pulled, if I find that it’s updated I update my cached copy and ping the [rssCloud server](https://blog.andrewshell.org/notes/rsscloud-server/) of an update. Once a day I fetch a list of known wikis from [search.fed.wiki.org](http://search.fed.wiki.org:3030/logs/online) and add any missing wikis to my master list. ### Peer Domains If I don’t have any items in my list of "peer domains" I refresh the list. A peer domain is a wiki domain that only has a different subdomain. So andrew.dojo.fed.wiki is a peer of ward.dojo.fed.wiki. My list of peer domains is created by filtering the list of all domains, removing any domains that already have a peer in the peer domain list. Every minute I pull one peer domain off the list and fetch it’s list of peers. This list is provided by the [present plugin](http://ward.dojo.fed.wiki/view/about-present-plugin). If it doesn’t have the "present" plugin enabled, it returns one item. Here is an example of a [list of peers](http://andrew.dojo.fed.wiki/plugin/present/roll). Any wiki in the list of peers that I haven’t seen before gets added to the all feeds list as active, although if it isn’t active it will get flagged as inactive after the first pull of its sitemap. ### Checking Feeds If I don’t have any items in my list of inactive feeds, I refresh the list which is all inactive feeds grouped in 60 chunks (one chunk a minute.) I then create a list of feeds to check which are all active feeds and one chunk from the inactive feed list. This way, any wiki that is updated regularly should have updates show up in the river within a minute (or so) while stale wikis that don’t get updated regularly don’t gum up the system. ### Rosters [Rosters](http://ward.dojo.fed.wiki/view/about-roster-plugin) needed special logic. Most rosters in the fediverse won’t need to be fetched on a regular basis because nobody is viewing their river. However, fetching a roster the first time can be slow. Especially if it links out to other rosters or lists of references. So if a roster list or river is fetched, it will be added to a list of active rosters. These rosters will be checked at a rate of one roster a minute in a loop. If the list or river hasn’t been fetched in over two weeks it’s dropped from the list of active rosters and won’t be kept fresh in the cache. --- --- title: "RssCloud Server" url: "https://andrewshell.org/notes/rsscloud-server/" lang: "en-US" type: "page" description: "RssCloud is a technology designed to provide real-time updates for RSS feeds, streamlining the process of feed notification and reducing the need for frequent polling by feed readers.\nThe original rssCloud server was written by Dave Winer in Frontier/OPML Editor.\nIn March 2015,..." last_modified: "2026-03-12T15:46:38+00:00" categories: [General] --- # RssCloud Server RssCloud is a technology designed to provide real-time updates for RSS feeds, streamlining the process of feed notification and reducing the need for frequent polling by feed readers. The original rssCloud server was written by [Dave Winer](https://davewiner.com/) in [Frontier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UserLand_Software#Frontier)/[OPML Editor](https://home.opml.org/). In March 2015, I built [a Node.js port](https://github.com/rsscloud/rsscloud-server) of the server. Since then, I’ve continued to maintain and [host](https://rpc.rsscloud.io/) the project. ## Functionality of rssCloud The cloud element, documented in the [RSS 2.0 specification](https://cyber.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html#ltcloudgtSubelementOfLtchannelgt) by Dave Winer, allows an RSS feed to specify a server for real-time update notifications. This server, known as an rssCloud server, facilitates immediate notifications to aggregators when a feed changes, eliminating the need for constant polling. ### How rssCloud Works - **Feed Declaration:** An RSS feed includes a cloud element specifying the rssCloud server for change notifications. - **Aggregator Request:** Feed aggregators send a request to the rssCloud server, asking to be notified when the feed changes. - **Notification Process:** When the feed updates, the rssCloud server notifies all subscribed aggregators, prompting them to check the feed again for new content. This mechanism is particularly useful for feeds that update frequently, such as the [Hacker News Firehose](http://hn.geekity.com/), reducing the need for constant polling and enabling near real-time updates. ## Comparison with WebSub [WebSub](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebSub) (formerly PubSubHubbub) is a similar technology that enhances RSS feed updates. The key difference lies in the notification method: - **WebSub:** The server parses the feed and sends a "fat ping," including updated items directly to subscribers. - **rssCloud:** The server only sends a URL notification, without parsing content, making it simpler to implement and less resource-intensive. While WebSub’s approach is preferred by some for reducing load on the feed source, rssCloud’s simplicity offers flexibility and broader potential applications, such as notifying subscribers of any URL changes, not just RSS/Atom feeds. ## Implementation and Tools - **FeedLand:** A news aggregator developed by Dave Winer, which has rssCloud support. - **rssCloud Server:** A lightweight server that handles URL notifications, simplifying real-time update mechanisms for feed aggregators. For comprehensive information on rssCloud, refer to [Dave Winer’s documentation](http://rsscloud.co/). By leveraging rssCloud, developers and content providers can enhance the efficiency of their feed update systems, ensuring timely content delivery with minimal resource overhead. --- --- title: "How To Build A Time Tracking App In React" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2024/05/how-to-build-a-time-tracking-app-in-react/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "In 2018, I built a time-tracking demo in React for a job I was applying for.\n\nI had spent the years prior working with Angular (via Ionic), but many of the jobs I'd seen asked for React.\nSince then, it's been dormant while I moved on to other things. I still only do a little..." last_modified: "2026-03-22T15:54:17+00:00" categories: [General] custom_fields: activitypub_content_visibility: "local" activitypub_interaction_policy_quote: "anyone" iawmlf_last_processed: 1774198468 --- # How To Build A Time Tracking App In React In 2018, I built a time-tracking demo in React for a job I was applying for.  I had spent the years prior working with Angular (via Ionic), but many of the jobs I’d seen asked for React. Since then, it’s been dormant while I moved on to other things. I still only do a little React as my job is mostly backend Node.js development, but several side projects and one work project have had me refreshing myself with React. Recently, I decided to take a stab at updating my demo as several things have changed through the years. Create React App is no longer in vogue, with people preferring Vite. I also dropped SCSS for CSS Modules. It’s still using Redux, and I am still deciding if that’s something I should keep. I also set up things with pnpm workspaces and will probably add a backend soon. If you’d like to follow my development, here’s the code: [Time Tracking Demo](https://github.com/andrewshell/time-tracking-demo). If you’re a React guru and would like to review my code and give me notes, I’d appreciate it. --- --- title: "Transforming Fitness Goals: From Lag to Lead Metrics" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2024/05/fitness-goals/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "Have you ever felt like no matter what you do, the scale just won’t budge? This might be because you're focusing on the wrong type of metric.\nI've previously written about the differences between lead and lag metrics and why it's important to differentiate between them when..." last_modified: "2024-05-08T13:07:32+00:00" categories: [General] --- # Transforming Fitness Goals: From Lag to Lead Metrics Have you ever felt like no matter what you do, the scale just won’t budge? This might be because you’re focusing on the wrong type of metric. I’ve previously written about the differences between [lead and lag metrics](https://blog.andrewshell.org/essays/lead-vs-lag-metrics/) and why it’s important to differentiate between them when setting goals. This morning, as I was getting home from a walk, I was reminded of this in the context of some changes I’ve been making in my life recently. For those of you who don’t know me in person, I’m not thin. I’ve always been on the heavier side, and my weight has only gotten worse since 2020. I used to stay around 250 lbs easily, but by 2021, I was 280, and by 2024, I was 300. I’m not a spring chicken, having turned 42 in August, and the weight is taking a toll on my body and health. Previous weight loss attempts have worked in the short term but were ultimately not sustainable. I was unwilling to give up but needed to find a solution. What does this have to do with lead and lag metrics? I realized that weight loss is a lag indicator. I don’t have control over how quickly or how much weight I lose. Instead, I have more control over whether I go for walks during the day or when and what I eat. These are the lead metrics. Recording my weight and other measurements is still useful as long as I remember that they are lag metrics. They can inform me if my lead metrics are actually leading me toward the final goals. So here are my current lead and lag metrics. **Lead Metrics** - 40 minutes of exercise daily (walking) - 6000 steps daily - Only eat from 11 am to 7 pm **Lag Metrics** - Weight - Body fat % - Sum of measurements (neck, chest, waist, etc.) Now, I can track if I’m doing the right things every day, and once a week, I track my lag metrics to see if I’m headed in the right direction. For instance, over the last week, I only lost 0.1 lbs, but my measurement sum dropped a couple of inches, so I’m headed in the right direction. --- --- title: "First Define, Then Refine: How Goals Shape Successful Systems" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2024/04/goals-vs-systems/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "Many have told us that to achieve our goals, we should focus more on building effective systems rather than setting specific objectives. But this advice skips a crucial first step: setting goals is essential because it guides how we create those systems. Let's look closer at why..." last_modified: "2024-04-17T11:07:01+00:00" categories: [General] --- # First Define, Then Refine: How Goals Shape Successful Systems Many have told us that to achieve our goals, we should focus more on building effective systems rather than setting specific objectives. But this advice skips a crucial first step: setting goals is essential because it guides how we create those systems. Let’s look closer at why starting with clear goals can make all the difference in crafting systems that work for us. One of the most intriguing concepts I’ve come across is from Scott Adams’ book, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big. This idea, often discussed (especially at this time of year), is that systems triumph over goals. Adams suggests that those who focus on a goal are in a perpetual state of losing, only experiencing a brief victory if they achieve the goal. In contrast, those with systems win every time they apply their system. Adams acknowledges that you can reduce the difference between goals and systems to semantics, but it’s valuable to think of them as different things. I agree, but it’s also worthwhile to consider them the same thing. Hear me out. In my essay [Unified Theory of Goal-Setting](https://blog.andrewshell.org/notes/unified-theory-of-goal-setting/), I say: > Every single goal-setting and task management system is just a way to filter and prioritize the endless number of things you could be doing and decide on a single thing to do right now. The differences between systems mostly come down to how broad/specific your level of abstraction is and what criteria you’re using for prioritization. Systems seem more valuable because they are more specific. However, creating a system without first having a goal you hope to achieve makes it less likely that you’ll achieve what you want. You need to have a benchmark to determine if the system is working. These are the lead and lag indicators. If you aim to lose 100 lbs in one year, that’s a lag indicator. Without a system in place, your goal is just a wish. On the other hand, if you create a system with a vague unspoken goal of "losing weight," you’re winning if you lost one pound this month. But, if you combine them, you might quickly discover that your 3,000 calories a day (lead indicator) system will not lead to achieving your goal, and it needs to be revised. --- --- title: "WebFinger for ActivityPub Feed Discovery" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2024/02/webfinger-for-activitypub-feed-discovery/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "This post is the first of several articles about the technology around Understanding ActivityPub.\nThe first question I had while reading the ActivityPub specification was, "How do I find the different feeds and documents defined by the spec?"\nOne of the first things..." last_modified: "2026-03-22T15:53:34+00:00" categories: [General] custom_fields: activitypub_content_visibility: "local" activitypub_interaction_policy_quote: "anyone" iawmlf_last_processed: 1774198467 --- # WebFinger for ActivityPub Feed Discovery The first question I had while reading the ActivityPub specification was, “How do I find the different feeds and documents defined by the spec?” One of the first things defined would be an [actor object](https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/#actor-objects) that refers to me. An actor object contains my name, avatar, and paths to the different [collections](https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/#collections). ActivityPub doesn’t define how to find an actor object for a specific user. Instead, existing networks like Mastodon use a different standard for this purpose, [WebFinger](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7033). WebFinger is a pre-defined URL that allows you to look up information about a specific resource. Here is an example of how Mastodon uses it: If you have a user in Mastodon @andrewshell@indieweb.social, you can request `GET https://indieweb.social/.well-known/webfinger?resource=acct:andrewshell@indieweb.social` and get back a WebFinger document in json: { "subject": "acct:andrewshell@indieweb.social", "aliases": [ "https://indieweb.social/@andrewshell", "https://indieweb.social/users/andrewshell" ], "links": } The link defined with "rel": "self" and "type": "application/activity+json" is the URL for my ActivityPub actor object. Another link, defined by "rel": "http://webfinger.net/rel/profile-page" is the URL a human should visit for this actor’s profile page. The last link is something related to oStatus. However, that URL goes to a gambling spam site. The wiki for it is [available from the w3c](https://www.w3.org/community/ostatus/wiki/Main_Page.html). Other services can also have links in the WebFinger document. For instance, OpenID Connect uses it. --- --- title: "What does “done” look like?" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2023/07/define-done/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "I define a project as something I do with an outcome I want. The problem is when I keep starting projects, then one day, I realize I have created dozens of projects. Every week the list grows longer.\nWhy do I create projects and not finish them? Because I don't know what done..." last_modified: "2023-07-23T16:02:34+00:00" categories: [General] --- # What does “done” look like? I define a project as something I do with an outcome I want. The problem is when I keep starting projects, then one day, I realize I have created dozens of projects. Every week the list grows longer. Why do I create projects and not finish them? Because I don’t know what done looks like. Each project becomes a giant neverending slog because I think of all the possible things I can and want to do as part of that project. What’s the solution? Before starting any project, define the scope of the project. What is and is not included in this particular project? If the scope starts growing, tell yourself these extra things can be the next project and keep this project small. Why do I like this? Because I finish projects and finished projects are progress. It also gives me natural breaking points. Instead of feeling like I have to work on the same project forever, I get to finish and re-prioritize before starting my next project. That way, instead of a giant list of unfinished projects, you have a list of finished projects and a list of possible next projects. ## Related - [Podcast: Rescuing A Project In Progress](https://37signals.com/podcast/rescuing-a-project-in-progress/) --- --- title: "Andrew Shell Headshot 1" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2022/02/andrew-shell-headshot-1/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "Today I created my first NFT. I'm not really sure how useful it is, but what the heck.\nThe general idea is that it's in my best interest to become knowledgeable about blockchain and related tech because there are starting to be some interesting use cases and I'm better off being..." last_modified: "2026-03-22T15:52:04+00:00" categories: [General] custom_fields: activitypub_content_visibility: "local" activitypub_interaction_policy_quote: "anyone" iawmlf_last_processed: 1774198330 --- # Andrew Shell Headshot 1 Today I created [my first NFT](https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0x495f947276749ce646f68ac8c248420045cb7b5e/50785849398388566510903729972648362585060473171757419675425038676188286943233/). I’m not really sure how useful it is, but what the heck. The general idea is that it’s in my best interest to become knowledgeable about blockchain and related tech because there are starting to be some [interesting use cases](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1DgYveFF4Y) and I’m better off being primed to act on any new opportunities. I’ve purchased a [Ledger Nano X](https://shop.ledger.com/pages/ledger-nano-x) hardware wallet and created an [NFT on OpenSea of my headshot](https://opensea.io/assets/0x495f947276749ce646f68ac8c248420045cb7b5e/50785849398388566510903729972648362585060473171757419675425038676188286943233/). I then transferred it to my wallet and linked my wallet to Twitter (had to get Twitter Blue). Then I was able to select my headshot as my profile picture and it looks the same before except instead of being in a circle, it’s a rounded hex shape. When you click on it it shows some extra metadata. I’ve also signed up for the [Blockchain Developer Bootcamp](https://www.dappuniversity.com/) because I figure it will get me up to speed on everything I need to know. [](https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0x495f947276749ce646f68ac8c248420045cb7b5e/50785849398388566510903729972648362585060473171757419675425038676188286943233/) --- --- title: "Unified Theory of Goal-Setting" url: "https://andrewshell.org/notes/unified-theory-of-goal-setting/" lang: "en-US" type: "page" description: "Goal-setting and task management are essential components of personal development. At the core of every goal-setting framework and task management system is a fundamental principle:\n\nEvery system serves to filter and prioritize the infinite number of potential actions, guiding..." last_modified: "2026-03-12T15:46:39+00:00" categories: [General] --- # Unified Theory of Goal-Setting Goal-setting and task management are essential components of personal development. At the core of every goal-setting framework and task management system is a fundamental principle: > Every system serves to filter and prioritize the infinite number of potential actions, guiding you to select the most important task to focus on at any given moment. The primary differences among these systems lie in their levels of abstraction and prioritization criteria. ## The Filtering and Prioritization Process ### Goal Funnel The [Goal Funnel](https://blog.andrewshell.org/essays/you-need-a-goal-funnel/) uses a series of filters, starting broadly with life areas, then narrowing down to specific emotional objectives within each area. ### Eisenhower Matrix The [Eisenhower Matrix](https://asana.com/resources/eisenhower-matrix) classifies tasks by urgency and importance, helping to filter and prioritize actions. ### Getting Things Done (GTD) The core of [Getting Things Done](https://gettingthingsdone.com/what-is-gtd/) involves capturing everything in a trusted system, then filtering items by their actionability and abstraction level to determine the next steps. ## Levels of Abstraction Different levels of abstraction prevent overwhelm. For example: - Monthly focus: Prioritize health. - Weekly goal: Lose 2 lbs. - Immediate action: Research and start the Keto diet. - Specific task: Buy a book about the Keto diet on Amazon. Each level filters down possible tasks, allowing for effective prioritization across multiple goals. ## Addressing Common Failures in Goal-Setting Failures in goal-setting often stem from gaps in the refinement process, such as not breaking down broad goals into specific actions or failing to review and adjust ineffective actions. [Regularly reassess your tasks](https://blog.andrewshell.org/essays/validate-your-lead-metrics/) to ensure alignment with broader goals. ## Time Management Feeling overwhelmed by daily tasks necessitates a review of your activities to ensure they support your broader goals. Eliminate or streamline tasks that do not contribute to your objectives. --- --- title: "That’s All Folks" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/11/thats-all-folks/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "Today is the last day of my Ship 30 for 30 cohort.\nWhen I started on October 9th, I said that success would simply be posting 30 items I'm proud of, so it was certainly a success.\nIt started pretty easy, and I had a lot of notes that I could draw from. Notes from books I've..." last_modified: "2021-11-07T13:18:40+00:00" categories: [General] --- # That’s All Folks Today is the last day of my Ship 30 for 30 cohort. When I started on October 9th, I said that success would simply be posting 30 items I’m proud of, so it was certainly a success. It started pretty easy, and I had a lot of notes that I could draw from. Notes from books I’ve read, courses I’ve taken, as well as a lot of life experience. The last two weeks were a bit more difficult. I’ve met some interesting people through this program, and I still have a lot of content to go through that I hadn’t gotten to when my number one priority was writing every day. I’m planning on taking a break now. Although the daily writing hasn’t been too difficult, I have felt like I’m running out of things to say. So I want to reflect on the last 30 days, go through the materials in the course, especially around idea generation, and decide what I’ll want to do moving forward. There is a possibility I’ll niche down and try focusing on productivity for developers. This might provide me with more ideas than writing for a general audience. The next two months will be busy. I’m closing on my house on November 16th and will be doing a lot of renovations to make it move-in ready. In addition, I’m in the running for a leadership position at work which will probably include additional training, including training for becoming a Scrum coach. I’m glad I did the Ship 30 for 30 challenge. I’ve signed up for the Master Ship, a community of Ship 30 alumni that includes additional training about writing and publishing in different channels. --- --- title: "Don’t Ask for Permission" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/11/dont-ask-for-permission/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "Early in my career, I worked for an SEO company. I was pretty low on the totem pole but had a lot of chutzpah.\nI would get assigned a technical project specification written by a senior developer (in New Zealand) based on a report created by an SEO consultant in our Wisconsin..." last_modified: "2021-11-06T14:40:57+00:00" categories: [General] --- # Don’t Ask for Permission Early in my career, I worked for an SEO company. I was pretty low on the totem pole but had a lot of chutzpah. I would get assigned a technical project specification written by a senior developer (in New Zealand) based on a report created by an SEO consultant in our Wisconsin office. One of these projects would typically take a month to build. One month, my team was worried. The other two developers were busy working on a big project, and they had three projects that I needed to build that month. I went over to the consultant and said, "Bring your notes from the SEO analysis. We’re going into the conference room to look at the site." We took 30 minutes and went through each item in their notes. Next, I’d determine if what they wanted was easy or difficult to build. If it were difficult, I’d suggest a few much easier alternatives. As far as they were concerned, the easy and difficult solutions were equivalent from an SEO perspective. I explained that I now had my list of what to do, and they didn’t need to write out a formal report or send anything to New Zealand. _Each project took me a week._ I had no authority to order around our consultant or to change our operating procedures. However, I didn’t ask for permission, and nobody questioned me. Everybody was just happy that the projects were done and they had less work to do. The moral of this story is, "It’s better to ask forgiveness than permission." _Don’t wait for permission to lead. Just do it._ --- --- title: "My Weekly Checklist" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/11/my-weekly-checklist/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "Previously, I discussed reducing friction by using the simplest system that will get the job done (see Small Pieces, Loosely Joined). I briefly described (at the end) that I used a weekly checklist to get through my week.\nFolks on Twitter were interested in learning more about..." last_modified: "2026-03-22T15:49:29+00:00" categories: [General] custom_fields: activitypub_content_visibility: "local" activitypub_interaction_policy_quote: "anyone" iawmlf_last_processed: 1774198235 --- # My Weekly Checklist Previously, I discussed reducing friction by using the simplest system that will get the job done (see [Small Pieces, Loosely Joined](https://andrewshell.org/2021/10/small-pieces-loosely-joined/)). I briefly described (at the end) that I used a weekly checklist to get through my week. Folks on Twitter were interested in learning more about how I use this checklist. ## On Monday Morning: ### 1. Print Checklist I print out a [blank checklist](https://andrewshell.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Weekly.pdf) and fill out the "Week of" date as well as each day of the week. ### 2. Fill Out the Backlog I go through the previous week’s checklist as well as Jira (work stuff) and pull together a list of items I want to do this week. I include work and personal items, big and small tasks. ## Daily: ### 1. Review Backlog I go through my backlog and add anything that is missing. I’ll pick out 1-3 important tasks (they are usually not trivial) and add them to today’s checklist. ### 2. Eat That Frog As Brian Tracy recommends, start your day by working on your biggest, most important task. It should be the first item on your daily checklist. I use the Pomodoro Technique (see [How To Get Things Done](https://blog.andrewshell.org/essays/how-to-get-things-done/)) and every block I complete I fill in a bubble. If I complete the task, I check it off in both the daily checklist and the backlog. ### 3. Update as Needed As the day goes on, I may get assigned new tasks. Typically, I’ll add them to the backlog unless they are urgent, then they go on the daily checklist. Between blocks, or meetings I’ll review the backlog and do any small items that can be cranked out quickly and check them off in the backlog. --- --- title: "Fostering Confidence" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/11/fostering-confidence/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "Today I interviewed for a leadership position at work. During the interview, the interviewer asked what my philosophy was for leading and mentoring people.\nI create an environment where it's safe to fail, I assign projects that are a stretch for them to accomplish, and I do..." last_modified: "2021-11-04T21:07:44+00:00" categories: [General] --- # Fostering Confidence Today I interviewed for a leadership position at work. During the interview, the interviewer asked what my philosophy was for leading and mentoring people. I create an environment where it’s safe to fail, I assign projects that are a stretch for them to accomplish, and I do everything I can to foster their confidence. Junior employees frequently have great ideas about how to solve problems. But, in many cases, they have better solutions because they are less engrained in "the way we do things here" and come up with unique solutions. When I was CTO at Pinpoint Software, we hired a very smart developer who lacked experience and confidence. She’d come into my office with problems she’d come across. I’d ask, "How do you think you should solve this problem?", she’d think and propose a solution. In most cases, it wasn’t what I would have come up with, but it was a good (or better) solution, and I’d say, "That’s a great plan. You should do that and let me know how it goes." In time her confidence grew, and she didn’t have to come to ask me. She’d do what she thought was best, I’d review her code, and it was always a great solution. Sometimes, I’d say, "This is looking great, but what about this situation?" She’d go back and figure it out. The way people grow in their positions is to do challenging work, try and sometimes fail. So you need to put systems in place where failure doesn’t cause problems. That means padding projects with margin to give people the space to experiment and retry if needed. Then, you need to include opportunities for senior staff to review the work and provide encouragement and constructive feedback. --- --- title: "My 3 Favorite Productivity Books" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/11/my-3-favorite-productivity-books/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "Here are three of my favorite books about productivity and goal setting.\nEat That Frog by Brian Tracy\nThe book's tagline is "21 great ways to stop procrastination and get more done in less time". For example, if it's your job to eat a frog every day, you'd best do it..." last_modified: "2021-11-03T21:54:16+00:00" categories: [General] --- # My 3 Favorite Productivity Books Here are three of my favorite books about productivity and goal setting. ## Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy The book’s tagline is "21 great ways to stop procrastination and get more done in less time". For example, if it’s your job to eat a frog every day, you’d best do it first thing in the morning because everything will be easier after that. Of course, he’s not suggesting you eat literal frogs but rather tackle your most important task, the one you’d rather put off first thing in the morning. It’s a quick read with great actionable advice and no fluff. ## How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams Part autobiography, part advice, this book is one of the most valuable books I’ve read in recent memory. One of the key ideas in this book is the concept of skill stacking. Scott explains that instead of working super hard to become one of the top performers in your field, you’re better off becoming pretty good at several complementary skills and creating your unique domain. For example, he said he carved out a niche that he could dominate by combining his mediocre humor, writing, drawing, and years of corporate business experience. ## Start Finishing by Charlie Gilkey This book outlines a process for how to prioritize and plan your projects so you complete them. Charlie moves you along the process giving you frameworks with acronyms to help you think about your projects differently. For instance, he talks about IABCD (Intention, Awareness, Boundaries, Courage, and Discipline) as things required to prevent life from getting in the way of your goals. --- --- title: "How To Get Things Done" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/11/how-to-get-things-done/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "Once you have your goals in mind and know what you want to do, the next trick is to get yourself to do it.\nI have two complementary strategies for getting things done.\nTime Blocking\nThe first is to schedule time blocks on your calendar for when you want to do certain things.\nIf..." last_modified: "2021-11-02T23:55:12+00:00" categories: [General] --- # How To Get Things Done Once you have your goals in mind and know what you want to do, the next trick is to get yourself to do it. I have two complementary strategies for getting things done. ## Time Blocking The first is to schedule time blocks on your calendar for when you want to do certain things. If I’m going to be doing something that requires a lot of mental effort, I schedule it in the morning. If it’s something that is mostly busywork, I plan it for the afternoon. You don’t need to schedule every moment of your workday, I prefer a certain about of flexibility, but it’s beneficial to know that you have a two-hour block set aside to work on a particular project. This also lets you figure out what you can fit into a week. As part of your weekly planning, you can figure out the top projects you want to make progress on this week. Then it’s just a matter of penciling in how much time you’ll work on them and when. ## Pomodoro The second strategy is the Pomodoro technique. First, you decide on a fixed time (usually 25 minutes) to work followed by a short (usually 5 minutes) break. Then, after every four Pomodoros, you take an extended break. Pomodoros work well with time blocking. Since each work-break block is 30 minutes and 4 of those blocks are two hours, you can easily schedule blocks in Pomodoro increments on your calendar. If there is something that you’re avoiding, Pomodoro’s work wonders. You can tell yourself, "I’m only working on this for 25 minutes. In the end, I don’t have to work more if I don’t want to." That can usually get you to start, and that’s the hardest part. --- --- title: "Finding Clarity in “Why?”" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/11/finding-clarity-in-why/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "The number one thing that sabotages me regularly is a lack of clarity.\nClarity is a sneaky thing, and it plays a part in so many aspects of your life. Clarity is a lack of confusion, and it leads to confidence.\nSo many days, I struggle because I'm not clear about what I should..." last_modified: "2021-11-02T01:25:11+00:00" categories: [General] --- # Finding Clarity in “Why?” The number one thing that sabotages me regularly is a lack of clarity. Clarity is a sneaky thing, and it plays a part in so many aspects of your life. Clarity is a lack of confusion, and it leads to confidence. So many days, I struggle because I’m not clear about what I should do, what I want to do, and how I’m going to do it. I wonder why I should bother doing something or why I should continue doing things. If I encounter resistance, I usually decide that it isn’t worth the effort. I guess that’s the curse of being "the smart kid" in school. You don’t learn to try hard, to persevere through difficulty. In the last couple of days, I’ve had doubts over finishing my 30 days of writing. Initially, ideas came to me quickly, and it wasn’t much effort to spit out 250-300 words on a topic. However, the last week has been more challenging. I’m a bit surprised that I’ve lasted this long. I don’t have an excellent track record of finishing projects. I get excited about something, go at it for a few weeks, lose interest and go off after something else. With Ship 30 for 30, it’s different. I want to get through the 30 days without interruption. I want to prove to myself that I have the power to finish something. Maybe, if I can get myself to ship for 30 days, I will have a chance to stick to a healthy diet and lose weight. It seems silly that something so small can represent something so big. But perhaps, finding clarity to my "Why?" will be enough to push me over the finish line. --- --- title: "Small Pieces, Loosely Joined" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/10/small-pieces-loosely-joined/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "If you're a software developer, you probably at one point or another have heard of the Unix philosophy of "small pieces, loosely joined."\nThe idea is that instead of creating giant monolithic applications that try to do everything, you build small apps that do one..." last_modified: "2026-03-22T15:49:58+00:00" categories: [General] custom_fields: activitypub_content_visibility: "local" activitypub_interaction_policy_quote: "anyone" iawmlf_last_processed: 1774198236 --- # Small Pieces, Loosely Joined If you’re a software developer, you probably at one point or another have heard of the Unix philosophy of "small pieces, loosely joined." The idea is that instead of creating giant monolithic applications that try to do everything, you build small apps that do one thing well and make it easy to wire them up however you want. This way, each app can easily be updated or replaced, and you can achieve incredibly sophisticated results by connecting them and piping data through a series of apps. ## Any system that needs complexity to function is fragile and prone to breakage. I’ve noticed the same thing with productivity. I might develop an excellent system for tracking habits and tasks where everything needs to be tagged and categorized. The problem is if it’s complicated to implement every day, I won’t do it. Instead, it’s best to start with the simplest solution to your problem. If something about it doesn’t meet your needs, what’s the simplest way to meet that need? There have been months when I was overwhelmed, and the only way I could get through my weeks was with a simple weekly checklist. I had a single page with two columns. On the left side, I’d list all the things I needed to work on that week. On the right side, I’d list the days of the week and room for five items. I wasn’t using OmniFocus or Things, just a piece of paper sitting in front of me on my desk. Here is my [Weekly Checklist](https://andrewshell.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Weekly.pdf). --- --- title: "Goal Brainstorming" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/10/goal-brainstorming/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "Goal Funnels (see You Need a Goal Funnel) can be overwhelming. So here is another strategy to use to help flesh out your Goal Funnel.\n1. Brain Dump. Spend 15-20 minutes just writing down every possible thing you'd like to accomplish in the next ten years. For example, what are..." last_modified: "2021-10-30T16:05:08+00:00" categories: [General] --- # Goal Brainstorming Goal Funnels (see [You Need a Goal Funnel](https://blog.andrewshell.org/essays/you-need-a-goal-funnel/)) can be overwhelming. So here is another strategy to use to help flesh out your Goal Funnel. **1. Brain Dump.** Spend 15-20 minutes just writing down every possible thing you’d like to accomplish in the next ten years. For example, what are items you want to buy, places you want to visit, skills you want to learn, and experiences you want to experience? Try to get at least 50 things written down. **2. Group and Tweak.** Identify if each item on the list is more of an Emotional Objective (be a good dad) or a Measurable Goal (make $1,000,000). **3. Emotional Objectives.** Match every Measurable Goal on your list to an Emotional Objective. If you don’t find a fit, this is a sign that you’re missing one. Think about why you want to achieve the goal. For instance, do you want to travel to Machu Picchu because you value being a well-traveled person? **4. Life Areas.** There is no rule here, but I’ve usually found the sweet spot is around 5-10. You want a balanced life, so each area will hopefully feel about as important as the others. If you have 10-times the goals in one area, that’s a sign that you need to split it up or focus on other areas. **5. Measurable Goals.** Finally, go through your Emotional Objectives and see if any are missing Measurable Goals. Every Emotional Objective should have at least one or two Measurable Goals to make sure you’ve thought through how you plan to accomplish the objectives. **Bonus: Timeframe**. Jim Rohn recommends going through your list and putting a 1, 3, 5, or 10 next to each goal to estimate how long it will take to accomplish. If you have too many in one category, that’s usually a sign you either need to break down big goals into smaller milestones or think bigger and come up with some long-term goals. --- --- title: "Don’t Fight Inertia" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/10/dont-fight-inertia/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "When you focus on the past (positive or negative), you're creating inertia. That's what habits are. They require effort to get started but then require minimal effort to keep them going.\nIf you want to change your future, you're potentially fighting inertia, just like when..." last_modified: "2021-10-30T02:48:06+00:00" categories: [General] --- # Don’t Fight Inertia When you focus on the past (positive or negative), you’re creating inertia. That’s what habits are. They require effort to get started but then require minimal effort to keep them going. If you want to change your future, you’re potentially fighting inertia, just like when you’re driving your car. If you’re going forward fast, it will take effort to get the vehicle to turn. If you try to turn too quickly, you’re not accounting for inertia, and you will crash. Instead, you need to take the turn gradually. The faster you’re going, the more gradual you’ll need to turn. As someone who doesn’t have a lot of patience for change, I need to remind myself of this reality. If I try to change something in my life drastically, there is a good chance I won’t be able to sustain the change. I’m turning too quickly and driving too fast. It’s a recipe for disaster. It’s been a goal of mine to start my own business. Over the summer, I was in multiple classes, trying to learn what I needed to do to start a business. I was also working on development side-projects, my full-time job, fathering my daughter, figuring out a weight loss strategy, reading several books, trying to take notes on all these books and courses, and burning out in the process. When I put everything on hold and realized that I needed to focus on a few things first (job, daughter, and weight loss), I started getting traction. When weight loss got enough inertia, I was able to add Ship 30 for 30. I have nine more days to go then shortly after that I’ll close on my house. I’m sustaining my changes because I slowed down and decided to work with inertia instead of fighting against it. --- --- title: "Don’t Burn Out, Level Up" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/10/dont-burn-out-level-up/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "When you're driving, you shift into a higher gear so you can continue accelerating. If you continue accelerating at the current gear, you'll wear out your engine and burn up a lot of gas.\nThe same thing applies to people. You're pushing yourself, you're trying to do more and get..." last_modified: "2021-10-28T20:57:37+00:00" categories: [General] --- # Don’t Burn Out, Level Up When you’re driving, you shift into a higher gear so you can continue accelerating. If you continue accelerating at the current gear, you’ll wear out your engine and burn up a lot of gas. The same thing applies to people. You’re pushing yourself, you’re trying to do more and get everything done, and you can physically feel yourself reaching the limit of what you can do. This is a sign that you need to shift to a higher gear, or you’ll burn out. ## How To Level Up The first thing to do is take a break. Give yourself a chance to recover a bit. Your mind works similarly to your muscles, where if you push it past what it’s comfortable with then give it time to recover, it will grow so the next you can handle a higher load. Next, identify what kind of work you have been doing lately? Has it been primarily internal work like reading books or taking a class, or external work, like building something or shipping a deliverable? The goal is to switch between these states regularly. Learn something new, then commit to doing something with what you’ve learned. Then go back, reflect on what you’ve learned and done. How can you improve, and what skills will help you be more effective? The cycle continues. It’s similar to how when you work out, and you alternate between upper and lower body days. Mix in a few recovery days, and you’ll continue to level up. --- --- title: "How to Make Intentional Choices" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/10/how-to-make-intentional-choices/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "When you're trying to change your behavior, it's easy to fall into old habits. You've practiced these bad habits for a long time and it's foolish to think you can just decide to change and make it happen.\nIt takes work and it takes practice. However, there is a skill that if you..." last_modified: "2021-10-27T18:50:51+00:00" categories: [General] --- # How to Make Intentional Choices When you’re trying to change your behavior, it’s easy to fall into old habits. You’ve practiced these bad habits for a long time and it’s foolish to think you can just decide to change and make it happen. It takes work and it takes practice. However, there is a skill that if you learn will make this process much easier. ## Stimulus The trick is to identify what are the triggers that cause you to behave with your default reaction. For example, let’s say you want to stop grazing on food all day and only eat at mealtimes. What are the triggers or stimulus that makes you go to the fridge to get a snack? Maybe it’s when you feel bored, or if you’re stuck on a hard problem. Write these down on paper and review them regularly. You’re trying to tell your subconscious mind to be on the lookout for these triggers and alert you. You can add additional intermediate triggers as well, such as opening the refrigerator. ## Pause When you encounter one of these triggers, pause. Give yourself at least a good 5-10 seconds to observe what you’re doing and decide if you could do something else instead. It helps to have thought through these options ahead of time. ## Respond Now that you’ve decided what you’d like to do. Do it. Maybe it’s what you were going to do, to begin with, and that’s okay. Maybe you pause and decide "I’m actually hungry right now and it’s not just because I’m bored." Cool, go for it. The goal is to break the pattern of behavior and give your logical brain a chance to engage with the situation so you can choose to make a better decision. --- --- title: "Why I Use a Daily Log" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/10/why-i-use-a-daily-log/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "How often do you find yourself on autopilot?\nIn the early 2000s, I had a daily 50 minute (each way) commute through farmland. On my way home, I would have to make a left turn or else I'd end up in another town. I would regularly find that I had no idea where I was, unsure if I..." last_modified: "2021-10-27T02:04:00+00:00" categories: [General] --- # Why I Use a Daily Log How often do you find yourself on autopilot? In the early 2000s, I had a daily 50 minute (each way) commute through farmland. On my way home, I would have to make a left turn or else I’d end up in another town. I would regularly find that I had no idea where I was, unsure if I had missed my turn. I’d have to keep going and hope my turn was still ahead of me. ## You Need Milestones This happened so often because one stretch of farmland was identical to every other. My brain tuned it out like a white noise machine. There was nothing to attach my attention to along this route. The same thing can happen with your life. ## Your Life Needs Milestones How many weeks go by where on Friday, you can’t recall what you did all week? It can make you feel like your productivity has been garbage. You need a daily log. This isn’t a long-form diary, just a record of what happened so that you can objectively recall what you did at the end of the week. Then you are armed with an actual list of milestones and can objectively measure your productivity. ## How I Log My Day At the beginning of the day, write out three sections: - What’s happening today? List upcoming appointments. - What do I want to do today? List your top 2-3 tasks. - What happened today? For now, this is just a heading. As I go through the day, I jot down what I’m doing. This doesn’t need to be super detailed. Make sure your notes include any accomplishments. Even if you don’t finish one of your tasks, you can jot down what you did and where you left off for next time. --- --- title: "Feedback Loops" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/10/feedback-loops/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "The best way to grow is to implement systems that incorporate feedback loops.\nOn Saturday, I talked about validating your lead metrics. This is one example of a powerful concept in personal development, Feedback loops.\nIf you want to grow consistently, you need to implement..." last_modified: "2021-10-25T13:38:03+00:00" categories: [General] --- # Feedback Loops The best way to grow is to implement systems that incorporate feedback loops. On Saturday, I talked about validating your lead metrics. This is one example of a powerful concept in personal development, Feedback loops. If you want to grow consistently, you need to implement feedback loops. A feedback loop is evidence that what you are doing is working. With lead metrics, you want feedback that what you are doing is leading to your lag metrics. When reading a book, taking notes written in your own words is a feedback loop to comprehend what you’re reading. If you only quote the text or save highlights to Readwise, you miss out on feedback. When studying, you create flashcards to test your knowledge. This is a feedback loop that you remember what you’ve learned. You don’t want the exam in class to be the first feedback that you don’t understand the subject. Teaching is another feedback loop. It’s giving you feedback on whether or not you understand a topic enough to communicate it clearly to another person. That person will ask questions, and your ability to answer those questions is feedback on how thoroughly you understand the topic. When you’re starting a business, you break it down into smaller feedback loops. Can you reach your target market? Do they have the problem you think they do? Does your solution solve their problem enough for them to pay you money? Don’t waste your time working on the wrong thing. Instead, identify your feedback loops so you can get validation as soon as possible that you’re doing the right thing. --- --- title: "Changing Direction" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/10/changing-direction/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: ""You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction." — Jim Rohn\n\nJim Rohn was one of the original personal development teachers. He mentored Tony Robbins when Tony was 17 and was a lifelong friend.\nHis style was accessible, and his..." last_modified: "2021-10-24T16:12:22+00:00" categories: [General] --- # Changing Direction > "You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction." — Jim Rohn Jim Rohn was one of the original personal development teachers. He mentored Tony Robbins when Tony was 17 and was a lifelong friend. His style was accessible, and his conversational delivery made his common-sense advice incredibly quotable. This quote has been on my mind lately. After a rocky 2020, I started getting back on my feet in 2021, and over the last three months, I’m on a new path that I wouldn’t have anticipated earlier this year. Two of the biggest changes are my weight loss journey and buying a house. Things can change overnight. You go to bed thinking one thing, you’re on one path, and in the morning, you have an idea, you make a decision, and you’re suddenly on a new path. I’m down about 25 lbs with a target of losing 120. It’s challenging to make decisions every day that keep me on my path. For example, I’d love to eat an entire pizza right now, but I know it’s more important to get thin and healthy. I know that once I get to my target weight and transition to maintenance, I’ll have more flexibility with what I can eat. For example, I probably won’t eat an entire pizza, but I should certainly be able to eat a slice or two occasionally. I keep an eye on my destination, and every day I make sure I’m facing the correct direction. I could certainly take a detour, but right now, it’s more important to get to my destination as quickly as possible. --- --- title: "Validate Your Lead Metrics" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/10/validate-your-lead-metrics/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "Yesterday, I talked about the difference between lead and lag metrics and why they are essential parts of your goal-setting funnel.\nToday, I will discuss making sure your lead metrics lead to your lag metrics using validated learning.\nApplying Validated Learning to Your Goal..." last_modified: "2021-10-23T15:09:10+00:00" categories: [General] --- # Validate Your Lead Metrics Yesterday, I talked about the difference between [lead and lag metrics](https://blog.andrewshell.org/essays/lead-vs-lag-metrics/) and why they are essential parts of your goal-setting funnel. Today, I will discuss making sure your lead metrics lead to your lag metrics using validated learning. ## Applying Validated Learning to Your Goal Funnel - Define a goal with a measurable metric (lag metric) - Think of an action you can do regularly that should lead to progress toward your lag metric (lead metric) - Act on your lead metric for a set period (2-12 weeks) - Analyze your results - Reevaluate your lag metric What’s happening here is you’re applying the scientific method to your goal setting and achievement process. ## What to Look for During This Process - Were you successful in completing your lead metric? For example, if you said that you’re going to call 20 leads every day, and you called ten leads a week, you need to identify why this failed. Was it unrealistic? Were there other things that interfered with achieving your goal, like getting sick or another emergency? - If you were unsuccessful in completing your lead metrics, is there something you can do differently the next time around to be more successful? For example, do you need to schedule a time to work on it? Do you need to go someplace different (coffee shop or library) so you can focus and do the work? - If you were successful, is there evidence that achieving this lead metric progresses toward the lag metric? - If it made little or no progress toward the lag metric, why? Is it the wrong lead metric? Did you not do it for a long enough time? Are there other things that would produce more progress? - Are there any resources (people, books, courses, etc.) that could give you external feedback on why this failed or what you should be doing instead? --- --- title: "Lead vs Lag Metrics" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/10/lead-vs-lag-metrics/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "Yesterday, I mentioned (see You Need a Goal Funnel) that the 5th stage of your Goal Funnel is Lead Metrics.\nToday, I figured I would explain what lead metrics are and their partner lag metrics because it's a crucial distinction that I think many people overlook.\nLag Metrics\nWhen..." last_modified: "2021-10-22T20:20:07+00:00" categories: [General] --- # Lead vs Lag Metrics Yesterday, I mentioned (see [You Need a Goal Funnel](https://blog.andrewshell.org/essays/you-need-a-goal-funnel/)) that the 5th stage of your Goal Funnel is Lead Metrics. Today, I figured I would explain what lead metrics are and their partner lag metrics because it’s a crucial distinction that I think many people overlook. ## Lag Metrics When someone creates a goal, they know that it needs to be specific and measurable. Examples are losing 50 lbs or making one million dollars. These are useful because you need a target to aim for, but you’re setting yourself up for failure if this is as far as you go. If you want to make a million dollars, how will you do that? Of course, you’re hoping that you can sell enough goods and services to earn a million dollars, but at the end of the day, you don’t have control over whether other people decide to make this exchange with you or not. ## Lead Metrics Lead metrics, on the other hand, are the things that you do have control over. In the million-dollar example, you can decide how many people you’ll call to try to sell your product. You can choose how many pieces of content you’ll publish every week that direct people to your sales page. If you want to lose weight, you can control how many calories you eat every day. You can decide how many times a week you work out and for how long. ## You Need Both The lag metrics are essential because they align with your why. For example, if you want to retire and not work until you die, you may need one million dollars saved up. The lead metrics are essential because they represent what you’re going to do every day. In a future post, I’ll describe how to connect these two to ensure that your lead metrics lead to your lag metrics. --- --- title: "You Need a Goal Funnel" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/10/you-need-a-goal-funnel/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "Whether it's on January 1st or some other schedule (I recommend quarterly) it's a good idea to regularly do a deep dive goal planning session.\nI hope by this point you know that a goal like "lose weight" is not very good. You've probably heard of SMART. goals which are..." last_modified: "2021-10-21T17:02:56+00:00" categories: [General] --- # You Need a Goal Funnel Whether it’s on January 1st or some other schedule (I recommend quarterly) it’s a good idea to regularly do a deep dive goal planning session. I hope by this point you know that a goal like "lose weight" is not very good. You’ve probably heard of SMART. goals which are great, but not the whole picture. ## What you need is a goal-setting funnel A goal-setting funnel is a set of different types of goals starting with the broadest scope, down to the most narrow and specific. **1. Life Areas.** This is where you define the top level life areas you’re concerned with. For most people this includes things like family, finances, career, health, and relationships. Be as specific or broad as makes sense for you. **2. Emotional Objectives.** These are broad objectives that fit within your life areas. They aren’t intended to be measurable, but rather things that speak to you emotionally. Examples are "Being a good father" or "Lean and high energy". **3. Measurable Goals.** For each emotional objective you’ll want at lease one measurable goal. Make sure that your goal is as specific as possible with a deadline and a way to easily determine whether or not it’s "done" without ambiguity. Google "SMART goals" if you need help. **4. The One Thing.** At this point go through all your measurable goals and pick one that you want to do first. You’ll be able to do more in a bit, but to start, pick one goal that if completed would make the other goals easier or irrelevant. **5. Lead Metrics.** If your goal is something that you can influence, but not directly control (like how many products you sell) you’ll need to decide what your lead metrics are. This means what you do that you have complete control over that you can measure. For instance, you can’t control how many pounds you lose, but you can control how many calories you eat. --- --- title: "Margin Helps You Live Life" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/10/margin-helps-you-accomidate-life/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "Today my essay is a little later in the day. There are a lot of things going on right now. I have an accepted offer on a house I'm buying and my daughter is sick with a stomach bug.\nThis stuff is part of life and therefore needs to be a part of productivity. This is why leaving..." last_modified: "2021-10-20T17:02:56+00:00" categories: [General] --- # Margin Helps You Live Life Today my essay is a little later in the day. There are a lot of things going on right now. I have an accepted offer on a house I’m buying and my daughter is sick with a stomach bug. This stuff is part of life and therefore needs to be a part of productivity. This is why leaving margin in your life (asdo.one/margin) is so important. If my days were booked solid with projects and deadlines I’d be freaking out right now. But I’m not. I find that I’m actually way more productive when I aim to do less. There are times in my life when I have a lot on my plate and productivity grinds to a halt. It’s like being on the highway during rush hour. If there is no space between the cars, nobody is going anywhere. It helps to have priorities. I know my daughter is my top priority, so it’s easy to shuffle things around when she needs me. I also know that there are certain things that need to be done to keep the home buying moving. I’ve already submitted all my paperwork to the mortgage broker and we’re scheduling a home inspection. This house will be a fixer-upper so I know that I shouldn’t sign myself up for any major commitments for at least the next four months. I’m leaving myself margin so I can get the home repairs done and not stress out. I’ll prioritize the projects and determine what can be broken up into smaller parts. For instance, there is one nasty bathroom in the house. I’ll probably demolish it right away when I’m ripping out all the smelly carpet. This way I hopefully won’t need to get a dumpster multiple times, and I can be confident that the bathroom isn’t hiding any surprise mold. --- --- title: "My Favorite Useful and Weird Book" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/10/my-favorite-useful-and-weird-book/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "Yesterday I mentioned one of my favorite books. It contains many practical and useful practices for helping your subconscious help you. The book is "Ask and It Is Given" by Esther and Jerry Hicks.\nNow, I also mentioned that it's a weird book. If you're not familiar..." last_modified: "2021-10-19T17:02:56+00:00" categories: [General] --- # My Favorite Useful and Weird Book Yesterday I mentioned one of my favorite books. It contains many practical and useful practices for helping your subconscious help you. The book is "Ask and It Is Given" by Esther and Jerry Hicks. Now, I also mentioned that it’s a weird book. If you’re not familiar with Esther & Jerry Hicks, the gist is Esther channels a non-physical consciousness that they call Abraham, and Abraham (through Esther) teaches about how the universe works and how to align with source energy to live your best life. However, you don’t need to believe any of this to find the book incredibly useful. The second half of the book is a list of 22 processes to align with source energy, which also just happen to be really great methods for changing your mood and programming your subconscious to work in your favor. ## My favorite practices from Ask and It Is Given Rampage of Appreciation: During your day, like when you’re driving or standing in line, look around and notice something that pleases you. Notice the positive feeling and try to focus on the thing and feeling as long as possible. Move onto something else. The Wallet Process: Get a $100 bill and put it in your wallet. During your day think about the $100 bill in your wallet and notice all the things that you could spend that $100 on if you wanted to. Your goal is to signal to your subconscious that money is abundant. The Focus Wheel: Draw a big circle with a little circle inside it (a donut). In the small circle write down something that you’d like to feel better about. Then clockwise around the circle write statements that match how you want to feel that you already believe are true. It just has to be a true and positive statement. By the time you get around the circle you should feel better. I once did this for a job I was miserable at. One of the items I wrote down was "There is free coffee." You got to start somewhere. --- --- title: "Aligning with Success" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/10/aligning-with-success/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "Yesterday, I discussed how to leverage your subconscious mind (see 5 Ways to Leverage Your Subconscious Mind). Today, I want to give special attention to one aspect of the subconscious.\nI had mentioned how your subconscious uses strong emotion to prioritize work. I also..." last_modified: "2021-10-18T17:02:56+00:00" categories: [General] --- # Aligning with Success Yesterday, I discussed how to leverage your subconscious mind (see [5 Ways to Leverage Your Subconscious Mind](https://blog.andrewshell.org/essays/5-ways-to-leverage-your-subconscious-mind/)). Today, I want to give special attention to one aspect of the subconscious. I had mentioned how your subconscious uses strong emotion to prioritize work. I also mentioned how your subconscious will alert you to things in your environment that it identifies as important. This is one of the things that powers "The Law of Attraction." The idea behind the law of attraction is that you attract in your life that which you focus on the most. Your brain doesn’t differentiate between wanting and not wanting, so if you’re focused on your lack of money, your mind will continue to reinforce not having money. In the world of relationships, the same thing happens with "the ick." You have someone that you’re attracted to, and they do something that you don’t like. You fixate on the thing that you don’t like and soon you start to notice other things you don’t like. Before long, you have no idea what you ever saw in this person and you end the relationship. The other aspect of this is not only how you perceive the world around you and what you notice, but how you show up and behave. If you’re focused on how you don’t have any money, you’ll behave as if money is hard to come by and that you need to hold on to every penny you earn. Your subconscious will literally filter out anything that would contradict this belief. You may have all sorts of opportunities presented in front of you, but you won’t consider them, or even notice them if you’re in a scarcity mindset. You could improve your earning potential by learning a new skill, but ignore those opportunities because you think they cost too much. You could be overworking because you’re afraid of losing your job and not notice all the opportunities to impress management which could lead to a promotion. Tomorrow, I’m going to dig into one of my favorite books that although is kind of weird, has some of the most useful, practical advice I’ve seen on programming your mind for success. --- --- title: "5 Ways to Leverage Your Subconscious Mind" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/10/5-ways-to-leverage-your-subconscious-mind/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "Do you ever have a problem that no matter how hard you work at, you just can't figure it out? My inclination has been to power through, trying one thing after another until I figure it out, but usually, that leads to resistance and frustration. I've found another way that more..." last_modified: "2021-10-17T17:02:56+00:00" categories: [General] --- # 5 Ways to Leverage Your Subconscious Mind Do you ever have a problem that no matter how hard you work at, you just can’t figure it out? My inclination has been to power through, trying one thing after another until I figure it out, but usually, that leads to resistance and frustration. I’ve found another way that more often than not helps me solve my problems quickly and with less resistance. ## I let my subconscious mind solve it Your subconscious mind is your research assistant that digs through the deep archives of your memory, processes and files your notes, highlights key information, and delivers reports with the most important information to your consciousness. ## Here’s how to help your subconscious mind help you: - You have to be very clear about what you’re looking for. Your subconscious is a lot like a genie, where you may very well get what you asked for, but not what you wanted. - It helps to have strong emotions tied to acquiring the answer. Your subconscious prioritizes work by emotion. If you’re obsessed with finding an answer, your subconscious will be working overtime. - Give your subconscious the raw materials to work with. Being curious and studying a wide variety of topics is the best long-term strategy. Useful first-hand experiences are particularly great, like failed attempts at solving the problem. - Sleep is necessary for your brain to move things from short-term to long-term memory. It also frees up mental energy because it’s not processing all the new incoming information. It’s helpful to alternate short naps with intense study sessions to maximize effectiveness. - Follow your intuition. Your subconscious deals with all your memories and feelings and frequently communicates with you in non-verbal ways. If your subconscious knows that something is important, it will alert you to things in your environment that it things are significant. --- --- title: "Are You Productive?" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/10/are-you-productive/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "How do you define productivity? For example, if I asked you if you've had a productive week, what criteria would you use?\nDefining productivity is tricky. Productivity content has an idea that the goal is to get as much work done as possible.\nJade Bowler described productivity..." last_modified: "2021-10-16T17:02:56+00:00" categories: [General] --- # Are You Productive? How do you define productivity? For example, if I asked you if you’ve had a productive week, what criteria would you use? Defining productivity is tricky. Productivity content has an idea that the goal is to get as much work done as possible. Jade Bowler described productivity as "spending time well." This idea aligns very well with how I view productivity. ## It’s not about getting more work done. Work is one part of the picture. - Was I present with my daughter when we were spending time together? - Did I choose to focus on the best things at work? - Did I give myself enough margin around activities this week, so I felt calm? ## What is the best use of my time right now? The answer is usually not "work more." If It’s 4 pm and I know I’ll be busy with my daughter that evening, the best use of my time might be to take a nap or a relaxing bath. That way, I’m recharged and not stressed out when I see Piper. If it’s 8 am on a workday, and I know I have some mentally taxing projects ahead of me, it’s best to get started. What can do before my 9:15 morning standup? A walk might be an excellent use of my time, but I’ll leverage my morning brain to solve challenging problems. I can go for a walk later when I need an energy boost. --- --- title: "Teaching is an Unfair Advantage" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/10/teaching-is-an-unfair-advantage/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "I was very fortunate to stumble into my number one career hack earlier on.\nMy first professional job was as a PHP developer, building content management systems for an agency. I was the only PHP developer at the company, and when I was hired, I barely knew anything about PHP. I..." last_modified: "2021-10-15T17:02:56+00:00" categories: [General] --- # Teaching is an Unfair Advantage I was very fortunate to stumble into my number one career hack earlier on. My first professional job was as a PHP developer, building content management systems for an agency. I was the only PHP developer at the company, and when I was hired, I barely knew anything about PHP. I had played around with it for my website, which had previously been static HTML (this was in 2003.) I struggled by myself for about a year. I had a stack of out-of-date books, and I didn’t know what I was doing. I looked on Meetup.com for a PHP user group. There had been one, but there hadn’t been any meetings for months. At about the same time, I attended a PHP conference in Toronto where I ran into many people from Madison. Everyone asked the same question "Is there a PHP group in Madison?" When I got back, I started the Madison PHP Meetup group. For the first six years, I would come up with a talk to present every month. Occasionally, I’d have another member speak, but I probably gave ten presentations a year. The topics were usually pretty basic and about something I needed to learn better. After running the group for about a year and a half, I was laid off. The company I worked for decided to focus on the networking side of the business and cut custom development. Two members of my group were owners of another company in town. When they heard I was available, they suggested we go out for lunch. At the end of lunch, they asked, "So, you want to work for us?" This was when I realized that running the group gave me a massively unfair advantage. Not only is teaching the best way to learn. But running the group was a credibility indicator. The members knew me, and they knew I was competent. I became Co-founder and CTO of a startup because the founder was seeking a developer by contacting meetup groups. I even got my current job because the senior architect had seen me talk at the PHP conference that spun out of my meetup group. --- --- title: "The Importance of Margins" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/10/the-importance-of-margins/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "Every weekday morning I either take my daughter to school, or meet her at school (when she’s with her mom.) That way, I can see her, give her a hug, and send her off to first grade.\nEven on days when all I need to do is roll out of bed, and drive to school, I still get up an..." last_modified: "2021-10-14T17:02:56+00:00" categories: [General] --- # The Importance of Margins Every weekday morning I either take my daughter to school, or meet her at school (when she’s with her mom.) That way, I can see her, give her a hug, and send her off to first grade. Even on days when all I need to do is roll out of bed, and drive to school, I still get up an hour before I need to leave. This is because I value margin. Margin is the space around things. I like to give myself space. This way I have time to get out of bed, weigh myself, brush teeth, get dressed, stare into space, have breakfast, and check my email. I’m not rushed. I leave with enough margin to get there sometimes 10 minutes before my daughter and her mom get there. I like not rushing to get to school. When I take my daughter to school, I still get her up an hour before leaving. She has time to eat, watch TV, and get dressed. She’s far calmer on days we have this margin. When I’m driving by myself, I usually drive in silence. This is another type of margin. It’s a space where my body can be on autopilot and I have time to think. Since I get to school early, I have time where I can write a note to myself about the things I thought about. The rough draft of this essay was dictated to Siri as I sat in my car, waiting for my daughter to arrive. If I didn’t leave a margin, I wouldn’t have had the time to have these thoughts, let alone to record them. --- --- title: "The 3 Enemies of Shipping" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/10/the-3-enemies-of-shipping/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "You have things you want to do, but probably not enough time or energy. You can only do one thing at a time (multitasking is a lie), and switching between projects eats time and energy for lunch.\nDone is better than perfect\nOne reason I don't get as much done as I'd like is..." last_modified: "2021-10-13T17:02:56+00:00" categories: [General] --- # The 3 Enemies of Shipping You have things you want to do, but probably not enough time or energy. You can only do one thing at a time (multitasking is a lie), and switching between projects eats time and energy for lunch. ## Done is better than perfect One reason I don’t get as much done as I’d like is perfectionism. I have an idea of the ideal outcome, and I can’t ship until I hit that unrealistic target. So I work and work, and work, then get bored or distracted, and nothing gets finished. How, then, can I create more output and ship a higher quality output? ## Make a lot of pots I remember a story I heard about a pottery class. The teacher decided to run an experiment. Half of the students were to spend the next two weeks creating the best pot they could. The other half, to make as many pots as they could. At the end of the two weeks, the best pots created were from the second group. Because they made many pots, they iterated, experimented, and drastically improved the quality of their work. ## How to ship more It turns out there are three things you should focus on reducing if you want to ship more, and through iteration, achieve higher quality output over time. ## 1. Resistance How can you make it easier? Deciding to ship when something is "good enough" can reduce a whole lot of resistance. Understand that even if something seems somewhat shitty, you’ll get better faster by shipping more things that are good enough. ## 2. Complexity Can you ship something simpler? Breaking a big project into smaller, simpler deliverables can make it easier to finish. Instead of coordinating many complicated interactions in your head, reduce the complexity until it’s manageable. ## 3. Delay Don’t start tomorrow or next week, or when you think you’re "ready" to go. Just start now. The longer you wait to work on a project, the more likely you’re going to lose whatever motivation and inertia you have right now. It would be best if you also tried to work in big chunks of time. If you block off 3+ hours, you’re more likely to get into a flow state, which will help you produce more in less time. --- --- title: "8 Steps to Decide Project Priorities" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/10/8-steps-to-decide-project-priorities/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "Does this sound familiar?\nYou have a great idea for a new project. You're so excited about this project that you immediately drop everything else you're working on and focus on nothing else for the next few days, maybe weeks.\nSoon you hit a tough spot. You realize that this..." last_modified: "2021-10-12T13:46:48+00:00" categories: [General] --- # 8 Steps to Decide Project Priorities ## Does this sound familiar? You have a great idea for a new project. You’re so excited about this project that you immediately drop everything else you’re working on and focus on nothing else for the next few days, maybe weeks. Soon you hit a tough spot. You realize that this project is going to take you months to finish. Other parts of your life decide they no longer like being ignored. You pause the project. Just until you get other things sorted out. You have a great idea for a new project. Soon you have 45 projects that you’ve started and fully intend to complete. You don’t understand why you’re so stressed out. All you want to do is crawl into bed. ## Confession This was me about a month ago. I was completely overwhelmed. I didn’t even realize I had 45 open projects, but I did have an inkling that I had bitten off more than I could chew. I opened up a text editor and started typing. I listed out every project I was in the middle of. Websites I was building, courses I was taking, books I was reading, parties I was throwing, and home projects I was coordinating. Yeah. No wonder I was overwhelmed. ## What to do instead? - Put everything on hold. - Organize the list into categories. Books to read, courses to take, things to build, things to learn, and things to do. - Add any projects I wanted to do, but fortunately hadn’t started yet. - Decide which projects were absolutely essential. I picked my main project that work (don’t want to get fired) and my daughter’s birthday party (not canceling that). - Decide if I have the bandwidth for another project? Yes. - What project, by doing, will make the other projects easier or irrelevant? Fix my diet so I’m not exhausted all the time, gaining weight, and sprinting toward my impending doom. - Take any great ideas for new projects and put them on the list. - Periodically review the list. Remove ideas I don’t care about and promote projects to active when I free up bandwidth. --- --- title: "20 Questions for Overcoming Procrastination" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/10/20-questions-for-overcoming-procrastination/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "One area I've studied a lot is the area of personal productivity. If left unchecked I procrastinate like crazy. I focus on what I'm interested in and all those other pesky things that I "need" to get done just don't get done, or at least until the last minute.\nWhen I'd..." last_modified: "2021-10-11T17:02:56+00:00" categories: [General] --- # 20 Questions for Overcoming Procrastination One area I’ve studied a lot is the area of personal productivity. If left unchecked I procrastinate like crazy. I focus on what I’m interested in and all those other pesky things that I "need" to get done just don’t get done, or at least until the last minute. When I’d procrastinate, I’d feel bad and think that it was because I just didn’t have the willpower to push through the resistance. However, when I’d reflect on why I was procrastinating, there was usually a specific reason. Here are a few of the reasons I usually procrastinate and how I work through these issues. ## I lack clarity: - What am I specifically trying to accomplish? - Why am I working on this project? - Is it important and valuable? - Do I have all the tools & resources needed to complete this project? - Do I have written notes that detail everything I need to know about this project? - What is the next step? Can I break it down into smaller steps? - Do I have any unanswered questions? ## I lack focus: - Am I worried about anything? Either related or unrelated to the project. - Is there anything in my environment that is distracting me? - How am I feeling? Tired? Anxious? Overwhelmed? Hungry? - Can I play music to help me focus? (The Prodigy helps me focus while coding.) - Do I need to move my body? ## I lack motivation: - What happens if I don’t complete this project? - Who is counting on me to complete this project? - Can I delegate this project to someone else? - Can I work on this for just 30 minutes then do something fun? - Is there anything interesting I can learn by completing this project? - Is there a better time to be working on this? - Can I do a quick and dirty version of the project? - Is there anyone that can help me? --- --- title: "Letting Go of Toxic Stories" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/10/letting-go-of-toxic-stories/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "What stories are you telling yourself?\n"I can't lose weight! No matter what I try, I sabotage myself. I have no self-control."\nI'm good at telling this story. I've been practicing it for years. Probably, most of my adult life. I'm a big dude. I'm six feet tall, and for..." last_modified: "2021-10-10T16:57:03+00:00" categories: [General] --- # Letting Go of Toxic Stories ## What stories are you telling yourself? _"I can’t lose weight! No matter what I try, I sabotage myself. I have no self-control."_ I’m good at telling this story. I’ve been practicing it for years. Probably, most of my adult life. I’m a big dude. I’m six feet tall, and for most of the last decade, I’ve been around 250 lbs. In 2020 I gained an extra 30 lbs. I guess getting divorced and being locked down in my apartment with Ben & Jerry wasn’t a recipe for success. ## These stories are helping you Wait… what? How are they helping me? They are clearly hurting me by causing me to over-eat and avoid the very real problems I’m heading for in the future. This is also true. However, this story, and others like "I can’t meal plan. I don’t know what I’m going to eat until after I’ve eaten it." are helping me feel comfortable. They help me feel better about eating whatever I want without focusing on the consequences. Even if you can objectively look at these stories and tell yourself that they are hurting you, these limiting beliefs serve a purpose. Otherwise, there would be no reason for you to have them. ## Thank the stories for helping you If you want to change your life, you have to embrace these stories. You have to acknowledge them and be honest about how they are helping you. It helps to visualize these stories as external entities, friends that have been with you for a long time. _"You’ve been a great friend for all these years. You’ve helped me make sense of this chaotic world. However, it’s time we go our separate ways. It’s clear to me that we’re on different paths. I need new friends to help me through the next chapter of my life. I am so grateful for everything you’ve done for me. I love you. Goodbye."_ --- --- title: "Why I’m Shipping 30 for 30?" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/10/why-im-shipping-30-for-30/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "Today marks the first day of the October cohort of Ship 30 for 30. It's a writing challenge to publish an atomic essay (like this) every day for 30 days.\nWhy did I join Ship 30 for 30?\nI've been writing online at least since 2004 and for the most part, it's been pretty..." last_modified: "2021-10-09T16:47:34+00:00" categories: [General] --- # Why I’m Shipping 30 for 30? Today marks the first day of the October cohort of Ship 30 for 30. It’s a writing challenge to publish an atomic essay (like this) every day for 30 days. ## Why did I join Ship 30 for 30? I’ve been writing online at least since 2004 and for the most part, it’s been pretty inconsistent. There have been short bursts of writing here and there about a wide variety of topics. Most of my writing was simply for myself and I didn’t care one way or another if anybody read it. Now, I’m at a point in my life where I’d like to start a side-business most likely around teaching and coaching. However, I don’t want to teach programming and I’m not even sure what people would want to learn from me. I have many interests and things I could teach that I don’t even realize are valuable to others. I bootstrapped and ran a successful Meetup group, I’ve spent 20 years as a software developer including a seven-year sprint as co-founder and CTO of a startup that recently had a successful exit. ## What am I looking to write about? My current passions are around self-improvement, including mindset, learning, and personal knowledge management (PKM). I’ll be mining ideas and strategies from my journal and notes and attempting to distill them into useful nuggets of actionable wisdom. ## What would a successful 30 days look like? At this point, success is simply being able to post 30 items I’m proud of. Hopefully, I’ll also have a few ideas that resonate with people and have some interesting conversations along the way. ## How can you help? - Read my posts every day and let me know what you think. I don’t know what people want to learn from me, so let me know! - Share any posts you resonate with. I’d like to spread my reach and see whom else I can help. --- --- title: "My iPad Setup" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/05/my-ipad-setup/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "This morning I read Peter Akkies Newsletter and he asks:\n\nI’ve been spending way too much considering whether to buy one of those shiny new iPad Pros. If you own one, which screen size do you prefer?\nPeter Akkies\n\nI was going to respond via Twitter, but realized I had more than..." last_modified: "2021-05-30T14:01:33+00:00" categories: [General] --- # My iPad Setup This morning I read [Peter Akkies Newsletter](https://peterakkies.net/) and he asks: > I’ve been spending way too much considering whether to buy one of those shiny new iPad Pros. If you own one, which screen size do you prefer? Peter Akkies I was going to respond via Twitter, but realized I had more than 280 characters to say. I ordered the 12.9-inch iPad Pro Wi‑Fi + Cellular 1TB and Apple pencil last year. It was a major upgrade from my first generation iPad Air. My iPad Air was getting long in the tooth and had been mostly taken over by my daughter for playing Roblox and Minecraft and even those apps didn’t run super well, they were crashing a lot. I really wanted an iPad pro specifically for the pencil. When I bought my first iPad (a first gen) I immediately purchased several types of stylus because I knew that using it for writing would be a big deal. The old "dumb" stylus never worked very well so I held out. When the first iPad pro and pencil came out I wasn’t in a position to purchase one. My first accessories for my new iPad pro were: - [Apple Pencil](https://www.apple.com/apple-pencil/) - [Paperlike screen protector](https://paperlike.com/) - [Lamicall Tablet Stand](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B071GL4MXS/) - [tomtoc Tablet Shoulder Sleeve Bag](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07R6KKPV9/) --- --- title: "FedWiki Demo" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/03/fedwiki-demo/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "This is the first of a series of screencasts I want to do demoing different writing and collaboration tools I find interesting." last_modified: "2021-03-27T15:51:01+00:00" categories: [General] --- # FedWiki Demo This is the first of a series of screencasts I want to do demoing different writing and collaboration tools I find interesting. --- --- title: "Avoiding the Final Death" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/03/avoiding-the-final-death/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "I talked to a friend yesterday about all the artifacts I collect and want to collect.\nI have a growing collection of software from Living Videotext, a complete set of Mondo 2000 magazines, and I was debating whether or not I wanted to spend $500 on Origins of Cyberspace.\nHe..." last_modified: "2021-03-27T11:34:20+00:00" categories: [General] --- # Avoiding the Final Death I talked to a friend yesterday about all the artifacts I collect and want to collect. I have a growing collection of [software from Living Videotext](https://blog.andrewshell.org/essays/my-growing-thinktank-collection/), a complete set of [Mondo 2000](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MONDO_2000) magazines, and I was debating whether or not I wanted to spend $500 on [Origins of Cyberspace](https://www.jnorman.com/pages/books/38301/diana-h-hook-jeremy-m-norman/origins-of-cyberspace). He asked, "Does having these things make you feel good?" After thinking about this more, I’ve realized that it simultaneously makes me feel good but also incredibly sad. I mean, I guess that’s the definition of nostalgia. I feel like everything is so ephemeral, especially regarding technology. Software from 20 years ago might not run anymore on modern computers. [Douglas Engelbart](https://blog.andrewshell.org/essays/douglas-engelbart-and-linked-data/) spent his entire life pursuing a mission that was never fully realized. He had so many ideas that people dismissed because they didn’t understand or didn’t think it would be profitable. I’m digging through old videos and documents to piece together what he was thinking, but it’s challenging. It would be better if he were still here, and I could ask him questions, show him my demos and ask for feedback. It reminds me of the movie [Coco](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2380307/) where Miguel witnesses someone dying and fading away. When he asks what happened he’s told: > He’s been forgotten. When there’s no one left in the living world who remembers you, you disappear from this world. We call it the final death. Final death is not only for people but for ideas. What dreams and visions died with Engelbart? We can try to learn from what he left behind, but it’s still a sample of what was in his head. What had he figured out but was unable to communicate to others? That’s why I try to connect with as many super-smart visionary people as I can. I want to share their vision and help make it a reality. --- --- title: "Douglas Engelbart and Linked Data" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/03/douglas-engelbart-and-linked-data/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "In this video, Douglas Engelbart answers a question about issue-based structured argumentation.\nI'm very interested in the idea of structured text. I've referenced Dorian Taylor's The Symbol Management Problem before, which is where I first learned about an IBIS (issue-based..." last_modified: "2021-03-27T11:06:13+00:00" categories: [General] --- # Douglas Engelbart and Linked Data In this video, Douglas Engelbart [answers a question](https://youtu.be/xQx-tuW9A4Q?t=2197) about issue-based structured argumentation. I’m very interested in the idea of structured text. I’ve referenced Dorian Taylor’s [The Symbol Management Problem](https://doriantaylor.com/the-symbol-management-problem) before, which is where I first learned about an [IBIS](https://privatealpha.com/ontology/ibis/1) (issue-based information system). This type of linked data, in conjunction with an outliner-wiki (like [Roam](https://roamresearch.com/)), could be interesting. Roam improves on a traditional wiki by showing a more contextual backlink. It does this by leveraging the note’s outliner structure. It also allows you to link and embed specific headlines from other outlines. Contextual Backlinks in Roam The missing piece, of course, is adding meaning to the link. Links and backlinks say nothing more than "here’s a link" and you infer meaning from whatever contextual clues you might have from the surrounding text. It would be awesome to have pages and links labeled (like in the IBIS example.) So I could (in a human and machine-readable way) say, "This is an issue, and it concerns this thing, and it questions this argument, and this argument supports and opposes these positions." You could then build systems on top of this knowledgebase to generate a chain of logic and try to find ideal solutions to problems. Dorian’s [IBIS tool](https://ibis.makethingsmakesense.com/) is useful and interesting, but imagine this idea embedded in an outliner-wiki. I could create a page of notes that I took in a class or from reading a book. Then as a phase of [progressive summarization](https://fortelabs.co/blog/series/ps/) you could label individual blocks of text as issues, arguments, and positions and formally link them to the other appropriate concepts, both within the current document but also other notes on your site. Links might be a regular link, contextual link, or embedded content from other pages. The system could generate new pages based on the known metadata. Hopefully, there would also be ways to leverage what Ward Cunningham is doing with Federated Wiki and allow you to pull other people’s content into your view seamlessly. My brain is working on this problem a lot these days. I just woke up in the middle of the night with ideas I needed to write down. --- --- title: "Personal Productivity: Through the Lens of Executive Functions" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/02/personal-productivity-through-the-lens-of-executive-functions/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "Notes\n\nBullet Journal\nTomatoTimer\nPomodoro Technique" last_modified: "2021-02-24T20:14:02+00:00" categories: [General] --- # Personal Productivity: Through the Lens of Executive Functions ## Notes - [Bullet Journal](https://bulletjournal.com/) - [TomatoTimer](https://tomato-timer.com/) - [Pomodoro Technique](https://www.pomodorotechnique.com/) --- --- title: "Async/Await for callback users" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/02/async-await-for-callback-users/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "I have a friend that writes node.js code with callbacks. There are some cases where I think using promises or async/await syntax might be advantageous. Here, I'm going to try to connect the dots.\nHere is an example of an asynchronous function that uses callbacks:\nfunction..." last_modified: "2026-03-22T15:46:40+00:00" categories: [General] custom_fields: activitypub_content_visibility: "local" activitypub_interaction_policy_quote: "anyone" iawmlf_last_processed: 1774198024 --- # Async/Await for callback users I have a friend that writes node.js code with callbacks. There are some cases where I think using promises or async/await syntax might be advantageous. Here, I’m going to try to connect the dots. Here is an example of an asynchronous function that uses callbacks: function timedMessage (message, callback) { setTimeout(function () { if (typeof message === 'string') { callback (null, message); } else { callback ('not a string'); } }, 1000) } function handleMessage (err, message) { if (err) { console.error(err); return; } console.log(message); } timedMessage ('hello', handleMessage); // hello timedMessage (false, handleMessage); // not a string We follow the standard format of a callback with the first param err and the second param the value. If the message is not a string it displays an error message, otherwise, it displays the message. This uses setTimeout to make things asynchronous. Next, we’re going to rewrite this code to use a slightly different syntax and split the callback into two functions. function timedMessage (message, resolve, reject) { setTimeout(function () { if (typeof message === 'string') { resolve (message); } else { reject ('not a string'); } }, 1000) } function handleMessage (message) { console.log(message); } function handleError (err) { console.error(err); } timedMessage ('hello', handleMessage, handleError); // hello timedMessage (false, handleMessage, handleError); // not a string We no longer need to have the if statement in handleMessage because it’s only called on success. On errors we call handleError. Now, we’ll take things one step further by replacing this callback with a Promise. This encapsulates the callbacks in an object that can be returned by our asynchronous function instead of being passed as parameters. function timedMessage (message) { return new Promise(function (resolve, reject) { setTimeout(function () { if (typeof message === 'string') { resolve (message); } else { reject ('not a string'); } }, 1000) }); } function handleMessage (message) { console.log(message); } function handleError (err) { console.error(err); } timedMessage ('hello').then (handleMessage).catch (handleError); // hello timedMessage (false).then (handleMessage).catch (handleError); // not a string One thing you can do with promises is chain promises together. If handleMessage returned a promise we could have multiple then calls, each with the next step of execution. I’m not going to overcomplicate this example with that use case, but it’s important to understand that this is desirable to avoid “callback hell” with nested callbacks. Doing this allows you to flatten the logic and break out of the flow and not continue if an error occurs. The final step will be to convert this to use async/await syntax. Because, we’re using setTimeout which requires a callback, we won’t actually rewrite timedMessage. Instead we’ll encapsulate our calls to it within an async function. function timedMessage (message) { return new Promise(function (resolve, reject) { setTimeout(function () { if (typeof message === 'string') { resolve (message); } else { reject ('not a string'); } }, 1000) }); } async function run () { try { console.log (await timedMessage ('hello')); // hello console.log (await timedMessage (false)); // throws an error } catch (err) { console.error (err); // not a string } } run(); All functions prefixed with async will return a promise. In this case, we don’t care because run doesn’t return anything. We can also prefix synchronous function calls with await (within an async function) and it doesn’t care. When you return a value from an async function it’s the same as passing that value through resolve and if you throw an error it’s the same as passing the error through reject. Here’s one more example that shows these cases: function timedMessage (message) { return new Promise(function (resolve, reject) { setTimeout(function () { if (typeof message === 'string') { resolve (message); } else { reject ('not a string'); } }, 1000) }); } function synchMessage (message) { return message; } async function run () { let message = '+'; try { message += await synchMessage ('1'); message += await timedMessage ('2'); message += await timedMessage (false); // throws an error message += await timedMessage ('3'); } catch (err) { console.error (err); // not a string } return message; } run().then (function (message) { console.log(message); // +12 }); Hopefully, this sheds some light on what’s happening under the hood with async/await and how they are related to promises and callbacks. --- --- title: "The Federated World Tesseract" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2021/01/the-federated-world-tesseract/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "The more I look at FedWiki, the more overlap I see with the work Dave has been doing with outliners and publishing. Especially with Trex and the World Outline.\n\nThe World Outline is like the World Wide Web, except instead of a web of linked pages, it's an array of outlines that..." last_modified: "2021-01-07T17:00:00+00:00" categories: [General] --- # The Federated World Tesseract The more I look at [FedWiki](http://fed.wiki/view/welcome-visitors/view/federated-wiki), the more overlap I see with the work [Dave](http://scripting.com/) has been doing with outliners and publishing. Especially with [Trex](http://docs.fargo.io/contentManagement/trex/) and the [World Outline](http://howto.worldoutline.org/). > The World Outline is like the World Wide Web, except instead of a web of linked pages, it’s an array of outlines that include other outlines. The outlines can live anywhere on the Internet. They are accessed over HTTP. [worldOutline.root](http://howto.worldoutline.org/) I released an experiment [opml.wiki](https://youtu.be/SxH2TEMGJ40) that consumes FedWiki JSON files and turns them into an OPML file. Seeing this hybrid gives me all sorts of ideas. I see these two platforms as three-dimensional representations of a [four-dimensional](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesseract) object. Add in a good helping of [the semantic web utopia](https://doriantaylor.com/the-symbol-management-problem), stir, and let it simmer. --- --- title: "Alternate Linked Data Syntax" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2020/12/alternate-linked-data-syntax/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "Following my intuition keeps leading me to fun coincidences.\nI've been following the work of Dorian Taylor, learning more about how he uses linked data. App::IBIS is interesting, but also how he's using attributes on links on his website.\nHere's an..." last_modified: "2026-03-22T15:45:32+00:00" categories: [General] custom_fields: activitypub_content_visibility: "local" activitypub_interaction_policy_quote: "anyone" iawmlf_last_processed: 1774197943 --- # Alternate Linked Data Syntax Following my intuition keeps leading me to fun coincidences. I’ve been following the work of [Dorian Taylor](https://doriantaylor.com/hello-internet), learning more about how he uses linked data. [App::IBIS](https://ibis.makethingsmakesense.com/) is interesting, but also how he’s using attributes on links on his website. Here’s an example: URIs, Resources and Representations I’ve implemented a markdown syntax so that I could assign arbitrary attributes on links. If I wanted to do something like this, that’s the way I’d have to go. If I only used rev="dct:references" it’s simpler but still ugly, and it doesn’t provide any context for someone using a web browser. Today on a Federated Wiki Zoom, there was [a demo](http://eric.dojo.fed.wiki/view/obeya) showing how [Eric Dobbs](http://eric.dojo.fed.wiki/view/eric-dobbs) labels the relations between pages using [Graphviz DOT language](https://graphviz.org/doc/info/lang.html). He uses a syntax that matches the words that start a line that link to other pages. Examples are “Includes,” “Consists of,” or “Enabled by.” I could see this used in conjunction with the work Dorian is doing. I could prefix a line “References,” and my blog engine would know to add rev="dct:references" to all the links on that line. Pulling from his [Content Inventory](https://privatealpha.com/ontology/content-inventory/1#) I could prefix links with “Mentions,” “Introduces,” or “Evokes.” I’m excited about this idea. I think the next step is to decide my use case. What types of links do I want? Do I want to have matched inverses? So any page linked with “Evokes” would automatically have a backlink that is “Evoked by.” The link prefix context is way more relevant to what I’m doing because I want it to be useful to a human, not necessarily a scraper. --- --- title: "Linked Data and the Semantic Web" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2020/12/linked-data-and-the-semantic-web/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "Knowledge Byproducts\nWhen I took Building a Second Brain, one of the concepts was "knowledge byproducts." The idea that as you're doing your work, you're creating things that could be useful later on in a different project.\nI decided that what I'd like to do is find a..." last_modified: "2020-12-10T22:49:42+00:00" categories: [General] --- # Linked Data and the Semantic Web ## Knowledge Byproducts When I took Building a Second Brain, one of the concepts was "knowledge byproducts." The idea that as you’re doing your work, you’re creating things that could be useful later on in a different project. I decided that what I’d like to do is find a way to use my website to work (and think) in public and use technology under the hood to help surface connections and themes that I might not have identified otherwise. ## Roam One tool that was popular with members of my cohort was [Roam](https://roamresearch.com/). Roam is a knowledge management system that is an outliner wiki built on a graph database. You write content on different pages, and as you write, there are conventions for tagging keywords. There are then ways to view these keywords and see what other content links to them, a concept that is common with wikis. ## Zettelkasten One method of notetaking that has become popular, especially with Roam, is the [Zettelkasten Method](https://zettelkasten.de/introduction/). Niklas Luhmann was a highly productive social scientist who collected notes on index cards. He tagged them so that individual notes linked to other notes. He kept these notes in a giant card catalog. ## My Website I was hoping to combine these ideas into the CMS underlying my website. I write all my content in an outliner, and this makes for a very fluid writing experience. Each node in the outline is part of a hierarchy and can have arbitrary attributes associated with the text. Each page of my site is built from a combination of structure and attribute metadata. I want to build in the wiki-like functionality from Roam to tag content as I’m writing it and link it to tag/topic pages. These pages can have original content (see [Progressive Summarization](https://fortelabs.co/blog/progressive-summarization-a-practical-technique-for-designing-discoverable-notes/)) as well as automatically generated backlinks. ## The Semantic Web In [The Symbol Management Problem](https://doriantaylor.com/the-symbol-management-problem) Dorian talks about using [RDFa](https://www.w3.org/TR/rdfa-core/) with [special vocabularies](https://privatealpha.com/ontology/content-inventory/1#) to represent metadata about the links between content. ## My Vision Perhaps, as I’m writing in my outline for my daily posts, I can link to subjects in a way that specifies the relationship between what I’m writing and the topic. For instance, in the IBIS demo, an object "responds to," is "supported by", or is "questioned by" a subject. This metadata can be used by the CMS when assembling backlinks on a wiki page. This way, instead of just seeing random backlinks, there is context, and the CMS can group the various contexts appropriately. Likewise, when a note references multiple topics, it can create contextual relationships between those topics. ## Next Steps Dorian has sent me some follow-up links to review. By putting my thoughts together in this post, I can share this with him, and he might have more ideas of how I can apply his concepts. The first version of my wiki linking will hopefully be live soon. Ideally, leveraging metadata to do something unique. --- --- title: "Fediverse of Federated Things" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2020/12/fediverse-of-federated-things/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "I'm pretty new to the idea of the Fediverse and Federation in general. I recently signed up for Mastodon to participate in the Podcast Index Community.\nMastodon is built on top of a protocol ActivityPub, which seems pretty straightforward.\nI recently hopped on a Zoom call with..." last_modified: "2026-03-22T15:43:26+00:00" categories: [General] custom_fields: activitypub_content_visibility: "local" activitypub_interaction_policy_quote: "anyone" iawmlf_last_processed: 1774197810 --- # Fediverse of Federated Things I’m pretty new to the idea of the [Fediverse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse) and [Federation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_(information_technology)) in general. I recently signed up for [Mastodon](https://joinmastodon.org/) to participate in the [Podcast Index Community](https://podcastindex.social/about). Mastodon is built on top of a protocol [ActivityPub](https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/), which seems pretty straightforward. I recently hopped on a Zoom call with [Ward Cunningham](https://twitter.com/WardCunningham), who has a group of people building [Federated Wiki](https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Federated_Wiki), but I haven’t dug in enough to find out what’s running under the hood. It would be cool if it were ActivityPub. I’m looking forward to learning more because Wiki has always had a place in my heart. There are also [Federated Blogs](https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Federated_Blog). I’ve been following my intuition lately. I come across something interesting and follow the thread, leading me back to where I need to be.  --- --- title: "My Growing ThinkTank Collection" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2020/11/my-growing-thinktank-collection/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "I have a bunch of saved searches on eBay looking for interesting things. One of those things is "Living Videotext". Today my latest addition, a copy of ThinkTank 128 arrived. Still need ThinkTank 512, Ready, and MORE.\n\nMy ThinkTank Collection\n\nDave Winer\nLater that..." last_modified: "2026-03-22T15:42:58+00:00" categories: [General] custom_fields: activitypub_content_visibility: "local" activitypub_interaction_policy_quote: "anyone" iawmlf_last_processed: 1774197804 --- # My Growing ThinkTank Collection I have a bunch of saved searches on eBay looking for interesting things. One of those things is “Living Videotext”. Today my latest addition, a copy of ThinkTank 128 arrived. Still need ThinkTank 512, Ready, and MORE. My ThinkTank Collection > Later that year we released our first Mac product. It was called ThinkTank 128. It was a completely new codebase, based on a new simpler data structure. I hoped to get a fresh start, with a completely memory-based product. It would be fast, and eventually support more features because the new foundation was cleaner and simpler. However this had the unfortunate side-effect that it appeared to users as if we had removed features from the product. Because ThinkTank 128, which was only available on the Mac, came after [ThinkTank for the Apple II] and [ThinkTank for the IBM PC], it was called ThinkTank and it had less features than the previous releases. —[Dave Winer](http://scripting.com/stories/2011/11/01/dontRemoveFeaturesFromProd.html#p10685) --- --- title: "Developing Better Developers" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2020/11/developing-better-developers/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "Just read Developing better developers it sounds like a great idea. I think a similar idea could also be bootstrapped outside of universities. Something that combines an open-source project with a meetup group. Senior devs can teach and work with the junior devs for the benefit..." last_modified: "2020-11-02T16:32:45+00:00" categories: [General] --- # Developing Better Developers Just read [Developing better developers](http://this.how/phoenix/index.opml) it sounds like a great idea. I think a similar idea could also be bootstrapped outside of universities. Something that combines an open-source project with a meetup group. Senior devs can teach and work with the junior devs for the benefit of the project. I was involved with starting something like this with the [Pivot Libre](https://pivot-libre.github.io/) project. A friend who was very into politics and had been an alderman in the past had an idea to create an open-source project for [ranked pair elections](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_pairs). It was good. We had a bunch of people, some technical, many not. We all got together and even though I left the project because I didn’t have the time to commit, it’s still going. It sounds like it’s even been used in a [few smaller elections](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XxqrV9O7UivxjeU9vuDPCiByyB0rPA1ByO2iPeaf4ts/edit?usp=sharing). --- --- title: "Philosophy in re RSS 2.0" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2020/11/philosophy-in-re-rss-20/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "This morning I read Philosophy in re RSS 2.0\nMy favorite quote was from Sean Gallagher "I mean, here we are, a country on the edge of being dragged into a war by some whack-job Texan with the IQ of a Post-It Note (TM), and people are badgering each other over RDF?"\nI..." last_modified: "2020-11-02T16:02:25+00:00" categories: [General] --- # Philosophy in re RSS 2.0 This morning I read [Philosophy in re RSS 2.0](http://essaysfromexodus.scripting.com/stories/storyReader$1744) My favorite quote was from Sean Gallagher "I mean, here we are, a country on the edge of being dragged into a war by some whack-job Texan with the IQ of a Post-It Note (TM), and people are badgering each other over RDF?" I know enough about RSS history and other standards wars that it’s not surprising, however I don’t understand what’s going on in peoples heads. If people are already using something, don’t break them! It seems very obvious and simple. It’s like Apple dropping 32-bit support from Catalina. Why? Apple is sitting on a mountain of cash. They can’t hire a few developers to make sure 32-bit apps keep running? --- --- title: "How Frontier got started" url: "https://andrewshell.org/2020/10/how-frontier-got-started/" lang: "en-US" type: "post" description: "Interesting timing. I've been talking to Dave lately about nodeEditor and how things worked in Frontier. Then I opened Instapaper today and was scanning through pages I had bookmarked to read later and came across a How Frontier got started which had an attached podcast that was..." last_modified: "2020-10-31T01:31:08+00:00" categories: [General] --- # How Frontier got started Interesting timing. I’ve been talking to Dave lately about nodeEditor and how things worked in Frontier. Then I opened Instapaper today and was scanning through pages I had bookmarked to read later and came across a [How Frontier got started](http://this.how/frontier/howFrontierGotStarted.opml) which had an attached podcast that was super interesting. I knew a little bit of this, but I had no idea how deeply integrated everything is in Frontier. Very cool. It’s also interesting because when I bookmarked this I had no idea what [this.how](http://this.how/) was and now I run my own version of it. ---