My Week #158 - Chessy, again(?)
The concept of my focus on chess is constantly growing in my mind...
π Mar 2, 2025β³ 1 minutes
What can we achieve being limited to 4 hours a week? How far can we go with out live, our career, our business? Can we actually achieve anything spending not more than 4 hours a week? Let's try to find this out π€!
The concept of my focus on chess is constantly growing in my mind...
The effect of my holidays was better than I initially expected - I really relaxed. I caught a lot of sun, ate lots of a great food, visited many great places and let my brain chillout.
I love the sun and the warmth, especially in the middle of the winter, especially in the middle of the coldest period of the winter! For the majority of my adult life, I lived with the complex of the lack of the ability to go skiing. I never had the opportunity to try that and with each next year, I was more and more ashamed of it...
Winter holidays are coming!
Doing things optimally was my way of living for years.
For years I worked and tried to work efficiently...
It really can sound like a coincidence, but few days after completing the apartment project I ... got sick. You know, it's not that I get sick every now and then. The last time I was sick was still in 2023. Interesting story, right?
I can finally announce that I completed my first project since the start of this blog! It took me nearly 3 years to complete the first one, but I am still proud of it. I attempted to start many before, but there always was a reason that made me abort the project. This is the first one I pushed to the successful completion. Should I make a retrospective on that project? This is actually a good idea!
Let's try to plan this year...
Let's try to predict what the future brings...
It's Christmas time so I had to use the opportunity to look back a year ago. Usually what I am used to is reading or listening to people proud of what they have achieved in the past year - the idea for that is to feel proud but also to prove and motivate others that lots can be done within a year.
I recently changed my job and became just the next `id` in the corpo world.
My apartment finishing is on the last straight...
I am starting a new, kinda risky journey next week...
I visited my cardiologist this week to discuss my current state of the arrhythmia after the increased amount of pills. I was hoping to see a good result giving me hope and the green light for running. I saw no progress at all which made me pretty sad. I'd like to return to my running regime and I have a green light for that due to the fact that my arrhythmia lowers when being active, but still, my internal reasonable voice declines my plans related to the marathon to happen next autumn.
It is pretty difficult for me to summarize this week. It wasn't the most exciting and breaking week of my life. It was not relaxing, it was not covered with stress and other emotions. Just a week to forget. Yes, I made some progress in terms of the apartment finishing. I did physical activities on a nearly daily basis. We had a nice time with family and friends. However, if I had to summarize this week with one word I would use ordinary.
Finally, I had a week where I felt much less stressed. I finished my previous project and, while waiting for the new one, I could focus on self-dev - getting familiar with some AI tools supporting daily development. To my surprise, after 3 days I already noticed that I feel much less stressed about my work. There was no deadline, there was no comparison to other devs, and there was no finishing stuff after hours. It's surprising how quickly I started feeling better. I am unsure if this will impact my Holter-ECG tests I ran this week but I hope it will!
I had a great week when it comes to physical training and the progress in the flat finishing. It's Sunday afternoon, I should chillout and finally relax, but a part of me is frustrated as today I was unlucky with the next small item in the appartment.
I start to notice the subtle change - with the more intense physical daily training and some small successes in live and work my level of confidence rises. I become braver, I stop being under-confident and taking care of what I say and what is said to me.
I had a very intense time in work related with the project crunch. Amount of work and time related to deliver it was amazing. Of course, this impacted my level of stress and my progress with the appartment finishing - the levels of stresss rised while the amount of work was reduced.
Every day, we experience dozens of situations that could dramatically change our livesβfor good or for bad. The probability of each situation is low or ridiculously low, but it's non-zero. You can break your leg while going down the stairs, you can be hit by a car when crossing the street, you can meet someone you love buying a break in your local bakery, or you can find the inspiration for the product that will skyrocket your business.
Yet another year older, yet another year closer to the other side. To be fair, the way you live somehow impacts the expected life duration, but definitely, this year was not the one to extend it. Constant work with house renovations, stress at work and with family issues, arrhythmia, and high levels of cholesterol - life ain't easy, right?
What I know for sure is that I have arrhythmia. I suspect that this is caused by the constant higher level of stress applied to my life for the last several months. If my assumption is right, the best way to fix my arrhythmia, other than taking pills is to reduce the amount of stress, right? So, what can I do to reduce the amount of stress?
Let me mention just a couple of facts from this week...
We have a floor! Can it be a dancefloor? Sure it can! Can it be the sleepfloor? Sure it can as well!
Yet another tiring week. Yet another super tiring week. Yet another super tiring and frustrating week.
I am a little bit concerned...
I am a lonely wolf. This is out of discussion, this is how I feel, this is how I am. When doing anything, literally anything in a team, there are two options - you are a leader or you have a leader. I don't feel great in both cases.
So, a week ago I mentioned that I need to focus more on physical activities...
I love and hate the complexity and variety of the holiday time this year. I am pretty sure I have never spent that much time driving a car and moving from place to place although we do not have any road trips - we are simply traveling back and forth. The funny fact is that one bike trip made my ass hurt more than days of traveling in the car π
Finally we are again on holiday.
The apartment's finishing is speeding up...
What a week it was. We finally started the finishing of our investment flat, finally to be called Golden Glass Apartment.
Pretty recently I wrote about a work-life integration as the concept I disagree with.
We nailed it! We basically designed the whole flat within a weekend!
La dolce vita, a popular Italian phrase describing a style of life, is in practice pretty similar to the Ikigai concept - focus on now, enjoy what life brings to you & stay positive.
According to the plan, nothing happened this week.
Summer holidays are right around the corner! What a crazy and tiring time it was in the last weeks, but it's over. I can finally announce that I have started the 10-day out-of-work break, the longest one in the last three years!
In July we start the flat renovation.
Last week was extremely exhausting, starting from the additional amount of daily family duties, through a lot of overtime work, ending with a super intense weekend with a great concert and a trip to the countryside. According to the plan, I kept positive for most of the week, maybe except for a few more difficult moments. I practiced a lot despite too warm temperatures, I performed a great additional presentation in work in the form of knowledge sharing.
Not according to the plan, but nothing happened this week.
I am not an alcoholic (hopefully). However, I am aware of the bad impact of alcohol on the daily operation of the brain. This is why I would like to drastically limit the amount of this liquid I absorb ideally to zero. For the past couple of weeks, I tried to survive 10 days without a bit of alcohol and it seems impossible. On the one hand, I can't believe it, on the other - this is part of the circles I live in.
WWDC week is a very special week of the year...
This week I finally received the keys to my investment flat. This week also put me in doubt about the best way to move forward. The first road is to sell the flat for a higher price if there is someone interested in buying it. The second road is to renovate and rent it for a long-term (a typical load duration is a year). The third road is to renovate it and rent it for a short term.
Next week has passed by and I am on the one hand rather relaxed, however, on the other hand, I don't believe I made any progress at all. Sure, I spent a lot of time working & enjoying time with my family, I spent a lot of time on stuff related to my new flat and reading a book "The Courage to be Disliked".
What a great ending to the last week it was. What a shock therapy I experienced this week when, during the periodic medical check I was sent to the hospital due to the very bad ECG chart - I had the irregular additional beats of the heart.
One day I woke myself up in the middle of the night with the idea for the mobile app I could create that could let me gain some experience in new technologies I need to learn and does not require a heavy design.
I love great stories, I adore amazing comebacks. After a really tough week, my frustration reached its peak on Saturday morning when I caught myself staring at the laptop without any progress in the dev library I was working on on the first comfortable morning this week.
Not according to the plan, but nothing happened this week.
I started preparing myself to run the first marathon. The fact is that my whole week's training plan was even more ambitious, but still, I am happy to admit that I feel great. I run faster and longer than before, I am able to maintain a good speed without losing my breath. It is still 20 weeks before the challenge so I believe I started my preparations early enough.
One of my business goals is to build a bit of a constant passive income stream. This is why I decided to buy an investment flat as a long-term investment with the plan to get some income from renting it. However, the recent stream of events made me wonder if that ain't the right moment to actually sell it.
FOS vs FOMO β the battle that should never take place
I like this new formula for reaching any remarkable life goal...
According to the plan, nothing happened this week.
Whoa, what an intensive week it was! What an exhausting one. Lots, really lots of work with home renovation has been completed.
Not according to the plan, but nothing happened this week.
I am writing a book! Well, not yet exactly, but I will write a book someday.
I have my new obsession! I am starting a new project...
Wake up at 5 am so you have the bonus time to focus on your obsessions and personal progress and at the same time sleep enough so your body regenerates well. Do you notice the conflict between those two?
According to the plan, nothing happened this week.
I am currently listening to `Can't Hurt Me` by David Goggins. What a book it is! What a story! What a man!
According to the plan, nothing happened this week.
Hmm, can a good week be a bad one at the same time?
According to the plan, nothing happened this week.
I created my new CV...
I finally had the opportunity to visit my new flat...
I believe I already convinced myself that I am ready to move on and change my base workplace. Although working in a great work environment, doing amazing projects and earning a pretty decent amount of money there is a couple of topics that make me strongly consider my options.
So I became an influencer.
Exactly 7 days ago I remember telling to my wife that the next week would be a hard one with many difficult topics in the daily work and the additional life projects related to the house renovation and the family support.
According to the plan, nothing happened this week.
Nature is waking up. Spring is in the air, birds are singing, and leaves are appearing. My mind finally gets clear and focuses on important challenges in the forthcoming time.
According to the plan, but nothing happened this week.
Let me try to summarize my recent approach, shall I?
Not according to the plan, but nothing happened this week.
Last week I decided to participate in the two meetings with people I barely know or don't know at all.
Diving deeper into the Rust language made me finally meet my first problems
This was a very special week.
As planned, I spent some time this week trying out `rust` programming learning.
The forthcoming year is the year when I need to make a significant shift in my career.
Exactly six weeks ago, in the summary of Week 97 I listed a couple of ideas for my self-dev in 2024...
We traveled to Rome. We walked over 75km through the streets of the Eternal City. We could name our visit a pretty full Rome experience - with guided tours, the full taste of Roman cuisine, and the sun beautifully shining over our longing heads. It was amazing to feel the sense of the ancient city with all the ancient buildings, walls, columns & churches. You can feel the history nearly around each corner.
According to the plan nothing happened this week.
The first holidays of 2024 are starting tomorrow.
Not according to the plan, but nothing happened this week.
Looking back two years back I would find myself much more stressed and frustrated. It's not that something great or unexpected happened during the last 100 weeks. I feel that my mindset started a conversion towards gratefulness, acceptance of reality, finding happiness in daily life, and courage to do things I put on hold for years or decades.
One hundred weeks later I am more or less at the beginning of my business life. That's two years already!
It was the most freezing week of the whole winter so far with the temperatures reaching -20 degrees during nights. It was my most active week of the whole winter so far with two running sessions, one visit to the swimming pool, and a couple of physical activity sets. I was also a week of the real mindset switch. I finally had a great run in chess, I finished reading one book and I started the initiative of evening family reading.
Not according to the plan, but nothing happened this week.
It's been about a year since visiting our local swimming pool. I have no idea how it is possible that we failed to visit our swimming pool for such a long time but this is a fact. Finally, having more or less a free Sunday we packed our family into the car and spent 2 hours swimming & relaxing.
Not according to the plan, but nothing happened this week.
Let's try to predict what the future brings...
I do not have any clear business plans for next year other than the clearest of them all - to start selling the outcome of the Strings project. That's my primary business goal and it's above everything. However, I'd like to focus on self-dev too. I defined a couple of areas of my focus...
It's Christmas time so I had to use the opportunity to look back a year ago. Usually what I am used to is reading or listening to people proud of what they have achieved in the past year - the idea for that is to feel proud but also to prove and motivate others that lots can be done within a year.
Planning next year in my case is not a simple task.
I am generally a healthy person. In the last couple of years I have had a new tradition of catching a virus once a year around Christmas period.
According to the plan, nothing happened this week.
F1 is on winter break. I lost the access to FC Barcelona matches. I completed the investment flat purchase saga. When I am thinking of a hobby I could spend more time on I'm thinking about chess.
It's a weird feeling when you complete the work but the final effect is not as good as you'd expect it to be. I've completed the next great feature in the app but, to my surprise, it exposes the lack of perfection of the product as a whole.
The weather can be one of the unexpected factors when planning anything.
We often tend to forget that something pretty easy to our minds may not be that obvious if we try to describe steps to do something.
Let me start with the follow-up on the topics from the last week.
Not according to the plan, but nothing happened this week.
Finally, after months of discussions and doubts, and looking for an ideal offer I decided to buy a new flat and signed the deal...
According to the plan, nothing happened this week.
Sometimes you prepare for the very special one week for a couple of months and, when it happens, things happen so dynamically that you simply do not have enough time & focus to celebrate.
I like watching Formula 1. One of the principal concepts of the qualifying session, the one that determines the order on the grid during race start, is the way drivers manage tire condition and energy. They typically alternate one push lap and one cool-down lap. This means on one hand, that many laps are the preparation ones, but when it comes to fighting for the best result they are well prepared.
The time for thinking is up, this is a time to decide. I've completed the loan of my flat this week and I am selling it this Monday. This also means I'm finally capable of buying something or paying off my mortgage.
I decided to stop the second iteration of sewing after 1750 lines...
There is a very popular internet meme with a dog sitting on a chair...
I'm sewing again. This time I decided to pick a very general picture of the butterfly to focus on gathering more feelings and calibration data comparing the outcome of the generated image to the real one.
Some amount of cash and 4 options to choose from...
I've done it!
Sunday afternoon. It was a busy but productive week at work. We had many topics to learn with children, a couple of smaller fixes and changes in the flat, and two longer evening drinking meetings.
The good news is that finally this week I finished all the changes I planned after the initial tests of Beta...
I'm forty. I take a daily bunch of pills, I visit the psychotherapist, I have my favorite shopping market, I have my routines, (finally) I have my voice and sometimes also the opinions, and, somehow I feel the age. I don't feel as young as I was even 2-3 years ago. Something has changed. Maybe it's the medical state of my organism, maybe some kind of tiredness, maybe it's my middle-aged crisis, but I feel different. I was superstressed days before the anniversary, but now I feel a bit more relaxed but still, different compared to before.
Not according to the plan, but nothing happened this week.
I was afraid of this half-marathon...
Not according to the plan, but nothing happened this week.
Days pass by, and weeks do the same, simply slightly slower. Sometimes it's very difficult to hold on for a while to actually celebrate and be grateful for all the things that happen around.
Another round of progressing towards beta of the Strings project ended with mediocre success.
They say that age makes you more aware of your emotions due to life experience and a general increase in wisdom. I can partially agree with that...
It went smoother than I expected.
Life-changing decisions need to be periodically taken. Sure, they can be spontaneous or reasonable and well-thought, but the real problem is that they always are based on the past and the present, not the future, impacting not the past and the present, but the future.
Not according to the plan, but nothing happened this week.
We signed it! It took several years of discussions and considerations, receiving the opposite messages and considering our options. It took months of serious discussions and collecting documents. It took an hour to sign one of the most important documents of our life - our aunt gave her house to us and we agreed to take care of her once she will be old and will need it.
Not according to the plan, but nothing happened this week.
The worst thing about living an organized life is that you have too much time to think which generates conclusions and actions that may lead to both simplification and complication, depending on luck, quality of decisions, ability to foresee the future, or random number generator, whatever fits best.
Not according to the plan, but nothing happened this week.
This was a crazy week mostly focused on the real estate market and decisions to be made. I've already summarized my thoughts on buying a flat for the office in the summary of...
Not according to the plan, but nothing happened this week.
Yet another Sunday, yet another summary time, and, to my surprise, I'm a bit stressed/frustrated since the early morning. My initial thought is the fact that once I checked my plan for the current week I realized that due to very active holiday time, I did not complete anything.
Maybe not according to the initial optimistic plan, but nothing happened this week.
I hate injuries. They happen in the least expected moment. You spend weeks or months training, growing muscles, and moving personal boundaries and suddenly you need to stop and take a few steps back.
Finally, I was able to return to my secret project Dots, which in fact should be renamed to my secret project Strings. I received new, updated frames from my teammate and that was a kinda motivational boost to start fixing issues after the first version of the algorithm was released.
It's natural for most of us to hope to live forever, or at least as long as possible. We dream of reaching the magical age of 100 years, and we celebrate amazing records of people living even longer, looking for the secrets of a long life that only few possess, but everyone else would love to have.
According to the plan nothing happened this week.
In an ideal world, you sleep for 8 hours, you work for 8 hours and you live for 8 hours. That seems to be pretty fair, right? You give yourself enough time to recharge the batteries, to use those batteries to live an interesting life, and to earn some bucks to spend on that.
Five weeks to go and no progress at all...
For a couple of days, we had a visitor in our flat - a 10-year-old cousin of my children. One thing that stroke me when we ate together was the fact of how slow she eats. It was absurdly slow compared to my family. Sure, she is known as the one that eats very little, but I realized that the speed of eating may have a significant impact on how much we eat and how it impacts our health & physical appearance.
So the first summer week is over and I could not agree that it was a productive one.
Will I enter the biggest project of my life? Will I define my future place to stay for a longer period? It looks like after years of thinking, discussing & wondering we are about to become the owners of the house in the countryside.
It was a kinda cooling-down week when nothing particularly special happened. I was in the countryside enjoying nature and working rather physically after hours.
I've finished the investment course. Based on this I updated my financial plan and already started executing the first steps...
Since the beginning of this blog I've focused already on several bigger projects...
Lazy Sunday, lazy, Sunday, lazy Sunday!
We've already had several iterations of HMI (Human Machine Interface). Just to mention a few most important ones - physical buttons on machines, keyboard & mouse for PCs, and touch & multi-touch gestures for smartphones. For a couple of years, it sounded like the next iteration will be the voice control, but it looks like the challenges with natural language and privacy impacted heavily on the low adoption of audio assistants.
After super stressful and exhausting weeks of work, I finally started the 7-day holiday on Tuesday. In the past, I already introduced the concept of the I-need-holidays factor to measure the level of tiredness. It is represented by the number describing the number of days needed to fully relax and enjoy the holidays.
It was a pure holiday week. Sure, I planned to use this time also to watch some WWDC sessions to get inspired or at least get familiar with the new stuff. Sounded like a good plan, right? Well, not exactly. As typically on holidays, plenty of time meant no time at all. But hey, that's the holidays, right?
There are good habits, there are bad habits. The secret of progress is to build good habits and to destroy bad habits. As simple as that, right?
WWDC23 is over. The race has officially started. The next 3 months is the time when many of us, developers will look for ideas to use new frameworks, new features, and new devices in a unique way to have a chance to get exposed in Autumn, when the new iOS/ watchOS, tvOS, macOS are released, alongside the iPhone, iPad, π watch, Mac, etc. Not to mention the newly introduced new π Vision Pro with visionOS and a new spatial approach to the design.
Last week I wrote about getting bored. The funny thing is that this week I participated in the `plSwift` conference and one of the talks was related to messing around and the side effects of it - surprisingly good side projects.
Last week focused on two main topics from the business side of my life - the future of the secret project Strings and purchasing of the office flat.
There is so much happening around that there is actually nothing specific to write about. The daily routine worked great this week with a bunch of good training, everyday long walks, lots of new knowledge accomplished, and a set of chess pieces of training. On top of that, we're finishing a bunch of side projects related to various areas which are also pretty time-consuming.
It was the first time I was a participant in the flat auction. What's not surprising, due to the clean nature of the flat and attractive initial price there were plenty of investors willing to purchase it. We went prepared setting the initial and the emotional borders upfront.
Daily physical training. Daily lessons of investment course. Daily chess training and matches...
The business side of life is moving forward in 3 directions recently - preparing an investment in the office flat, solving issues with the payment provider in our online shop, and considering purchasing an investment flat.
Let me tell you the story of me - the investor to be. For many years now I am somehow aware of the fact that I should not expect a high pension when I finally am retired. After paying attention to the fundamental needs of a nice living space and fair quality of life it's time to think about investing the surplus for the retirement time.
We launched our shop at the end of the last week and focused on the promotion of products. The interest in our products was not as huge as we expected based on our previous tests with Facebook selling. The only good thing about it is the fact that it suddenly occurred that our payment method was suspended by the payment operator due to a lack of some formal info on our website and we were not notified about it for nearly 24!
I just realized how my general motivation is correlated with meeting the right people. Some people have a very good impact on my mood before, during, and after the meeting while others have the opposite impact.
Exactly 7 weeks ago I mentioned a plan for Week 57 to release the first version of the online shop to sell online materials for English teachers. Fast forward to week 63 and I can finally announce that the first version of the online shop is live!
I'm back baby! The power is back, the motivation is back, the movement is back, and alcohol is also back π«’ but the overall effect of the week is super exciting.
Not according to the plan, but nothing happened this week.
Some things you do in your life are quick & simple or not challenging enough to look for extra motivation.
So, by the end of last week, we had a plan of steps that are required to start selling our digital products to English teachers. This week we precisely executed each step...
There are so many motivational books, speeches and courses nowadays. And they all contain some guidelines to be happy, to achieve success, to become better every day, to live a great life, etc. Sure, there are many ways to reach the same destination as well as there are many different destinations to reach.
Another weak, the next website was published.
Two weeks after the medical treatment I already feel much better and stronger and more confident when performing simpler daily activities like push-ups or plank.
It was meant to be that simple, right? As it occurred, nothing is simple.
I'm still during the medical pause. The wounds are healing but it was difficult for me to sit or stand for a longer period at least in the first part of the week. That also meant that I had much more time to think simply lying in the bed. I believe I spent that time efficiently, not only watching some Netflix or HBO but also thinking about the future.
It's that simple. You need to choose one of two options, you're unsure which one is the best, you take a step back and find the third alternative.
I forced myself to pause. Sure, it did not happen on purpose, but accidentally; still, due to injury I had a medical treatment this week. On the one hand, it solves the issue, and on the other introduces a big pause in my daily activities. I feel that I've recently shaped a great form and this pause will make things complicated. I am already afraid of gaining weight and losing some muscles and stamina. What is worse I am afraid and not having a way to flush my daily stresses and frustration, especially when running.
Usually, things do not go exactly according to the plan. It especially happens if you're not deep into the specific topic and you only have some kind of imagination or a view of the complexity of the task. This time we had the opportunity to experience this issue when setting up our online store.
One of my goals for March was to survive another strike of 2 weeks in a row without alcohol. I think that even writing it in the form of `surviving` exposes the scale of the issue. There are many opportunities in your life to have a glass of wine or a drink - Friday evening chill-out while watching some movie, meeting with friends, visiting family you haven't seen for a while, clubbing with work buddies, celebrating personal successes, birthdays, namesdays, anniversaries, etc.
As mentioned in a couple of recent posts, I have a tough time with my side hustle business spending too much time on daily duties. However, this was a perfect opportunity for my wife to have more space for her experiments as usually she is my first software tester from both QA & user points of view.
Finally, after tough weeks of catching form after the end-of-the-year crisis I recently had an idea to check if I am still able to run 10km.
As foreseen recently, this week was nothing special compared to the last one. Good progress, lots of hard work...
At some point this week I felt like a well-programmed robot of a well-functioning machine. I'd say that I am in a pretty good physical form (one of the best, tbh). Although working hard during weekdays and the weekend, I still find time daily to learn and practice some chess and some other activities. That makes me feel both great and scared.
A week when there is nothing worth mentioning. I'm working hard with my daily fundamental stuff, maybe slightly clarifying different alternative paths of future investments/projects, but still on a very general level.
This life week was rather focused on weekly goals, which is good, right?
I just bought a new monitor. It's LG 27GN880-B - 27" 4K monitor with a 144Hz refresh rate. I planned to purchase a new monitor for months. I've used for a year or so very similar model (the only important difference is the refresh rate of 60Hz) but had to return it when leaving my previous job and in the meantime, I worked on a retro 24" FullHD monitor I have temporarily loaned. I gave myself some time to check if I actually need to purchase a new monitor (the previous model was not the cheapest one) and to check if there is anything alternative.
The first year of this project has passed by. The first anniversary makes me wonder if this was a good year. If the project I started a year ago actually changed my life? I defining goals for year, month, and week makes it easier to achieve them?
Somewhere deep in my heart, I want to be a writer. This is my kinda dream since I was 19 and I was preparing myself for final exams. The thing is that I always felt too incompetent to start writing. Although, according to my family & friends, my vocabulary and language and the way I write prove that I am a good writer I've always felt the barrier. 21 years later I still feel barrier. It's stupid, but for me writing something is like setting in stone the opinion and my desire to write perfect things makes it sooo difficult to define a perfect and fulfilling final opinion I would be proud of.
From the live point of view, this was actually a kinda boring week.
A set of phone calls, a bunch of mail discussions, and a couple of discussions over coffee and it all ends in the lack of transaction (for now). We considered buying some flats both from a developer as totally new ones and from the previous owners in buildings from around 1980. We failed to negotiate a single good deal.
What if life was a game of chess? Initially, it seems like it would be much easier...
We are considering buying a small flat in the neighborhood for office purposes...
The problem with weekly summaries is that you try to summarize the whole week and each of the 168 hours of it in one moment based on your current mood and point of view. That of course is far from the average during the week, but well, it is what it is, right?
According to the plan nothing happened this week.
So, I finally started being more active this week and this was not an easy task. It occurred quickly how bad is my form after having flu recently. My condition is tragic, according to the Health app I'm in the worst form since June 2019 π«’
I finally finished the first phase of my secret project `Dots`, btw. recently renamed to `Strings`. So the first phase of my secret project `Strings` is finally over and the other part of our project team can now focus on their part.
So, I finally started being more active this week and this was not an easy task. It occurred quickly how bad is my form after having flu recently. My condition is tragic, according to the Health app I'm in the worst form since June 2019 π«’
It was a good week. It was such a good week, that I believe I bet my previous record and spent more than 3 times longer than I should spend on projects every week.
Sometimes, once you look back to the week that has just passed by you realize that the week was much better than you would expect it to be. Great, unexpected progress is always welcome, especially after a series of tough weeks. I am happy that this is related to a New Year - this is always a nice boost to New Year's resolutions.
Finally, I am back on the track! The long-lasting break is over, my brain is already operating on the expected level of focus and I made it this week - the second iteration of the algorithm for secret project Dots is done. It works better & faster! πͺ
Let's try to predict what the future brings...
According to the plan nothing happened this week.
It's Christmas time so I had to use the opportunity to look back a year ago. Usually what I am used to is reading or listening to people proud of what they have achieved in the past year - the idea for that is to feel proud but also to prove and motivate others that lots can be done within a year.
According to the plan nothing happened this week.
Winter has arrived in Poland. The first days of winter are extremely difficult due to both drivers and roads being unprepared for the winter to come. Freezing rain, roads not covered with salt or sand, summer tires on some cars - that's the reality we all have to face in the first days of real snowy winter.
According to the plan nothing happened this week.
Winter has arrived in Poland. The first days of winter are extremely difficult due to both drivers and roads being unprepared for the winter to come. Freezing rain, roads not covered with salt or sand, summer tires on some cars - that's the reality we all have to face in the first days of real snowy winter.
We came to the weird case when nothing special can be written here...
Recently I heard some advice that although making a list of goals is the first step towards reaching them...
The big breakthrough happened in the Dots project this week, thanks to one right question that was asked, and the answer was delivered. I was the one to ask the question, Google was the one to deliver the answer.
Short days and long evenings encourage you to spend more time at home rather than outside, eg. reading books.
These weeks are probably the toughest since the beginning of the project...
The current time is crazy. November also does not help to recharge, this is why it's tough sometimes to keep the energy at the appropriate level. Of course, the one way is to fall asleep and wake up around March, but that's the easy way.
The last weeks are very theoretical for me. I'd say that they are even too theoretical which sometimes is pretty exhausting, even for a person like me, an uncontrolled learner.
I guess most of us that watch any sports events or some commercials in the western world are familiar with one Heineken campaign - Drink responsibly. Although this combination of words does not sound perfect to me - the whole campaign is very important and needed nowadays. I have no idea if it has any measurable impact in practice but let me believe it has.
As planned, the beginning of the week started with finishing adding goal levels and spending some time drafting a precise idea for UI & UI of the new goal list.
Last week I wrote about lack of focus that can slow me down. On the other side, this week I am writing about impatience that can also slow me down.
That was a good week with lots of fundaments around new goal structure and levels. The crucial change in new approach is the fact that each goal may have levels of different kind that should smoothly work together. This is why it requires new model structure, new validations, new ways to access data and finally display it.
The reason for `4hour.me` project is to make a progress in my life. One of my observations during weeks of this project is the need to focus and constant struggling with distractions that slow me down.
As mentioned recently, a new approach to `Better` app was the only option to move on. This is why this week was so crucial cause I finally drew first sketches of new `add-goal` flow and started implementing it.
It's been four years actually since my butt hurt me last time from working too much in sitting position. Four long years of work, mostly from home, still in changing positions - sitting, standing, moving around, with back hurting after standing too much but never with butt pain.
The title of this post in not the accidental - as mentioned before, I focused recently on implementing value goals - second type of goals to be handled by the app. However, as I also recently mentioned, I was wrong for the whole time...
Procrastination is very popular explanation for lack of progress. It's sooo easy to get disturbed when the big chunk of work is looking at you waiting to see how you try to tackle it. Oh, it's a pure fun for the chunk to see you fail even to start a task.
It's actually difficult to choose best path to develop upfront. This is why refactor is a phase so popular in software development. You need to accept the fact that it's nearly impossible to produce perfect software from scratch - usually it means having several iterations changing approaches, fixing validation with design patterns or updating naming to be most accurate and so on.
Being alive can have so many meanings. For me, actually it means that after positive heart tests I returned to running. It also means that after couple of difficult work days I joined a project that seems to be super tailored to my best & current knowledge and it lets me instantly develop with the speed like I was in a project for at least some weeks.
Major plan for this week was to start implementing value goals as next feature of the app. However, just before diving deep into the topic I decided to go through my list of goals to simply check what's my structure of goals. And then the lightning just struck me...
Last week was really intense with lots of things happening around my health (two Holter 24h measurement sessions) and my sons wrestling career (3 visits to doctors before he was granted to become professional sportsman). All the preparations had deadlines on the weekend - I was participating half-marathon on Sunday while my son was participating wrestling tournament on Saturday.
This was a week that was designed to become a start of second app milestone - value goals.
For years I am used to think about myself as the healthy one. I try to live active live, I am on a pretty good diet, I limit sugar & alcohol, I've never smoked, I sleep like 8h a day. And then, suddenly, organism says that something is wrong...
Well, I did nothing actually other than testing / using current app version on daily basis. Life organized my time that way that it was kinda difficult to spend a minute working on app.
Consistency, persistence and patience - the big three needed to reach goals. But, here comes the counter three - creativity, responsibility and helpfulness - and they don't like the big three. They want to be the three to rule me all.
Well, I did nothing actually other than testing / using current app version on daily basis. Life organized my time that way that it was kinda difficult to spend a minute working on app.
Have you ever tried to measure how good your work-life balance is?
The whole blog is all about `reaching goals`...
When it comes to visual part, I'm always concerned. On the one hand I feel that I can distinct `not-a-bad` from `not-good` designs. On the other hand, my design skills are comparable to my singing. Trust me, you would not like to hear me singing π±
I'm currently on holidays so this ain't gonna be typical post describing the progress towards building great dev company of one. Holidays gave me no space for working progress, but also gave some space for thinking and doing some cleanups. One of the things that needed cleaning up was ~50 cards in my mobile Safari browser kept `for later`. This list of course grew for months.
In crazy 2022 year I actually wanted to spend at least 2 weeks on holidays with my family. Usually it means going for a longer trip during holiday season. As this year is different we decided to split our holidays into set of smaller trips to different parts of Poland. Last episode of out holiday time was about to happen by the end of summary and actually happened this week.
So, I was born and lived for first 23 years of my life in Cracov, Poland. They say that we are very traditional people. We are so traditional, that if something happens twice in a row we call it a tradition. For second week in a row we have very small celebration - this time related with finishing first milestone of `Consider it done` app. How could I did not admit that it slowly becomes a tradition to celebrate something? π
I'm actually surprised. What is more, my level of surprise rises every week. What I'm surprised with is the fact that I'm still in the game. I'm still developing the app I planned to develop. I started developing, I had several difficult weeks but I'm still progressing. This week is the week when I can celebrate finishing a first milestone - `daily goal functionality`.
Today we have very small celebration - it's been a half of the year since I'm writing my weekly summaries πππ This is actually a good opportunity to repeat once more that stubborn pursuit of the goal is actually the best way to achieve it. It may not be the fastest and most efficient way, it may require lots of time, energy and patience but it gives the highest probability of reaching goals.
The last 10-15-20% of something is most difficult to reach. It's one of the variants of Pareto principle - the one principle to rule them all. Right now I am observing it with finishing first milestone of the app - daily goal. For last couple of weeks it seems like next week will be the last one before moving on to next type of goal. But it always ends with realizing that something still is missing and requires adding - editing goal, displaying calendar, fixing calendar, fixing calendar again, and again, and again, deleting goal, updating progress bars of goal, updating date switching and so on and so on.
The best definition of very active time is the one when you write weekly summary on... next Wednesday π Weeks like this happen - they are crazy, costing you lots of time & energy, however, retrospectively they are potentially the best thing that can happen to anyone. You know, craziness will end, you'll recharge batteries sooner or later but what's in memories stays in memories forever.
Finally detail view became understandable for my beloved Tester which is actually a great sign. You know, there are two levels of understanding when developing something. First level of understanding is the one in which developer understands what he created. Second level of understanding is the one in which someone being bit outside understands what you wanted to show. Finally, after couple of iterations we reached a level in which detail screen becomes understandable the outside world which is a great thing!
I feel that I'm kinda sorry for people that tend to have polymathic character but not enough talent & focus to become expect in being a polymath. You know, it's nothing wrong in being an expert in several areas, it's actually amazing thing. Problem starts when you want to be the expert in several areas but, for several reasons, you fail to become one. I am actually writing this from position of someone who has an eagerness to become polymath but fails to progress far enough so I really can feel how frustrating it can be.
Pause - Stuck - Pause. This three-week series did not sound too optimistic for the future, but finally I was able to move on this week. A task that made me freeze for some weeks was implementation of calendar view presenting completed days in a monthly view. Initially I decided not to implement it from scratch but to integrate a library that looks like matching my needs
You could call this week a total failure.
Well, I did nothing actually other than testing / using current app version on daily basis. Life organized my time that way that it was kinda difficult to spend a minute working on app.
You are at the edge of your forties and you still feel that you mostly live not you life but adopt your life to someone else's life. Do you think this is your problem, problem of the other person or simply toxic relationship? To be honest, as it stands for today I believe that any kind of toxic relationship is mostly cause by ourselves cause we allow for this situation to happen and to last.
Weeks are different - sometimes they give you more time & opportunities to push with your project, sometimes it's the opposite. What is important is to have good flow even if you have very little time - it's so much easier to move on when you are not stuck. The worst thing that can happen is to become stuck with task. The starting point is so high that you don't even try if you feel that your time and energy is limited.
Actually the best moment to go on holidays is the one when you say that you don't have time for holidays. Lack of time sits inside your brain, keeps you stressed and tired. There might be couple of medicines for that but probably the best one is taking a break and having holidays, even if short ones.
It's actually interesting that pauses happen every 7th week. There is nothing planned here, just a pure coincidence. Or, maybe it is not a coincidence?
Ain't it that simple? When you have plenty of time you have wider perspective, sometimes focus on things you just like or wanna do, not the things that are the key ones. But, in the other scenario when you are actively seeking for a bit of time to make any progress you start focusing on essentials - cause they actually matter most.
Can you feel a bit unsatisfied even if you worked as long as you planed and actually did some progress on detail screen and also fixed some bugs across the app? Well, sure you can, if you overexpect.
Each decision has the feature, which might not be visible at first, but usually becomes visible once we feel remorseful some time later.
Only one hour of week time actually spent on project development is not a perfect way to push the project down the line. But, like it pretty often happens, it's all in the details. Life is not only about one project - it's actually an asynchronous race of multiple threads fighting for resources and the app project is just one of the threads - important one for sure, but not the only one. So it is what it is - detail screen is still under development, but a little progress was still made.
Actually, I like learning. It may sound weird but I like to know a lot, even if just on the basic level. Still I feel that every topic has multiple layers, like an onion. You start with scratching the surface, but under it the complexity rises up to the very detail level. Some people spend whole live diving deeply into one topic, some people prefer just scratching the surface of many of them.
So, this was a very educational week. I dived bit deeper into async/await way of threading in iOS and it actually not only took my breath away but also took significant part of time left for coding. Still, detail screen is under construction, it's already part of app flow. What it's lacking is presentation of data - levels, progress and completed days / strikes. This will be the subject of next week.
A big boy should find a balance between little boy' dreams and reality. Sometimes I feel that every week planing is not so optimistic and it shall be actually possible to reach most of, if not all the goals.
It actually took me six days before I figured out how to approach the logic related with levels completion popups. Luckily a week consists of seven days, that is why the last one was the productive one.
I am kinda workaholic. There is nothing to be proud of, although I feel that for some people being a workaholic is being someone better than alcoholic, constant smoker or drug addict. Spending too much time in work, no matter how you define it is also a problem. It's not even about taking overtime in your work, but expecting something more from yourself even after work. If week has 168 hours and you work only 40 hours a week it means that you could do something extra during remaining 128 hours. So much time - so much pressure.
Swift Charts for me was the shining star of The WWDC 22 week. Surprisingly, for this week I also planned adding little chart to the app presenting in the list progress in completing goal levels. As the app is for now developed based on SwiftUI in version for iOS15, I did not have the opportunity to test Swift Charts, but I believe I'll use it slightly later. Thanks to modularity of the code it shall be super easy to replace current chart rendering with SwiftUI code.
Playing Blitz in chess is pretty exausting - you actually need to stay super focused through the whole game, otherwise it's super easy to make a mistake which usually means loosing a game. This week was perfect example of my attempts to play chess without preparing perfect environment for that - without any disturptions, with head free of other problems and considerations. Other that daily practices I tried several games and lost like 80% of them π± It sounds like my next checkpoint will be super difficult to achieve without serious practice.
Creating goals without defining levels you wanna achieve is like participating in race without a finish line. Goal levels are checkpoints clearly showing you if you actually progress. There is no simpler and better way to monitor your progress.
Well, I did nothing actually other than testing / using current app version on daily basis. Life organized my time that way that it was kinda difficult to spend a minute working on app.
It seems a bit unproffesional to plan accomplishing one thing and doing nothing about it and at the same time successfully finishing something else, that was totally not planned. But hey, that's the life, right?
So, the initial plan for this week was kinda different - I wanted to focus on adding goal levels to track progress. However, after some days of testing local notifications I found a bug that could cause duplicated notifications or missing ones depending on moment user launched the app. This is why I started this week trying to fix the bug and also add some unit tests covering logic of selecting time for this notification.
Finally first bit of holidays this year! We spend 3,5 great days in mountains if Beskid ΕlΔ ski in the south of Poland. Weather was perfectly balanced to give us some time for montain walks when the sun was shining and wind not blowing and all the fun related to swimming pool when the weather was the other way round . This of course had to impact some other plans for this week as 3/7 days were of but well, I see no reason to regret! π₯³
I like flying with my little DJI Mini 2 drone. It's perfect device for so called `Sunday pilot` - easy to steer, very stable but on the other hand very light. Still, all my time spend in the dronnie topic is related with things I really enjoy (flying), things I accept (preparing some clips for to present to my family) and things I stress about (preparing & publishing my creations). As one of my goals I wanted to become a person known from publishing dronnies. The thing is that is tightly coupled with the topic I hate most - publishing. The question is - shall this be my goal? Is this actually my goal? Or, maybe I just wanted it to become my goal while somewhere deep in my heart/soul/mind I don't feel it that way?
When thinking about development, sooner or later you start thinking about automation of some tasks, processes, tests etc to simply save time when doing the same set of tasks from time to time. And, when you think about automation in world of iOS development, you need to think about Fastlane. This is the one tool to handle app automation in the way you would expect from tool like this in 2k22 - dependencies management, certification, building, testing, distribution - just to mention key areas you can automate using Fastlane.
You set your goal, you plan to do something about it, but you fail in first week, then you fail in second week, and it happens for several weeks in a row. At some moment you actually have three options: change something in your approach, accept that this might not be something you actually care or continue hitting a wall with your head. As the last option seems absurdal you have very limited options.
Once we started gathering data the next step was to introduce series calculator checking best & current series of successes for each of daily goals. Actually it took me some time to find an approach that makes sense but it looks like approach I finally took looks like working πͺ I finally decided to recalculate goal progresses once per a change and store them for quick future accesses to limit unnecessary recalculations. By storing data I mean storing in device memory and also in local memory cache for quick access during runtime.
When building list of goals I decided to use Combine to produce stream of data updates and to reload UI only when it's actually needed.
Every week is different - what a clichΓ©! But hey, what if this is actually true? π€
I tried to meditate in past. I actually had 2 or 3 approaches but sooner or later it always ended one day when I had no time or focus or both and never continued working on habit. That is why I decided to do it differently now and combine active micro meditiations with physical activity like running, walking or swimming. And, actually it's not what I decided - I simply noticed that my brain does it on it's own when doing activity. Once I realised that it made medications much simpler - my main task is to start physical activity and just let it go.
Inversion of control desing pattern is a programming principle increasing modularity of the software. Introducing dependency injections gives us a chance to quickly replace implementations, if needed, without a hassle and without changing anything in main program code.
Sometimes I feel that we live in times, when things that were difficult before became simple, while, at the same time things that were simple in past are difficult right now.
Real work on the project has started this week, finally.
Well, I did nothing actually other than noting some further ideas on the app functionality. Life organized my time that way that it was kinda difficult to spend a minute working on app.
One of my goals is to improve my chess skills. I knew the rules since I was a child, but never went deeper into the topic. I'm ashamed to admit that, but a trigger to get into the chess again was watching `Queen's Gambit`. So I watched and started playing - offline with my wife and children, but also online on www.chess.com. I also found it relaxing to watch chess educational videos on youtube during home excercises.
I was actually wondering what could I write here in the summary of this week up to the moment when within 3 hours I caused 4 drone accidents which is somewhat interesting cause for the whole last year I made exactly one of this kind in first minute of my flying.
The power of background processing always amazes me. Even when doing lots of other things brain is able to think in backgrounds about tasks that need solving.
168 hours of the week runs away definitelly too quicky. Not sure why it's not.. let's say at least 200 hours. Maybe with additional 32 hours meeting progress expectations would be easier. Well, it is as it is and it's ok, cause summary shows pretty soso week!
So it has finally started - creation of new app is on the way! Of course, not to become too optimistic I shall mention that the whole progress related to the app meant spending 30 minutes drawing basic designs, but it's already something and it looks nice. I already feel enthusiastic about it and eager to start coding.
How to summarize a week when biggest tasks planned for this week were not even started but, on the other hand, there were some successes in other areas? A good, soso, or still bad?
It was meant to be a good week, when after initial preparations we can move on to final developing something. A week has passed by and the only thing that was created is... this summary, created in 6 short minutes.
This week could be concluded with very important lesson - lack of good plan can lead to lack of progress. Summary of last week missed one important step of adding tasks to accomplish for this week to general week plan. As expected, it ended as it should end - week passed by without huge success.
Project finally has a tooling to measure actual execution of the project. During this week I focused on finishing first demo of the simple iOS app counting time spent on project.
To develop project limited in terms of time to be spent during a week we need a proper tooling. This week was about to create this tooling.
If we consider a week as a bunch of moments we will quickly notice that each moment is different - lots of them just pass by silently, some introduce difficulties we need to solve on daily matter while some of them are perfect to push us further.
Summary of first week of life 4h blog.
If you want to register your journey, first of all you need a notebook. Is there a better notebook than a blog?