The Zen of Yak Shaving - Journal for October 28, 2020
Oct. 28, 2020
I’m making progress. It’s great.
Or, it’s good.
Or, better said, it’s steady and that’s good.
I’m working on several projects. That’s nothing new. That happened before the meds. The difference: I’m completing them. I used to bounce from idea to idea so much that I’d rarely get things done. I hardly start. I’d spend intense time thinking about them, see their pattern, then move to the next thing.
I’m still jumping around, but it’s different. First, there’s less of it. Second, I’m able to keep everything in my head and move back and forth and wrap things up. I’m also bouncing around to avoid duplicating work. My current project list is:
- Build a YouTube sync tool
- Generate a collection of videos with the tracks from YouTube’s Copyright free audio library
- Create a bot that auto-posts images from NASA’s API
Turns out, they work as a stack. In addition to the image posting, I’ll use the NASA API to download videos that will go into the videos for the audio library. I’ll then use those videos to help with the sync project since I’ll be able to work with them on stream without fear of a copyright strike.
It’s a confluence of projects.
I’m also taking care of annoyances. For example, I’m streaming these projects. When I start a stream, I don’t want any browser tabs open. They’d be a distraction. I had been going through all my open tabs, closing the ones I could and saving the rest into pinboard bookmarks. That process was tedious and time consuming. So, I built a process that throws them all into a stash, closes them, and then restores them when I’m ready. From a pure time perspective it’ll take a year to recoup the investment. But, there’s more to it than time. There’s the tedium and the speed it affords me starting a stream. When I’m ready to go, I want to go live as quickly as possible.
Sure, it is yak shaving, but it’s a zen version. Gliding through water. I dip down for a bit then come back up. I’m fine with the label. But, I prefer to think of it like that apocryphal Honest Abe quote: “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
2020
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