Every weekday, I wake up, go to work, and try to create order from the chaos of the gigantic organization that I work in. I clarify what the vision of the project is, refine stories, write documentation, review code, write some of my own code, and go to meetings.
Oh, the meetings.
But it works — ideas become tasks, tasks become software, and that software is (slowly but surely) adding business value. I'm often told that my drive to refine and follow a process is why people like to worth with me, and I attribute that drive to a lot of my professional success. I do this 40-60 hours a week. With some exceptions from when I worked in research, I've been doing it for almost 8 years. It works for me.
But then I come home, and I'm hungry, and I'm tired. There's dishes in the sink and clothes in the laundry pile. I need a shower, I need to pack lunch for tomorrow, I need to get ready for bed. My intuition is to stick to the process. Catalog everything, plan ahead, estimate the work, and then execute.
I think what I've realized this year is that I can't do it. That a lot of my past failures have been taking what works at work and trying to apply it to myself. I'm not the same person at home. My home is not my office. I don't have employees, colleagues, and managers after 5 PM, I've got friends and family. I need to organize and coordinate tasks at work so that my team can collaborate effectively. For my wife's request that I hang up some artwork around the house, a simple checkbox will suffice.
My process isn't my identity. My goal isn't to complete tasks. I'm not a robot.
Embracing Chaos
So why am I talking about this? Look back even a few articles, and I'm talking about giant spreadsheets and a better process. I'd automated my reminders, sized all my work for the year, and was pretty confident that my capacity was in line with my goals. I still think that's true — I'm not here to throw out my goals.
I'm here to talk about why I threw away my spreadsheet.
"How is this helping me?" — I distinctly remember thinking this in late February, sitting in front of my computer screen. I used to manage with a pen, some paper, and a meticulous calendar. That's how I got through all 7 years of college, and it's how I got through the first 2-3 years of work. But this was pretty, and it was efficient. It was also monolithic, complex, and frankly, just not very fun to work with. It made my decisions for me, with no empathy for how I was feeling, or what I wanted to work on. I'd turned my hobbies into a job.
I archived the spreadsheet the next day, downloaded Obsidian, and started dumping my notes and tasks into daily Markdown files. I typed as I thought, with no regard for structure outside the fact that each file was today's file, and I could do whatever I wanted with it.
It felt chaotic, and I almost abandoned it, but I decided to give it a few more days. I downloaded a few plugins, organized my folder structure, and threw Taskido on top of it. I purposefully avoided YouTube videos advocating for crazy 30-50 plugin builds. I only made an improvement if I hit a pain point.
Then I got Obsidian Sync, and I could pour notes in from anywhere — my PC, my tablet during reading sessions, or even my phone while I was on the go. If I had a thought I wanted to keep, it went in there. If I had a task, I typed out the gist of it, and only gave it a due date if it made sense.
That's what I've been doing for the last three months.
It's been great for all the reasons I've turned down similar solutions in the past. I don't have to orchestrate everything in one place — I dump it in a file and it gets organized into a dashboard for me. I don't have to have a complete idea, I make a new file and put what I have. I can analyze the chaos from the graph view, and make links retroactively if I need to. It's a process that feels more like throwing paint on a canvas and refining it as I go. It's art instead of science, and because all I do all day is "science", my brain craves the change of pace when I get home.
In the same way that my drive for a process leads to success at work, this new, chaotic flow is working for me at home. I don't mean that I'm getting more done. I need more time with this change, to figure out what I can query from my data and what I can't. But I know every day I have a list of tasks I want to get done, and I finish them if I can, or I move them if I can't. I don't lose track of things, I don't get overwhelmed. If I forget something, I can search for it in multiple ways. I'm happier, which is what matters.
The list is no longer almighty, it's just my north star.
The Content Diet
I finished my lengthy web design course this month, despite it losing value as it got into the Figma weeds, but completing it still added value in terms of understanding design concepts. Now I can focus completely on studying for my AWS exam, which I'm targeting for late Q4 or very early Q1 (before my current certification lapses).
I read two books for fun in January: Defiant and The Sunlit Man. Then I got completely absorbed in the end of my Street Kid run of Cyberpunk 2077, and immediately (I mean, one hour later) followed that up with the beginning of a 100% completion Corpo run. Where Baldur's Gate III was my game of the year for 2023, I think the rest of the games I'll play this year have some tough competition in Cyberpunk.
After that I got some surprise news from some of my favorite modders, and have briefly returned to Skyrim to try out their latest work. But I'm also being called back to Elder Scrolls Online and Final Fantasy XIV, so I don't know how long that will last.
I got hit with the reading bug again in April, but opted to peck at my non-fantasy reading list instead. I finished Meditations, Engineering Management for the Rest of Us, and Accelerate in between then and now, and I recommend them all. It's also very satisfying to have my notes all in one place and linked together — which has kicked off a Herculean effort to pour all of my past notes (both professional and D&D related) into Obsidian.
The Crafting Corner
I have quite a few lagging house and hobby projects, but make no mistake, things are very busy in the Gilliam house! It's just that some things are seasonal, like planting a garden, or have more bang for their buck, like tidying up the space where my friends come to hang out on the weekends.
I think my next big project will be setting up my workshop, as not having one is a blocker to starting anything new. Paradoxically, that also includes setting up my workshop...
Wrapping Up
From here, I guess there's not much else to say. I'm going to keep going, throwing my paint at the wall and refining it as I go. I'm going to automate the drudgery, but make sure I still get to be human — I get to make decisions, communicate, solve problems.
I hope all is well with you and yours, and I'll see you in the next one.