2021 August. Mistakes and Tradoffs.
I had some time off at the beginning of the month. I can't even remember that. It has been such a long month for some reason, but I also feel like the summer was so short this year. Let's hope for a nice September.
Books I'm reading #
Books I've read #
I was reading early access (version V2).
It's still a work in progress, but what's lacking the most is editing, cleanups, and maybe some charts.
I especially liked the last chapters 7 about date/time data and 13, "Keeping up to date with trends vs cost of maintenance of your code," but I liked most of them other than the one about Kafka, which I don't use in practice.
I would recommend waiting for the V3 or the final revision if you want to give it a try.
Updates #
Keystone Habits.
After playing with the idea for a while, I've added a disclaimer that I'm going back to the Atomic Habits approach.
Planning for the worst days is fine, but the "effortful" part hindered me in practice.
Elsewhere on the Web #
How we improved our sprints when we stopped estimating stories
I wasn't aware at all there is a movement around not estimating work. I've found this story from Runtastic to be a great introduction to the whole idea and a good case study of when it can work for you.
Goals #
Hundreds of Ways to Get S#!+ Done—and We Still Don't.
It wasn't long before the two founders noticed something odd in the (anonymized) data they had on their users: People were lousy at finishing their to-dos. Chen and Guzman could see an accumulation of sprawling, ambitious lists of tasks that users utterly failed to accomplish. In 2014, fully 41 percent of to-do items on IDoneThis were never … done.
This story feels like someone was looking at my to-do list and exposed all my postponed tasks to the whole internet.
I heard multiple times that adding tasks should be quick and easy to make sure you add them. But, should it be that quick and easy? Doing them in practice won't be quick and easy for sure. It may also be that I rarely have time to go over my to-do list to prune the tasks that I can't do. But I don't think that would help a lot. That's just another thing you need to remember about doing.
Let me say that it's a great read, and if you're into productivity and self-improvement, then it's a must-read for you.
The importance trap
Are there any downsides to the famous "Eisenhower matrix"? Nicely connects to the first story.
Tech #
Modern web apps without JavaScript bundling or transpiling
But more importantly for our overall argument is that if you no longer need bundling for performance, you can get rid of the bundler entirely! Simply serve each module directly, as their own file, directly to the browser.
Can you see where we're getting to? No need for transpiling to write the kind of JavaScript that makes you smile, no need for bundling to package all your modules. Taken together: No need for any JavaScript toolchain to turn your source code into anything else. An entire class of complexity stands at the precipice.
🎉
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