Sunday, February 4, 2024.
It's Day 3 of my "12 days of Groundhog Day Resolutions bootstrapping", and I think a good next step is to make a more flexible version of this design from yesterday:
While it's a perfectly fine diagram, I think it would be better to have this in Affinity Designer so I can reuse the parts to make mashups over the coming days. Also, in the process of redrawing it, I will also be thinking about what the pieces of The Colony I need to build. It's a two-for-one activity that shouldn't take too long. I'm guessing 5-10 minutes for the basics, longer if some cool idea comes to mind?
10:05 START ... 11:15 END
This took longer than expected because I'm not that familiar with Affinity Designer, which I'm going to try to use exclusively this year over Adobe Illustrator. But here's the result!
If you're following along with me this year, print the PDF for your reference.
It's not terribly fancy, but it's a start. I did learn that the "textframe" feature in Affinity Designer that I'm using to make blocks of text does not support padding and background colors the way Adobe Illustrator does; it's available only in Affinity Publisher (similar to the Adobe InDesign desktop publishing app). Rather than fake the effect as in the original Whimsical diagram, I decided to leave them as plain text for now.
What's Next?
I'm going to make a custom page template in my PKMS (i.e. this site) that will mirror the structure of today's diagram. I was originally thinking of making this document store in Google Drive, but then I remembered that it's cumbersome to use MarkdownMarkdown is by far my preferred text-based document format! formatted docs there. Technically I guess this new section will be added to the Expeditions where there is already a tag for The Colony, but it might deserve it's own section with its own menu navigation...
But that's a problem for Future Sri, not lazy Sleepytime Sri! Seeya tomorrow!
INDEX of GHDR 2024 POSTS
This year's single goal is Building The Colony!
Made a simple "functional area" diagram using Whimsical to help gather my thoughts.
I converted the Whimsical doc from yesterday to Affinity Designer.
Created new subsite at /the-colony/
Wrote stream-of-consciousness "vision statement" for later cleanup
Convert stream-of-consciousness into a "phrase cloud" for further deconstruction
Artifacts of The Colony: Pebbles, Seeds, and Rings
Created a "refined phrase cloud" grouped into five categories, based on boot 05's work.
Extracted "foundational" statements from yesterday, but they didn't leave a strong impression. Punt "why" to tomorrow's post.
Created a "Selfishly Sri" printable assessment to gauge outside interest.
Reducing scope from Colony to Outpost.
Desired results are distilled down to two main ideas, which will cover the next couple of months.
A slow start to the year, as I focused on paying work for most of the month. Set four directives to achieve this mont
The set of analysis notes that I authored with ChatGPT4 to refine my understanding of "prosocial motivation"
New goal is to start connecting with future chatty collaborators, as my brain runs on "prosocial motivation" and meaningful human connections.
Delving further into my "predominantly-prosocially motivated" profile (PPMP), and how to turn this into action given the dilemma of "needing the energy from a group to start a task" being at odds with "needing to start a group so I have energy".
The task of "talking to someone in-person about PPMP-based community" didn't happen. Happily, I had several empowering insights along the lines of wealth, doing what is good, and accepting myself that I think will help with that.
A new approach to "reduce uncertainty" instead of "pushing through" tasks, I take the time to define the mission and audiences more carefully.
Change of emphasis to All The Animals Are Friends as the anchoring concept for communicating my ideas!
Recognizing the seemingly-impossible task of doing tasks that no one else is looking at with me, I recast writing as the primary goal. Without the camaraderie of connection, I just am unable to motivate.
August sucked. I had no energy or drive. Perhaps I need to prioritize my own communications and work needs for once.
September was really low-energy and sluggish again. Rather than worry about sustainable systematic productivity, I should just admit that I'm lonely and let productivity handle itself?
The depression of September faded as I visited family in California. I theorize 6 "rules for surviving loneliness".
An unexpectedly productive month as I applied several of the "rules for surviving loneliness". My outlook for 2025 for personal productivity feels positive.