GHDR 0606 Appendix: Timeline of GHDR Evolution

⊕ show captionThis timeline plots the development of key terms used in GHDR from 2006 to 2026. Available as higher resolution PDF for printing.

In the early days, I thought it was just a matter of following the freshest productivity tropes—this was during the heady days when Getting Things Done sparked an explosion of transformative ideas before “social media” even was a thing—and just executing to completion. What could go wrong?

It didn’t go as planned. I continually hit what I called The Execution GapSee the April 4 2026 GHDR report for my most recent lamentations on this topic., that horrible tendency for all my plans to grind to a halt because I simply couldn’t force myself to do certain things. I had many plausible theories why this was, adapted my work practices, and experienced momentary gains. But still, the execution itself remained expensive and demoralizing despite the dozens of mitigating stratagems I came up with.

Over time, enough of these theories have accrued that deeper patterns have emerged. I think

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The 8-Year Mapping Cycle

Another interesting pattern is how every eight years, I feel the need to draw a new map that allows me to visualize where I am in my career. Each time, the map getting a little more complicated and take longer. It’s arguable that I’m still working on the 2025 one and it’s halfway through 2026 at the time of this writing!

FIRST MAPPING (2009)

The first conceptual portrays me as a nomad with a bunch of skills, ready to cross the desert of the unknown to reach distant goals on the horizon. Includes pitfalls to avoid.

Source: World Domination 101.03 - Master Vantage Point

SECOND MAPPING (2017)

An update of the 2009 mapping, noting what still seemed valid and what no longer captured my attention. The new territory “Dave Land” identifies what still seemed like a good idea.

A secondary diagram outlined what I knew about myself, which served as a reference point along with diagrams like 2011’s Seah Model Four/3 Process Maintenance Guide

Source: Resolutions Review #05: Filling in the Boxes

THIRD MAPPING (2025)

A significant reframing of the map from “what I want to do” to “what naturally drives me”. This incorporates neurodivergent insights and gender identity transition concepts that I started to process in 2018. Instead of starting from the outside, I started from inside myself.

Source: Making a Career Map

PRESENT DAY (JUNE 2026)

In 2026, the third mapping started to transform into a specific shape. Instead of a map as in the first and second mappings, this took the form of a vessel that moved, carrying me and possibly a crew.

Source: Reframing Chores as Ship Operations and Setting Sail!

Blogging Phase 1 2005 to 2014

This period of time is marked by the development of unique processes that were suited to the way I thought. The year I started blogging coincided with when I start freelancing; I wanted an alternative to a cookie-cutter web presence. I started on Wordpress 1.0 and just blogged like no one was watching, figuring I would post digital interactive samples of my work. That never happened.

Foundational ideas established in this period are:

• Creative Independence - The idea that the good life would be making things I liked and selling enough of them to keep doing that.
• Investigative Design - The way I spun myself as a designer who saw patterns rather than one that focused on aesthetics.
• The Scientific Creative Method - Describes how I apply both rational thought and artistic sensibilities to my work.
• The Tribe - Described the ideal people I wanted to work with: positive-minded, self-empowered, conscientious, competent, curious, generous, and kind.
• ELBS - Identified that Exploring, Learning, Building, and Sharing is the natural iterative cycle I employ in production.

All of these foundational ideas were an attempt to identify what made me different than other practitioners of interactive design. They were how I seemed to naturally approach things, and I wasn’t seeing a lot of reflection in the greater design/development community. This made if difficult to identify myself to others, which I thought was the big disadvantage.

Blogging Phase 2 2014 to 2019

Until 2014, I was primarily working as a designer that blogged a lot about my productivity processes, personal development. I had developed a reputation for creating quality productivity tools. That started to change when I started doing Javascript development for a series of National Science Foundation grants.

2014 was well past the time when Flash Actionscript, the cross-platform interactive authoring environment I had mastered, started to decline. I started developing what amounted to simulation software that could run in a web browser using networked iPads and laptops in a classroom environment. This was cool because it drew on my prior experience in game development, and I was eager to develop a replacement for Flash.

This is also around the time when blogging was seriously being eroded by social media like Facebook. Independent blogs lost readership as they shifted to the aggregators. My plans to develop a line of physical stationery products fell by the wayside as the demands of Javascript development caused me to focus more on solving technical problems due to the immaturity of the tooling. I had to shift full-time to learning and developing on the fly practically as a solo developer, and this drained me dry.

The are only two foundational concepts from this period, both of them born from the realization that I craved real interaction with my peers. As a solo developer working on system-level software instead of interaction design for humans, this craving made me realize that it was actually a fundamental need I had not previously identified.

• Creative Interdependence - This reframes creative independence as interdependence; that is, for me to be at my best creatively I need to be interacting with other engaged people. The solo development work really drove this home.
• DS|CAFE - This is a virtual coworking space for followed from the blog and Patreon, implemented as a Discord server. It was created to gather other people to engage with, providing some relief from the solo development grind.

Despite the challenge of Javascript development, this was a relatively mild time as far as stress was concerned. Things would become more challenging in the next phase.

Blogging Phase 3 2020 to 2025

After 15 years of Groundhog Day Resolutions, I felt it was time to see how well I did without all the heavy-weight tracking I’d been doing. That was 2020, the year of “No Groundhog Day Resolutions” to see what stuck. That was also the year of the COVID pandemic. Because DS|CAFE existed, though, I was able to weather the isolation fairly well!

What’s more notable about this time period is the huge number of personal insights that came from my official diagnosis as having ADHD, Autism Level 1, and General Anxiety Disorder. I also questions who I really was underneath all the social conditioning due to my ongoing gender transition exploration.

In hindsight, it not surprising that the overall theme for new concepts centered around belonging.

• Construct Theory - Describes facets of my personality as simpler characters. Similar to the concept of the 2015 Pixar film Inside Out but drawn from live online role playing in the MMORPG WildStar; by inhabiting the construct, I can easily simulate how they would react to a given situation in their own voice.
• The Colony - Describes a place where people like The Tribe can come together and create a sustainable culture of economic growth and cooperation.
• The Meadow - Counterpart to The Colony, this is a place modeled on a bit from Berkely Breathed’s 1980s comic Bloom County combined with the idea that All the Animals are Friends. It is a place of psychological safety where friendships can flourish in the face of adversity.
• The Envoy - A construct that serves as the diplomatic interface between The Colony and the rest of the world, representing our culture as a positive feature to share.
• Narrative Design - The idea that storytelling and stories helps people understand how things can work. Extremely useful for conveying personal and cultural values in familiar contexts. Also useful for reframing boring work as something more interesting, similar to gamification but less shallow.
• Cat and Girl Narrative - A story about three friends Sri the Cat, a girl named Ellie, and their friend Tobes who want to start a town where they set up shop and try to build an interesting life together. Essentially a telling of all the animals are friends using construct theory as characters.
• Sri-kin - The kind of people who share my interest in architecting The Colony and The Meadow. They are architects, builders, and community developers making a place with other contributors also enjoy. Not all members of The Tribe are Sri-kin, but they all would find the places they build to be comfortable and welcoming.
• Magical Adventure Cat - A construct that combines my specific neurodivergent cognitive traits into a more adorable package, serving as a shorthand reference that models my needs and proclivities with surprising accuracy.
• Lumensera Narrative - The setting of a world where a version of The Colony and The Meadow are part of a synergistic whole.
• 90S Commmunication - Describes sentiment-first conversation, a way for myself as a neurodivergent person to understand differences in communication style compared to so-called “neurotypical people”.
• Theory of Friendship - Describes the way I understand friendship as the slow building of trust over time and through repetition. I believe this is the foundation for the kind of communities I want to belong to.

Blogging Phase 4 2026 Inversion

Starting in April 2026, I started to incorporate all of the above concepts into a new concept that might serve me moving forward. These are documented in the June 6, 2026 Groundhog Day Report.

« back to 2026 June 6 Groundhog Day Report