It’s 2025! Last quarter I began a new habit of doing a quarterly refection. I did the first one at the start of October 2024. You can read it here: Q3 2024 quarterly reflection
In my last quarterly reflection I noted that whilst I had made good progress with my goal of becoming an expert in data and information visualization, I didn’t have much to show for it publicly. I said that in the coming quarter I wanted to:
Create and share visuals in code.
Create presentations on Information Visualization topics.
Create an innovative information visualization.
Make and share hand-drawn images and diagrams.
To those ends I said I would do two new things:
Make sure I use my commute time wisely by drawing on my commute.
Plan on what I’m going to do during my non-client work days by creating “week notes” where I record what I did in the last week and plan the next one.
So how did I do on those goals? Let’s look at what I actually did.
The single most important productivity change I have ever made
I think I did the most important thing I have ever done for my productivity, and it wasn’t even on the list of things I wanted to do.
I have had a website that I have actively updated since about the start of 2023 I think. It is based on the Quarto publishing system, and I was updating it using the programmer editor VS Code. The big change I made last quarter was to move the editing from VS Code to Bear App. Now this simple change of what editor I am using shouldn’t be a big deal, but actually it has made a huge difference. Bear is so much nicer to work with. It didn’t feel natural to write in a programming editor, it just wasn’t a good experience. Bear is a beautiful, simple app and writing in it is a joy. To add a new page to my website I now create a new note in Bear app, then run a python script and my website is automatically updated. Quick and simple with no little annoyances.
Making this change wasn’t a small thing. It took me some weeks. I had to create python scripts (with the help of ChatGPT) to convert the Bear content to the type of content that Quarto works with. I did a lot of experimenting . But now I’ve done all that it has made updating my site easy, which means that I add to it more, which means I am sharing more, and overall feels like I’m being much more productive than I used to be. So just with this one thing, I can count Q4 2024 as being a big success. But there is more…
I am writing an essay about my process for that which is almost finished.
Drawing
One of the things I wanted to do was to get back into the habit of drawing on my commute into Barcelona, and I am now doing that regularly. I did some things I’d never done before:
I deleted all the generative AI images I had been using on the website, and replaced them with hand drawn ones, like these:
I spent quite a lot of time trying to develop a semi-automated process for doing research. The basic idea is that I create an initial list of web pages associated with a topic I am interested in, and then use AI to create a page of summaries of those web pages, and some kind of overall summary related to my research question. I didn’t finish this. I don’t think it’s time wasted because, well sometimes you have to try something and fail to make progress. I will use what I have learnt to make other processes. The general approach — of using generative AI to create lots of short scripts, each of which solves a little bit of a larger problem — is a good one I think. It worked really well as the mechanism I use to generate this website.
You can read more about this abandoned project here:
An unexpected benefit of having a website that is easy to update is that I started to write book reviews of every book I read. This is something I’ve been meaning to do for years, so it’s great that I’m actually doing it now. Since I made the change to my website I have written these reviews during Q4 2024:
And I’ve written two more already in this quarter. I hope I can keep this up, it’s a really good development.
My personalized exercise tracker
I do exercises three mornings a week when I’m in the office. I was keeping a record of my progress in a spreadsheet, but I decided it would be better to have my own little app to do this.
A CSV file with the exercise data automatically gets updated each time I update my website, so this graph should be showing the latest version of the data. (If you’re wondering why 15 of December is currently the last date show, it is because I only started back at work last week and I had a cold all week. It’s still not quite gone. So quite a big break for the holidays, but that’s ok. The automatically updated graph is cool right?
Show the code
// Load the CSV filed3.csv("/data/daily_exercise.csv", d3.autoType).then(data => {// Transform data to calculate the average for each exercise and dateconst averagedData = d3.rollup( data.flatMap(d => [ { Date: d.Date,Exercise: d.Exercise,Value: d.Rep1,Notes: d.Notes }, { Date: d.Date,Exercise: d.Exercise,Value: d.Rep2,Notes: d.Notes }, { Date: d.Date,Exercise: d.Exercise,Value: d.Rep3,Notes: d.Notes }, ]), v => ({meanValue: d3.mean(v, d => d.Value),notes: v[0].Notes// Assume the same note applies to all points on the same date for an exercise }), d => d.Date,// Group by date d => d.Exercise// Further group by exercise );// Convert the nested rollup data back into a flat arrayconst plotData =Array.from(averagedData, ([Date, exercises]) =>Array.from(exercises, ([Exercise, { meanValue, notes }]) => ({Date, Exercise,Value: meanValue,Notes: notes })) ).flat();// Create the plotreturn Plot.plot({marks: [ Plot.line( plotData, {x:"Date",y:"Value",stroke:"Exercise",// Different line for each exercisetitle: d =>`${d.Exercise}: ${d.Value.toFixed(2)}`,// Tooltip with average value } ), Plot.dot(plotData, { x:"Date",y:"Value",stroke:"Exercise" }), Plot.text( plotData.filter(d => d.Notes),// Filter points that have notes {x:"Date",y:"Value",text:"Notes",// Display the note textdy:-10,// Offset the text slightly above the pointfill:"black",// Text color } ), ],x: {label:"Date",tickFormat:"%Y-%m-%d", },y: {label:"Average Repetitions",grid:true, },color: {scheme:"category10",// Use a color scheme for exerciseslegend:true, },height:400,width:785,style: {background:"none",// Transparent background } });});
Week notes became month notes
My original intention to write notes every week to focus myself and plan the week ahead was well intentioned, but I’m not sure if I’ll ever actually do it. The times when it would seem best to do it don’t work for me — Monday mornings I tend to focus on client work, and Friday afternoons are most productive if I focus on something I enjoy doing.
Having said that, attempting to do this caused me to develop another habit, and it’s another one I’ve been meaning to do for years but never managed to do. Now every month I create a single new note for that month, and I just put random things in it. Ideas (I have lots of them), interesting quotes, things I need to do, whatever. I don’t try to sort them out, I just add new things to the end of the note. I have tried for years to consistently take notes but part of the problem has been that I have tried to keep them organized. Doing it this way — with no organization — means I don’t need to think about that when making the note. I can tackle the organization part all in one go every month or couple of months or when I get round to it. Then I have a lot of stuff to sort out, and I can see how things fit together, what should do with what, and organizing them is easier. So this is also a good new development that I am going to try to keep up.
Goals for this quarter
Having a good process for maintaining my website has been such a massive productivity boost it makes me wonder if there is something else of that nature I can do which will give me another big boost. I think this could be it:
A process for creating short spoken video content
One thing I experimented with a lot last year is creating video. Being able to easily and quickly create little talking-head video pieces I can include in other content would be a really good thing to be able to do. I’ve already done a lot of the prep work to be able to do this. I just need to make the final step of incorporating it into my processes and making it a habit. Video is a great format (apparently it’s Gen Z’s fave) and being able to present well is a really good skill to have, so creating short videos to go with my content would be really worthwhile. I can imagine creating a short video with these quarterly reports. Perhaps one of my aims this quarter should be to get to a point where by the end of the quarter, when I do my quarterly report, I should include a short video in it.
Other goals
So I didn’t achieve some of the goals I had for last quarter, but in many ways what I achieved was better than what I was aiming for. So perhaps it’s good for me to not try to aim too rigidly for particular goals, but just do whatever I am currently interested in.
That said, here are the things I’d like to achieve this month:
Conclusion
I’m happy with my progress. I think a lot of things that I have been working on for long time are finally coming together. I think I can keep it up. I’m excited for 2025! 🥳