Mindset Monday: Time and effort. What might be gained, what might be lost. (2022 Aug 22)

I see it written in finance that an important part of wealth building is not spending more than you need to. Yes, find ways to earn more and bring more in, but also take a look at what is going out.

I apply a similar mindset to my time and effort. If I’m going to spend an hour today learning something new, that’s an hour which won’t go to anything else. Taking on new challenges is something I enjoy. I’ve had to learn how to say “no” or even “No!” because of the times I’ve burnt myself out. I can’t think of anything which burned me out where the reward was worth the depleted output during the time I was recovering.

When I work for someone else, I don’t have the option of making all decisions about what I’ll do. If the task today is sweeping floors, I sweep floors. I also know that I have options such asking why we’re doing it this way. Multiple places, multiple supervisors, I’ve pointed out that whatever they have me working on, everything else on my to-do list isn’t being worked on.

I don’t enjoy filing. The time I spend filing now is time saved later when I look something up. (I learned that lesson the hard way, multiple times.)

For everything else, there’s always alternatives. For everything I do on my own times, there’s at least two dozen other things I could be doing, and at least a half dozen other things I should be doing.

I view my time, energy, and attention as limited resources. I’m never at a loss for something to do. The question I ask is “What am I doing right now, and why?”

(Edited shortly after publication to change the title slightly and add an extra category.)

Technician Tuesday: Learning about SSL and TLS (2022 August 16)

There’s theory and there’s practice. Many things are easier to know if theory and more difficult to put into practice.

Using HTTPS, SSL and TLS (HyperText Transport Protocol Secure, Secure Sockets Layer, and Transport Layer Security if you like your acronyms spelled out) seems fine in theory. Getting this website to use HTTPS by default is proving more difficult in practice than I expected in theory.

Humility is good for the soul. This is building character. This is really annoying me.

While I figure it out, here’s some external website links I found useful:

When I look up information on how something works or why I should use it, I try to look up information from people who’ve designed it, who sell it, and who use it.

Someone non-technical explaining something to non-technical audience who “just wants it to work” will often have information and perspectives which a more technical writer won’t think to mention.

Monday Mindset: Decide where and when I will deal with the pain of deciding. (2022 Aug 15)

Being honest about projects:

In every project or endeavor, there is a certain amount of pain that will occur. Maybe it will be physical exertion from rearranging my working space to be more efficient. It might be intellectual pain from having to research a topic I’m with which I am not familiar.

The pain I dislike the most is the lost time and effort from delaying a decision that needed to be made sooner rather than later. I delayed making a conscious decision, not admitting that by my actions I was making a decision anyway. Then later things turned out in ways I didn’t want. After undoing hours or days of work, I had to admit that all could have been avoided if I’d made difficult decisions at the start, rather than putting them off.

This has happened in sewing projects, homework for math and engineering classes, rearranging a space, deciding on which software program to use, deciding which camera to buy, or writing a long paper.

These are the rules I’ve set for myself to avoid excess time lost due to avoiding necessary decisions:

Be honest with myself about what decisions I need to make now. If I’m still getting stuck, asking myself what my goal is and why that is my goal will usually help me realize what decisions are needed.

Find some way to document those decisions, whether it’s notes to myself, the file names I choose, or a physical note taped to something.

Realize my time is more valuable to me than my pride over having made the “correct” decision. If later I find out I still made a bad decision, I own up to it and try to make a better decision.

Honestly, that last point about realizing my time is more valuable to me than my pride was one of the hardest decisions of all. I made it years ago. It’s worked well for me.

Technician Tuesday: Checking out email lists and opt-in forms (2022 Aug 09)

My previous post was titled Mindset Monday. Tuesdays I am reserving for actual technical information, usually something I’ve learned during the week. Maybe it will help you, the reader. Maybe it won’t.

I write what I’ve learned because it helps me organize my own thoughts. Additionally, it’s a a record of what I’ve learned for future reference. Which is better than trying to keep everything packed in my head. I don’t need to write down every button push or feature. That’s what the manual is for. I write down what works for me.

Today I’m writing about email lists and opt-in forms on a blog (like this one). I’ve gon through a few plug-ins and looked at various options. There are a lot of ways to create forms on a blog. Each of those ways seems to require setting up a separate account on a marketing site or email list site. Furthermore, I will say that user information is something which carries a responsibilities with it. The more information I gather, the more responsibility I’ll have. The more I spread that information around to other sites, the more responsibility I have to keep track of what information I’m gathering and who I’m sharing it with.

Every bit of stuff on the internet requires money at some point. Money pays for the server it’s hosted on. And money pays for the bandwidth to access the information on the server. Also, money pays for the people who maintain the servers, software, databases, and physical communications lines.

Every site and service I add on to whatever I’m using is paid for in some way. That’s true of this blog, my computer, my digital camera, and anything else. I either pay for it with money, or I pay for it with access to my information. (I do know about free open source software, FOSS, and I support people who do that. Even there, services are only free because someone else decided to pay with their own time and effort and money to create something free for the rest of us.) Until I better understand what various sites will be doing with the information I give them, I’ll leave out opt-in lists.

Regarding opt-ins and email lists: gathering user information means the gatherer has to be aware of how they’re keeping and sharing that user information.

I know, if you’re looking for information about how to use technology you probably wanted a quick set-up guide. This blog isn’t for that. The quicker the set-up, the easier the sign-up, the more that’s offered for free, the higher the likelihood there will be a price in time or money or unexpected risk to be paid later. That’s how you wind up with your technology using you, instead of you using your technology.

Mindset Monday: Know what you want to accomplish and why (2022 August 08)

I started this site to help people — including myself — who want to make their technology work for them, instead of the user tying themselves in knots working for their technology.

Because I don’t know what you, the reader, are trying to accomplish or what particular piece of technology you’re using, I’ll mostly be writing in first person. I’ll tell you what I did and how I look at things, and if it’s helpful to you that’s great. I’m not an expert and I’m not claiming to be an expert. I’m someone who might be a couple of steps ahead of you, and maybe something I write will be of use to you.

Today’s post is about mindset. I have met very few people — only one or two — who can read through an instruction manual for a piece of technology and immediately start thinking of all the things it would be possible to do with most of the options.

For myself, who does not have that gushing internal fountain of creativity, I’ve started to discipline myself to have a goal and a motive for any piece of technology I want to use. If I don’t have a goal, then my efforts are all over the place and lack focus, I flip through a manual restlessly and poke buttons without really taking the time to see what a button actually does. If I don’t have a motive, I get bored and move on to something else.

So, for mindset I start out with two things about which I must be honest (if only with myself):

What is my goal? What do I want to accomplish when I use this piece of technology?

What is my motive? Why do I want to do this?

Hello World!

Sometimes when learning to program in a new computer language, one of the first tasks would be to create a program that printed “Hello world,” usually on a screen.

This required the new student to learn how that programming language dealt with text and how to print something on a screen.

Many of you reading this probably already knew that, and many of you probably didn’t. My hope is this site will be useful and have valuable information for both groups.