Someone shared this video on Mastodon the other day. It really got me thinking. Basically, I’m trying to figure out if I’m working with or against my brain.

I’ve kind of been trying to build my life to limit chaos in my life. I’ve written about how I have to limit how late I code, and how much, otherwise I can’t focus on anything else. I’ve been putting up guardrails. This video has got me wondering if those guardrails are helping or actually hampering my creativity and productivity.

I feel like I do pretty well when I have a routine. I tend to wake up at the same time, go to bed at the same time, go running after dropping my daughter off at school, intermittent fasting, and things like that. I think routine helps give my day structure and offloads a lot of decision making.

I’ve tried to add structure to my work/side-projects—3 days a week, same time, etc. But I’m not sure if that helps me do my best work or not. I tend to work in bursts. I procrastinate a lot at work, then one day, bam! I get like 80% of my tickets done. I putter around my side-projects, then bam! 3 new features. In retrospect, I may have tried to build my systems so that I wouldn’t feel lazy. But if I’m not as productive as I want to be in my allotted 1 hour 30 min work block, I don’t feel great.

So I might need to rethink things. Or maybe not. Things are going pretty well. But I can’t help but wonder if they could be going better.

At the start of 2023, my wife and I had been feeling a bit stressed about money. We knew we should have plenty, but it always kinda felt like the money wasn’t where it needed to be when it needed to be there. We tried budgeting apps, but they just didn’t work for us. It’s hard to pinpoint why, but we haven’t been able to find one that works the way we think.

So we tried to come up with something that would work for us.

Basically, we needed to automate our money a bit more and get it out of sight. First, we opened 2 new checking accounts. We now have one for bills, another for expenses, and one for credit card payments. The bills account is for everything that is scheduled/automatically withdrawn—mortgage, utilities, savings, etc. Expenses is for every day stuff—groceries, eating out, etc.

I setup my paycheck to be split between the bills and expenses accounts. This way we are 100% sure we have the money set aside to pay all the things that have to be paid.

We’ve also made the decision to put all expenses on the credit card¹. Every few days, we move money from the expenses account to the credit card checking account so that the balance of the credit card matches the credit card payments account. If it’s a bigger purchase we have saved for, we move money from savings to the credit card payments account. Now we know the money is set aside to pay the credit cards.

This system has worked really well for us and we’ve felt a lot more confident about our finances. It feels simple—move the money away so you’re not tempted to spend it. The more I’ve looked into personal finance advice and systems, this is not a unique or novel idea. But it feels validating to know others are giving similar advice.

Moving forward, we’re opening another 2 checking accounts so that we can each have our own “fun-money” account. I think this will help us feel less stressed/guilty about spending money on ourselves. And it will also help us keep gifts a little more secret.

Personally, I’ve been working on delaying purchases. Instead of just buying things immediately, I wait a day. Usually, I talk myself out of it by then. Works out pretty well.

2023—Year of Discipline

Writing

I haven’t finished writing the book I started for my daughter. Still need to do that…

But, I’ve been writing for my blog pretty regularly. Mostly devlogs. Looks like 23 this year so far. Plus a handful of other posts. It’s been fun a good way to close out my dev sessions for the day.

I would like to do more posts outside of devlogs. I’ve been reading more books lately, and think it would be helpful for me to write more about what I learned from them. Writing helps me organize my thoughts.

In fact, in an attempt to write some more, I’m writing a few posts and scheduling them to be published. Just feel like writing prose instead of writing code today.

Development

My intention is still to work on my side projects 3 days week. Kids schedules have been changing a lot lately, so I haven’t been the most consistent the last couple of months. But 3 days a week is still the target. My wife has been really supportive of it, which is incredibly nice and helpful.

I’ve made really good, steady progress on ScreenCred. I think it’s almost to the point that I’ll feel comfortable doing a public beta of it.

I also feel like I’ve learned a lot. One of the goals of ScreenCred was to just try things. That’s one reason progress has been slow¹. But that’s one way I keep myself interested. Instead of grinding away on the iOS app, I might take a week to work on the website. Can’t remember who said it, but it’s good to have multiple projects so that you can procrastinate one by working on the other.

I’m not going to put a deadline on ScreenCred. There’s not point right now. Maybe I will in the future, but at this rate I expect I’ll have it ready by Summer. And if not, oh well.

I think there is still a lot of work to do in these areas. I have a harder time being consistent with writing and developing than I do with things like running for whatever reason. I need to consider more how I can make these more a part of my life while still working full-time and leaving ample time for my family. I’ve been feeling a bit unmotivated and discouraged. In reality though, I think I’m doing okay. But I feel the warning signs of burnout coming on. I need to continue to learn how to manage that, while still making progress.

2023—Year of Discipline

One of the big areas I wanted to focus on in 2023 was my health and fitness. So far, I have mainly focused on running and losing some weight.

Running

My goal for 2023 was to run 500 miles. As of today, I’ve already run 255 miles. So I think I’ll hit that goal.

The biggest change I made was low heart rate training. I wanted to try something different with my running this year, and this sounded interesting. Basically, I try to keep my heart rate around 145 bpm while running. When I started doing this in January, my pace was about 12 mins/mile. This morning, I broke 10 mins/mile for the first time. That was exciting!

I’ve noticed a few big changes. I’m less tired. I’ve been able to stop drinking caffeine to get through the day because I just feel less exhausted. Because I’m not so tired, I’m able to run more. I would struggle to reach my goal of 12 miles a week before. Now, I’m regularly doing over 20 miles a week. That feels pretty good.

Progress has been slower than I was hoping, but I feel so much better, so I don’t mind. I’m a little worried about how things will go when it gets warmer here. There’s already been a couple mornings that have broken 70°F, and it’s definitely harder for em to run when it’s hot and humid. So it could be a rough summer.

Weight Loss

I’ve lost about 18 pounds this year and have been maintaining my weight at my target for about 1 month.

I started the year by stopping eating after 7pm. That was when I tended to eat the most junk food and treats. So that helped. With my low heart rate running and running more, I was burning more calories. That helped. Around February, I really restricted my caloric intake, as well as not eating until 11am. That’s when the pounds really started coming off.

I’m now eating my regular diet again, but between running more and intermittent fasting, I’m able to maintain my weight. I’ve noticed that I’ve shifted more of my junk food and treat eating to the middle of the day. So I need to do better at limiting those, otherwise I don’t think I’ll be able to maintain my weight for much longer.

Other

I’ve been trying to get up early a few times a week and do some strength exercises. My goal is 3 times a week. I started off well, but now I’m lucky to do it twice a week.

Overall, I’m pleased with my health and fitness so far this year! I just need to continue to focus on not eating so much junk food, and be more committed to strength exercises—I notice a huge improvement in how my back and shoulders feel when I do it more often. But, this is the best shape I’ve been in in a long time. So that’s a win.

2023—Year of Discipline

Mostly just screenshots today. I was working on making my suggested searches less boring. This is where I started:

Boring

The alignment bothered me. Too much text.

Images are nice

Next I tried adding images like I have on my history view. I quickly decided this was the right direction. But still had alignment issues and it felt too heavy.

Wow so clean

Aligning the poster images with the titles felt like a step in the right direction. As well as removing the button background. But now, it’s not obvious what you should tap.

Closer

Add a dedicated button. Easy. The layout doesn’t feel quite right to me though.

Actually happy with this

This is where I ended today. I’m quite happy with it. The divider creates clear separation as dividers often do. And I like the trailing alignment of the “Try it!” button.

Projects ScreenCred devlog

Finally made myself work on ScreenCred!

I’m trying to get things polished up to release someday “soon”—or at least a public TestFlight. So, crossing things off my list.

I fixed a bug on iPad. Apparently the background images were covering some buttons somehow…even though they were clipped. Maybe a hack, but I just threw .allowsHitTesting(false) on them and now it works. Win. Easier than I thought it was going to be.

Then I started polishing, or at least moving things around, in my settings screens.

Small change, but instead of a toggle for where to open details in, I’m trying a segmented control. I think it’s a little more clear. But I might need to add some additional text to explain which details I’m talking about and whatnot.

Worked a bit on the about view as well. Mostly just moved things around, but I think it looks slightly nicer.

Before

After

Anyway, feels good to get back into the swing of things. Now I’m off to soccer practice. Not my practice, but my 6 year-old’s practice. She’s much better than me.

Projects ScreenCred devlog