I spent some time today backing up my former Wordpress blog. I had posts there from 2013. I took a disproportionate amount of time to find out where the export option was. I almost gave up. But it's done. I've been debating with myself if I should delete the account. I've done that before with Medium, after I tested it for while. But for some reason revisiting my first posts on Wordpress today made me nostalgic. I could not hit DELETE.
Is that what you do when you move to a new blogging platform? Just delete the old one?
I've been having a similar dilemma about social media. I deactivated my Facebook account, but haven't deleted it. Same thing with Twitter, not actually using it, but it's still out there. The only reason my Facebook was NOT deleted is... family and friends that are far away still use it. It's sometimes their only online presence. So, what if one day I want to contact them? That's the only place these people exist in my references. I keep it for “someday/maybe”... food for thought..
I don’t have big goals or big changes for 2021. I want to consolidate the discoveries I made in 2020. I learned a lot about myself last year. It was a good time to reflect about my habits and now I want to ENGAGE 🎬.
I want to build my Knowledge Database. I’ve been studying Zettelkasten for that.
Engage more, do more. Spend less time setting up apps and changing methods. Stick with the established routines. Get into the flow.
Make small adjustments only when and IF necessary.
Continue to go out on long walks (something I started doing regularly in 2020).
Spend less time on my phone.
Be less distracted, (re)train my focus.
Consume less information. Quality > Quantity.
Every year I like to list books I plan on reading. It's a starting point, a list that I look at every month to pick what to read next. It's not meant to be a “must read” list, just suggestions for my future me.
This year I'm not being too ambitious. I want to slow down and savour the moment. No big goals really, just sailing in cruise control.
I mainly want to keep on reading the books I already own, so I will try to pick from the following list:
I'm moving all my notes out of Evernote. And I have a notebook there with all my e-books notes and highlights for the past 7+ years. A total of 276 notes. One note per book.
I've always used this free service my.clippings.io to export my Kindle highlights to Evernote. It also exports to .txt, .pdf and .doc. But, the only way to have separate files (one note per book) is when I use the Evernote option.
My issue here is: how can I convert all these Evernote notes to markdown??😕
I have never asked that question before. But suddenly I felt like I was overwhelmed and that I was spending too much time and energy to manage my lists. So this year I decided to sit down and write a description of my GTD system to understand what was going on.
The inspiration came from a post from Cal Newport in which he describes his “Rooted Productivity“ document. For him, it's a one page document that he keeps in a plastic sleeve on his desk.
The idea is to have a “root commitment” that includes all your productivity habits.
GTD is based on 5 steps, which are:
CAPTURE: Collect (Inbox)
CLARIFY: What is it?
ORGANIZE: Put it where it belongs
REFLECT: Review and Update
ENGAGE: What is the next action? Do it!
Based on Cal Newport's idea, I came up with a description of my system based on the following questions:
Which tools do I use for each of the 5 GTD Phases?
What are my Inboxes? Where are they?
What are my list managers? (including tasks and project lists)
How do I organize the stuff that comes into my inbox?
What is on my Calendar?
What is my reference system? How do I file non-actionable things?
Core habits and routines: what are the habits that are important to me?
Periodic Reviews: what are the reviews I have scheduled to keep the system up-to-date?
Yes, tmo, I've been thinking about this. I moved some of my project to the “someday/maybe” list because of COVID. These are one of the things I want to get back to after the pandemic is under control:
Trip to Brazil (who knows when that will happen now...)
Renew passports
Various quick trips to nearby cities
Get back to swimming
Visit Museums
Borrow graphic novels from the Public Library
It's December and I feel a kind of relief 2020 is coming to an end!
I know things are not going to magically be resolved on Jan 01, 2021, but leaving this year behind makes me feel good. What a year!
This month I'll focus on self-reflection, being calm and getting back to simplicity:
Less consumption, more creation. And rest.
I'm re-discovering this universe of Plain Text and Markdown enthusiasts. It's fascinating!
I discovered Write.as in 2018 and that was the first time I saw Markdown. I used to have my blog on Medium at that time because I loved the writing experience there (I used Tumblr before that). Then I moved all my writing to Write.as. I love the minimalist interface and distraction-free environment.
I used Write.as for about a year and something happened in my life that made me look for complex solutions. Go figure... Or maybe I just wanted to try WordPress to see what it was all about.
WordPress was... overwhelming! Bloated with stuff I didn't need or wanted...
And then they changed to this new editor. I didn't want to write there anymore. It was cumbersome! So I started using Evernote, Word, OneNote to write. Then I would copy-paste into WordPress. What a mess! I made lots of experimentation. None of them pleased me. Formatting issues were endlessly annoying!
And now I'm back at Write.as 💜.
Re-learning Markdown, and loving it!
