Hacking on stuff — especially stuff that I might use while travelling, at a PAX or FIRST event — is a rabbithole where I can sink hours on tinkering and trying new ideas. I’m a sucker for trying to come up with a 'solution' to these kinds of situations that I think I’ll encounter in the future. It’s definitely a personality quirk that can frustrate me. Seeing this as a labour of love, and a way to broaden my skills and familiar with more building blocks, may help lessen that self-judgement.

I still fall into hacking rabbitholes

The more time we spend around someone, the more we tend to take for granted the nice things they do for us, and conversely we get exponentially more annoyed by the frustrating things they do.

2021-04-11

I have a lot of what I'll call labours of learning - they're fun as long as you feel like you're learning new things and increasing your mastery.

Labours of Love & Labours of Learning 

There are a lot of books that I've read, which I can't recite or clearly remember much of, but which have still shaped who I am and how I operate now. Having those memories isn't a really indicator of whether they will stick in ﻿some part of my brain.

I played with LEGO a lot as a kid, and I think that still is a big factor in how I build solutions to problems today. I build things with simple, modular blocks (which Google Sheets, Airtable and Notion are very good for), and as I’m building, or as I’m using the Thing I Built, I make lots of small tweaks and changes. I like to throw thigns at the wall, and see what sticks. A more-polished term for this style might be Emergent Design.

I still play w/ LEGO at age 34 (sorta)

2021-04-02 - My main priority right now is to be a great husband and dad, and to get better at both of those, and this has been a really rewarding and satisfying experience for me. It helps to see and know that I'm getting better at these things.

The biggest killer of buying cheap, potentially low-quality parts or using cheaper vendors isn't that you have to buy the more expensive thing eventually. It's the hit you take to your schedule, both to replace the part in your design, and often to find out about the failure in the first place. There can also be timeline challenges with integrating the cheaper parts, due to poor documentation or reference designs.

2021-04-12

When working on processes &amp; systems, I have a strong affinity for Punk Rock Process or Cockroach Process. Stuff that’s very simple, made with rudimentary or easily-accessible building blocks (like Sheets or Excel), and which can survive and stay functional during the chaos of a fast-moving startup that’s full of busy people with fragmented attention spans.

I like to set up ‘Punk Rock processes‘

2021-04-02 - When I look back at my time in high school, and to some extent during university and past that, I often put mental energy into trying to fit in with people who, even 5 years later, I've never thought about. I think this constrained me, and prevented me from feeling comfortable in my own skin. It's probably worth asking: Am I doing something similar today?

For anyone who has stumbled onto this article, I’m am writing it for myself. Specifically, I recently discovered deepstash.com, and I’m using this article as a workaround to put my own ideas into…

Similar ideas

Don't Sell Yourself Too Cheaply - Day 126

Types of people