Jan 2, 2023

Talk, Christmas and next year | Readings

Photo by Hiroko Yoshii on Unsplash

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve slowed down a bit and been reading a bit more high fantasy and enjoying the festivities. I’ve given the dbt in a data mesh world talk at Data Porto meetup which was nice and hope to work a bit more on relevant work to do other talks on more technical stuff.

With the close of the year, it’s time to look back at what I’ve accomplished.

Programming languages

My initial focus of the year had been on Python and Scala. However, things changed and I’ve got now to add javascript/Typescript. I’ll do some somethings in Python but I’ve decided to learn Rust as my “fast” language for when TS isn’t enough. My goal will be to finish the advent of code of 2022, read the book and help launch a data-intensive application I’ve got in the pipeline. This leads me to the next section.

Side projects

It’s funny how looking at last year review I got things done by helping solve daily tasks with my software. Nothing major. I guess I’ll keep on doing this as I have a Rust project already in the works and I’ll additionally be looking for ways to improve the tooling at my current place of work.

Organization

My calendar was indeed a good friend of mine as I saw last year. I’m doing a mixture of writing my tasks on Notion but I look into blocking some time on the calendar for achieving this. If the task is too big for say 2 hours, I try to break it down. There’s not a perfect tool although having a sync between tasks and the calendar would be great. Google tasks can do 90% of this but I guess I like to set a duration so I’d still need to

Writing

I’ve come this year to like to write the weekly update. I’ve published 24 articles in total and the last one went to a medium publication). Small but important steps. The updates are a retrospective of what I’ve accomplished and what I plan to do next. I don’t set hard dates but it has helped me define and fulfill loose goals. Instead of setting blogging goals, I’ll be looking to write around 500 daily words. It can be anything from personal notes, knowledge, or blogging. For this simple article, I was able to fulfill this already so I think it’s an achievable one. Hopefully, I’ll come up with something interesting to share but, if not, at least I’ll feel my head is more organized.

The remote work is great but I’ve had to find mechanisms to keep my head fresh and ready. I read a lot and my usual plan was to mix technical books with light reading. I don’t think this works anymore as I usually need to balance entertainment with studying. So now I’m switching to have always something to read or watch. Technical reading is not something to be entertained (unless it’s that interesting 😅).

Through the past year, I’ve started to balance my life between soccer (1X per week) and swimming (2X per week). I’m set on this and with the flexible schedule, it seems to be something I can keep for the rest of my life. Just need to be more careful with what I eat to not spoil it 🤐.

Regarding socializing this is something that keeps on turning as very very important with remote work. I want to keep in touch with my friends and I have a good idea to help me in this task by reminding of who I haven’t been talking to. Additionally, I’d love to set up or join a monthly board game group. This has been the year I learned about D&D but I’m guessing that is still a bit hardcore. One can dream though…

Summary

So here is the TLDR of actionable actions to do/keep:

Keep on scheduling the tasks on the calendar
Daily 500 words
Read Rust book
Finish advent of code in Rust
Develop a research program in Rust
Develop app to remind who to keep in touch
Setup/join a monthly board game