I'm so inspired now!

Holy crap, I got an amazing response from the video that I put up a couple of days ago. Over 100 comments from my awesome viewers who are interested in programming and are still interested in following the channel. Overall I am really inspired and honored! I am ready to put out some helpful content now (more so than I was before).

I'm planning out my strategy for April today and tomorrow, which mostly involves more balance, as well as more focus for what I am doing.

Even though I didn't really have any interest in doing anything exciting by normal standards during this time off period, I certainly feel good about it. I was able to relax, and get some perspective. In the future I don't know if I'll need a whole week off. 4-5 days is more than enough it feels like. I'm just getting really antsy to get back to working on projects, especially now that I'll be taking at least 1 day each week to relax.

I started listening to a new podcast, "Ear Biscuits" by Rhett and Link from Good Mythical Morning and was surprised. I thought it was just a comedy cast, but it's actually an inspirational interview podcast with successful youtube and internet names. Really great stuff!

I don't have too much else to talk about really. I feel like I am in the calm before the storm because I'm really dreaming forward about what my Youtube, blog, and career have in store within the next year. I have a feeling things are going to get really exciting.

See you next time!

Taking time off is harder than I would have thought

Hey everyone! So far I am enjoying my days off. I went to see the final episode of The Hobbit (which was...okayish). I've been doing my best to relax and just be present. I still keep thinking about programming and how much I want to get things done, but I am gradually getting a bit more perspective and when I go back into it I think I'll be much more focused which was the goal of taking this time away.

I honestly don't know what to do with myself. I spent some time browsing artwork, and added a lot of new desktop backgrounds which was fun. I also have been playing around and practicing with memorization and speed reading. Other than that, I am sitting around pondering stuff or chatting with friends online.

I created a video as well, which would mark the first video in FOUR MONTHS for my channel. Check it out if you like:


Well, that's it really. I want to get better at meditating and relaxing, so I'll try to keep working on that. On monday I want to spend time doing some planning and really strategize so that going back into my next month I'll really be prepared to hit it hard with some laser focus.

Talk to you later!

Enlightenment?

So, day 2 of my 1 week "break." Not quite sure how it will go, but I can say it
is difficult! I am doing my best to not think about trying to work on a project.
I do notice I tense up quite a bit when my mind wanders to the idea that I
should be getting stuff done, but I am working on being as meditative and
relaxed about doing nothing as I can.

Instead of listening to podcasts all day and while going to work, I tried to
just relax and be mindful of everything, listen to the cars pass by, and enjoy
the warmth and the wind from outside. Sounds all woo woo, but honestly I could
feel the stress and tension slowly fade a bit that I would normally be
experiencing.

Clearly my super high velocity 80 hour a week studying was catching up. I didn't
think about it so much, but I'll be sure to plan out the next few weeks of
crunch time to better account for recharge time. I've decided I'll only work on
the super important stuff for 6-8 pomodoros in the morning, and always be done
with that stuff by 10am, at which time I cannot do any more and I can free
myself to chill a bit and exercise or check email / chat with people.

I'll iterate on this as necessary, but right now I'm settling on 4 days of
coding time, 2 days for creative work, and 1 "free" day to do whatever I want,
whether it's a different side project, or just hanging out with buddies etc...as
long as it doesn't involve my normal "work"

I'm also a bit upset about a recent change at work. From now on, anyone with ANY
electronic device will be instantly terminated. WTF? So that means no more
relaxing laptop time in between calls to read and study. Whatever, just means I
REALLY need to push hard to get a job ASAP. I can't do that crap for long.

Well, let's see how I feel after a few more days of forced vacation. I don't
really know what to do with myself to be honest, but I'm hoping I can enjoy it
and really let my mind go from the "I HAVE TO GET SHIT DONE" mode that has
started to wear me out after 4 months straight.

Don't be such a perfectionist

No Organization this time, just a mess of thoughts

Yesterday I had a phone call with a guy who has been done about 20 or so tech interviews recently, and has been doing dev for a bit over a year. I wanted to just bounce some thoughts and hopefully get rid of some stress I've been building up about my learning experience so far.

Overall I felt it was a really helpful chat, and it helped me calm down a bit about my progress. Here are the main takeaways that I pulled from it that will apply to myself:
 * Don't be a perfectionist.
I've been trying to be amazing at everything I do, and I've been trying to do EVERYTHING. For example, it is always pushed as very important to focus on testing apps in production and making that a big part of what you do, however from my perspective of learning and just needing to build things, I was stressing way too hard over it.

Right now Meteor testing is extremly new, and there aren't a lot of resources on it. It ties into the next point which is the Pereto principle.

This is something I always go back to thinking about in everything I do. It applies very heavily here though, because I have to start focusing on important stuff that produces the majority of the results. The perfectionist stuff like getting TDD perfect even in my little toy apps was taking it a bit long. From now on I am going to just work as hard as I can to just SHIP apps, and then iterate over them as I go on.

He suggested I start reaching out to people on Angel list and Hired.com, and to keep my portfolio / description short and honest. I'll reviese some things and start putting out some apps.

I also took some time to really learn some Javascript fundamentals based on his previous suggestion, but I'll definitely keep learning more about them as he was saying that is what helped him to get his jobs so far. Things like Hoisting, Closures, .this, lexical scoping, prototypical inheritance etc.

At first I was feeling  a little bit like I was messing up by switching focus over to just Javascript / Meteor instead of continuing with Rails but I honestly just REALLY like Javascript and front end stuff. I like being f ull stack which Meteor allows, and I think in 1-2 years Meteor is really going to blow up more than it already is so I'm okay with it even if it means I have a few less job opportunities in the short term.

I've decided now also that I have to reduce the amount of time I spend working on stuff. By that, I mean I have to have forced breaks of time or days to completely change focus. I need to do stuff like go outside, exercise, do some cooking / baking, play video games, be social...stuff like that. I can still be super hardcore about my learning and like "bootcamp" mode but, even looking over one of the bootcamp curriculums they have a mandatory 1 week break in the middle.

I'll plan something out for either this coming week or the first week of March. I think it will help me a lot to reorganize my thoughts and spend more time doing the other things I wanted to work on like speed reading, memorization, exercise, learning baking, and what not.

Other than that, I've started on my Money app project. In order to focus on the important stuff I deleted out the Testing stuff I was trying to learn and having issues with, and I'm just going small bit by bit. I got the Materialize framework added in, with a navbar, a basic login (I'll style a custom one later) and now I'm making sure my data schema is correct and that I know how to update things from the console.

Well, this post was a bit rushed and disorganized in comparison but I just had to get some thoughts out. I do want to clean up some of my note organization later so I can be more detailed on what I am learning etc. Well, that's it for now. Time to bounce!

JUST BUILD WEBSITES! - Thanks Chris...

What have I learned?

Whew, so I've been trying the 4 hour thing for a couple of days and I believe it might be too little. I kept getting quite tired and needing to take a nap as I wasn't able to keep my eyes open sitting up. I decided to go back to 5 hours of sleep, which was working great for me. That still gives me 6-7 hours of time in the morning to do projects and learn.

I was planning on spending all week on Javascript fundamentals and challenges, but I actually feel that I've got the concepts down that I was looking for. Even though the past 2 days weren't too productive as I needed some relax time, I was still able to get the knowledge I was looking for quicker than I had expected.

Roadblocks?

My big roadblock right now is doubt. Doubt with myself on whether or not I am focusing on the right things. For example, if I were to look back and give myself advice I might just say, hey man begin building projects right away. Don't spend so much time on "book learning". On the other hand however, I do feel a lot more comfortable with important concepts and fundamentals that will make me a better coder and be able to produce better work.

The other doubt I have is if my skills are where they need to be. You could call that imposter syndrome, and on hand I KNOW that I am at least at a junior level or even a good bit above...but I still have to be able to prove that. I guess it just goes back to what Chris Coyier always says, "JUST BUILD WEBSITES!" haha.

What am I going to do next?

Just looking at this from a logical perspective, I really have to get to building some actual apps. That will be the best way for me to learn going forward. I still need to polish up my website as well, so I believe that I should split some time between working on that and putting work into building apps.

I do have several people I am talking to about trying to pair up with and help on their stuff. Anything I can do that involves actual coding now is probably top priority. The only other thing I am now somewhat torn on is if I should do projects in Rails or in Meteor. It's possible that will be determined by if I get one of the two Meteor jobs I applied for, because if not it's Rails for sure as the job opportunities there are MUCH more bountiful, and then I could always do Meteor on the side once I get a job.

I have a chat today with the guy who has been interviewing for a while. A meetup with Useful.io guys on Monday, and I met the CEO of Grok at our local meetup last night who told me he was interested in chatting so I feel good about the networking side of things. Now to just prove that I am worth hiring!

My current project idea that I have been thinking about since before I even began learning programming, is still to convert my huge excel money sheet into an app so perhaps I'll start working on that. I keep thinking it might be more work than I can do in a few weeks but on the other hand maybe not if I just put in the core stuff. Essentially it will be some data entry with tags / categories attached to each entry, and then it adds things together to get a total. Not too complex if you word it like that. I think it is an app idea that has a ton of room to grow, which is why I am holding off but meh.

My other thought was I can start on it, and for individual concepts I need to learn I can make a quick throwaway / toy app to test that bit of functionality while getting the hang of building new projects and making sure I understand the whole process from zero to boilerplate to completion.

Well, too many thoughts and not enough time I think. I need to put some of this stuff into practice, so I'm going to stop there. See you next time!

Networking like a boss!

Last two days have been great for solidifying my learning of Meteor. I finished
up the Discover Meteor book, and posted up the projects I've done for my
portfolio. Other than that, I was able to schedule another initial phone
interview for this coming Monday, so I am excited there.

Yesterday was quite awesome in my opinion. I found some great resources by going
through community links and watching some Q&A vids from Josh Owens Meteor Club.
He has a Slack group, which I joined into and the authors from some of the books
I've got are in there as well.

I was able to make a few contacts and have been chatting with Josh himself, and
might even do some pairing with him on one of his projects. I set up a call with
another guy to discuss some Javascript concepts, as he just went through about
20 interviews and so I figured I could get some insight into how that process
looks.

Overall I am pushing very hard to reach out to as many people as I can because
networking is how the world works when it comes to getting a job! I'm doing my
best to give back also in any way I can. I am always offering help to noobies
from various chats, as I know that what goes around comes around.

I've decided for this next week I'll try to work on my deeper knowledge and
understanding of Javascript itself. I want to really be sure I can understand
the important concepts like .this, closures, objects, how to do OOP in it,
prototypical inheritence vs classical..all of that stuff. I get it enough to
code things and solve problems but I want to be able to explain all of the deeper concepts
things easily.

I'm going to watch a few videos on Javascript, read through Javascript the good
parts, and also "You don't know JS" series. On top of that, I'll be doing a
couple of code wars and exercism.io challenges. I think that should put me in a
good position overall. I'll be able to do all of that by the end of the week,
and if I finish it up I'll most likely work on finishing up some articles and
book reading on using Velocity the Meteor testing framework.

That's it for now, really. I'm looking forward to seeing where some of these new
connections will lead! Talk to you in a few days :)

Reaching Peak Performance

What did I learn?

So my learning of Meteor.js has been very comprehensive so far. I've completed all of the Evented Mind screencasts, read through the entire official manual, skimmed the docs a few times, and almost fully completed the Discover Meteor book. I read through some community stuff and looked through various articles also so I have a pretty good feel for the framework and where it is going. Overall I can say I am extremly happy to be learning it.

There are some things that I'll have to drill down to and practice more to fully learn, but at the moment I am pretty sure for anything I need to do I can figure out where to look and how to get the answer. That is the big part of learning a new language or framework. Memorization comes later with practice and building practical apps, and troubleshooting issues.

How do I feel?

I've been taking L-Arganine and ZMA, along with some low-carb protein to complement my exercising that I've been doing lately. I am not sure if it is that stuff helping, or the fact that I've been running and working out catching up finally but I feel great! I was able to do a full sprint to the end of the block before getting winded, and my recovery-walk was much shorter and I was able to sprint through the entire trail which I usually have to do like 3-4 run/walk iterations.

On top of that, bumping down to 4 hours of sleep I am actually getting out of bed MUCH easier. Perhaps I was just waking up at a weird cycle for the 5 hour mark. I did take a 5 minute boredom nap at work, and felt a little drowsy for a bit, but then got up and moved around and I'm refreshed already.

Going forward...

I think I'll give some time into learning Velocity the upcoming testing framework for Meteor, and also probably go through the Bulletproof Meteor course. That should give me an all-around great understanding of the important parts of building any Meteor app going forward.

I want to make a from scratch app now, or at least copy a concept on my own once I am done with some of this. It makes it much easier to learn when I am not copying code. Currently I will read up on a section, and peek at what the next block of code will do, then try to write it out myself before actually looking over the example code. This is helping me learn much faster and solidify the concepts.

That's it for now though. See you next time!

One Track Mind

Productivity++

Dang, my learning motivation is top notch these past two days. I was able to
blast out 20 pomodoros yesterday, and another 13 today before work. I've been
working through the Discover Meteor book, and then I found a great post from
Javascript is Sexy called "learn Meteor the right way" and it helped me to get a
good list of resources to work through, with some good discounts one being the
book, and another is an amazing screencast series from EventedMind.

Lance just asked me to make a simple leaderboard app, but I have gone beyond
that. I've got a pretty decent reddit clone going from following the book
examples, including login. I also have a good overview of the workings of Meteor
from reading through the Docs and the EventedMind screencasts do a great job of
explaining how things work internally.

Overall I really enjoy Meteor, and look forward to developing some apps in it. I
actually feel that it would be a great framework for the money tracking app idea
that I had because of the real-time and responsiveness of it as well as the
ability to easily port to iOS / Android.

Exercise

I have been feeling better and better, and now that it is warming up I went for
a bike ride again and running is much more enjoyable. I've added a protein shake
with kale / spinach to my day in order to augment the working out I've been
doing. I was considering doing some Insanity or P90X but not sure yet. For now I
am feeling good with the decent exercise I am getting.

Sleep

I thought of bumping down to 4 hours of sleep for the crunch time of this next
month because I am super serious about getting this job or SOME job very soon.
Once I get one I can bump back up to 5-6 and be okay with it.


If I do get a remote job, I definitely would consider checking out working at
the Geekdom co-working space. I think that would help keep me sane and able to
meet other people, which I was really missing when working from home doing
Youtube stuff for 4 years straight.

Well, that's all I can think about right now. The only thing on my mind is
finishing up this book and screencasts so I can feel really good with my Meteor
knowledge. See you next time!

Time to learn Meteor.js

Hi there! So I had good success with getting interviews past 2 days. I had a really good
face-to-face with Matthew at Test Double, and was told I would be a good fit for
their culture. Today however he said they are looking for more experienced devs.
Overall I'm okay with that, just means I need to build more projects. It's
pretty well known that it is tough for juniors to get spots, and they are a top
notch company.

I met with the CTO of big asronaut today also, and he wants me to learn and
build an app in Meteor, and could bring me on as an apprentice. I wouldn't be
making much money, but it would be akin to an internship so that could possibly
work out...and I REALLY like Meteor.js. I believe it might just be the future of
the web...not that Rails is going anywhere. We will see.

Other than that, not too many interesting things going on. I was focusing on
learning TDD by going through the workshop at upcase. I'll be putting it on hold
and changing my week's priority to building a Meteor app for now, as that will
be my best bet for now at moving into a better position.

In about an hour of time, I've already created a simple todo app in Meteor so that is
promising. Here it is http://colby-todo-woohoo.meteor.com

I ordered a 27" 1440 monitor. I've begun realizing that having 3 screens isn't
so useful as a programmer, and in fact is just distracting. I'll be better
suited by swapping workspaces to look things up, and I can use a 2nd monitor to
view training videos or a live preview of a site I am working on, but otherwise
it isn't so useful to have more than just my main screen with as much going on
there as I can fit.

I joined up with a Facebook group / google hangouts group that are focusing on
The Odin Project and am tryin to lend my help. I think that will be a good way
for me to contribute and see what problems newer learners are having so that I
can use that knowledge in the future to make learning resources, which
ultimately is what I would like to do.

I still am torn on if I should create a new domain other than colbycheeze.com.
Perhaps switch to ColbyWilliams.com, or make something centered around what I'd
like to teach, or what topics I like to write about. Something around the topic
of productivity + web development. Well, I'm bad at locking down those decisions
so for now I'll just put it on my "to think about" list.

Super Learning is Fun

It feels like a lot longer period of time than it actually has. I am glad I
decided to write these every two days, because I already am having trouble
remembering what has transpired. Possibly part of it has been due to my new
schedule at work and being transferred to a night team with a ton of downtime.

I spend that time doing coding challenges, reading articles, and tweaking my
website. I've been able to get my portfolio page completed, and I am feeling
good about how it was coded. I put together a local data store with yaml in
order to keep the code 'DRY'. The rest is just a simple template that has some
fancy schmancy cards and a mouseover shadow. Fun stuff!

All I need to do now is get a cool front page set up. I still have to figure out
how I want to do that...bit of a block there. I could do something like a big
full page picture of me doing something interesting, with icon links to my blog,
twitter, etc... That might be a good start (or even end).

I've been working on finding companies to work for, and have gotten a call from
a recruiter that is looking to place me locally. I've also got another call
lined up for another remote company. I would love to be a remote worker because
I am so used to that environment already, and it would be nice to have the
freedom to move around etc.

I spent a few hours today trying to get the League Junkies Vagrant setup working
on my machine and just had zero success. I swear everything I try to do meets
huge walls haha. Even things that should be simple. It's funny too because I
had Sashi working with me on Slack the whole time. No worries though, I'll be up
and running soon enough.

Super Learning

I've been getting through this super learner programing and really enjoying it.
It is getting into speed reading, but this one is a bit different. They focus
more on learning how to memorize things as a baseline for learning to speed
read. You create markers from words as you read through which are associated
with images and animations in your head, so that your recall is boosted
dramatically.

I've been practicing memorization techniques, peripheral vision stretching, and
overdoing the amount of WPM I can read each day. Hopefully I can get good enough
with the memory stuff to rapidly learn all of these new frameworks and get
really good with knowing where to look for the various components of each
system.

Overall, I'm feeling good about where I am headed. I just want to keep building
awesome things and get shifted into the next phase of life. Next chat, we should
have an update on how some of my plans are evolving for the rest of the month!

I might need to recharge the batteries

So after finishing up all of the Euler projects and filling out the massive
questionnaire for Big Astronaut, I sit here eagerly awaiting feedback. Also I am
pumped to look for other companies which would be fun to work for.

Stressed? Or maybe I just need to recharge

I didn't do too much today productivity-wise...I guess it's been about 3 months
since I've given myself a day off to just relax. Not that I relaxed today, I
just stressed over not being in the mood to do stuff. Maybe that is a sign I
should relax haha. Honestly I don't even know what I would do at the moment. I
kind of want to go ride my bike, but a cold front blew in again.

I thought about buying a new game, but then I quickly lost interest in that. I
do really want to just build things. Since I am spending so much creative energy
solving problems and learning new things, perhaps the best way for me to
recharge the batteries so to speak would be to look for more social ventures or
physical activities. Before, just watching TV and playing video games was
extremely fulfilling...but maybe because I played really hardcore and
challenging games. Now that my need for challenge is being taken up, I've got to
balance that out.

Planning and prioritizing

Anyhow, I did a bit more planning today on what I want to focus on going
forward. I really have a bit of a design block on how I want my blog header to look,
and how to design my landing page / portfolio / about sections.

I was thinking perhaps I should bump up the priority of polishing some of my
existing projects, and make a card view for the portfolio page. That would make
the most amount of sense now that I am putting myself out for potential
employers.

My new idea...it's a good one!

I had a new idea for a "capstone" project to do instead of the money tracking
thing. There are SOOO many learning resources and websites popping up now days
for getting into web development, that it is hard to even decide where to go or
which one best suits what you need to do.

I learn about a new resource almost every couple of days at LEAST. The problem
gets even worse when some of the hide content behind pay walls, and you don't
know if paying 50 bucks a month to access it is even any better than the free
resources.

So, the idea would be to make some sort of review / content aggregation site to
bring together all of the learning resources and categorize them based on what
you want to learn and your own learning style. So people would vote and review
on the best learning resource for certain topics. Maybe Codecademy is best
for...learning basic Ruby syntax, but then you want to learn HTML/CSS and
everyone has voted up Code School, and then Michael Hartl for Ruby on Rails
beginners...anyways those are examples not my opinions but that is the point.
Who knows? I think that would be extremly useful to me to see a spot where there
are discussions and what not based around that.

The site could be similar to glassdoor for example, just people who have
experience with the resource giving the knowledge so you can make better
decisions on how to spend your time.

Anyway that's what I've got for now, see you in a few days!

I feel like I am getting close! (to being hired)

My website is beginning to look a lot better. I did a redesign on many elements,
and I feel pretty good about it. The only thing I still want to improve is
getting a better looking header / hero image at the top.

Finishing up the Test trails for Upcase was way harder than I thought. Just
wrapping my head around the code wasn't so easy, as they give literally no good
examples, and just say "here do this thing".

I was able to get through the fundamentals section, but only through the first
part of the test doubles. I am getting the hang of it now, but it just took a
while. Also, another reason I didn't finish it up, was that I ended up spending
some time asking questions about getting jobs from someone in my Ruby slack
group.

I ended up tweeting out a few people, sending some e-mails, and applying for a
couple of jobs. I got a call from someone local here that said they may have a
Jr spot for me at Rackspace, and they want me to come in on Tuesday to chat, so
that is awesome!

I also applied for a remote position at Big Astronaut, and they sent me this
freaking massive questionnaire covering everything from Ruby, Rails, Javascript,
HTML, Git, and Agile practices. Wow, ridiculous haha. I've already spent 6 1/2
hours filling some of the sections out because I had to look a few things up,
and some of the questions needed to be answered a bit more in depth. So far the
front end questions have been the longest and hardest, maybe because that is
where some of my weak points lie?

I was extremely exhausted yesterday, and ended up taking a mid day 5 hour nap
haha. I wonder if it is in part because of my picking up on the running and
exercise. Since my roommate James has done enough of the research on the
various supplements, I just bought about 80 bucks worth of things to help out
like protein and some other things. I'll probably start to look into more
workout things I can do, so that I can be more well rounded in my exercise.

So, yea there's that! I'm looking forward to sending off this tech question
thing, and hopefully getting some responses from the feelers I send out to
companies. Of course I'll be working to improve my portfolio as soon as I can,
now that I will have people reviewing the work.

So, until next time...peace out!

Planning out the Month of March

I already feel really good about the two articles that I've written. I got a ton
of retweets for my learning resources article that I posted also, so that is
great. Now to just sustain that sort of quality weekly for a few years! Haha...

I wrote 2000 words for my productivity article, and it took me about 2.5 hours
to complete. I am sure I can write future stuff a bit faster, but I did pause
quite a bit going through it, and I'm a bit sloppy at the moment.

I've decided I'll go ahead and give the Geekdom space a 1 month trial this
coming month, so I'll go in tomorrow around noon to check it out. My goal for
now would be to go in about twice a week. In all it should cost me 90 dollars,
so I would hope to get value out of it from networking, otherwise I'd just
cancel.

I got stuck a bit on the Fibonacci recursive project, and took a bit longer on
the merge sort than I wanted. Just shows I need to do some more practice and
katas so I'll be completing a couple a week going forward until I can do them in
less than an hour np.

I've been planning out the month of March as best as I can but it is very
difficult to forsee that far out! This is something I want to get better at for
sure. Project and goal planning for me is hard enough a day or two out haha.

So far I have gotten about a week worth figured out, and then just a broad "do
personal project" I can drill down further on it, but I don't know if I'll be
spending more time working on League Junkies or not, and then I'd have to choose
a project to focus on. Also, it might be a good idea for me to pick some concept
projects to "copy" which show my competence and try to complete them in about a
week each so i can have portfolio stuff to show.

Hard choices man!

Resumes will start going out this month, so I also want to be sure and polish up
my Github and portfolios as much as I can. Going forward, doing tasks focused on
getting a job will probably be the big thing for me. I just need to keep that in
mind, because it is easy to just focus on learning more as there is so much
knowledge to still obtain, however I am effective enough at the moment to
contribute to a team imo.

Peak Productivity

Progress!

These past two days I have made a considerable amount of progress on my website.
I was able to complete enough of the blog to be quite presentable and start
putting up content. It felt good to be able to do so much without as many
roadblocks. I did hit one bump with a template issue, but I resolved it by doing
an if statement within the view, isntead of breaking out into two templates.
Wasn't as clean as I'd like but it works.

For the rest of this week (next two days) I'll be focusing on writing content. I
was able to polish up my Tmux/Vim article a good amount, put together a recap of
building the blog, and also posted up my monthly recap of learning web dev.

I downloaded screenflow and GIFBrewery so that I can edit up some screencasts
and gifcasts, which I was looking forward to, so that should be good fun!

Becoming more productive?

Looking at my time spent report, I've been getting about 5~ pure pomodoros
completed each morning this week, which as been great. That was all that I could
complete on my total day off last week. Overall it just shows how exhausting it
is to work in such a focused state for so long.

I'll have to begin working out more in order to gain more stamina, as throwing
more hours into the equation at this point won't help. I've been exercising a
decent amount now, but I could certainly step it up. Once the weather gets
better I'll be able to do some biking and that will be awesome.

Future Planning

Now that my website is *mostly* complete, other than a pretty landing page and
cleaning up my portfolio, I can switch my focus back into learning the more
heavy duty stuff. My focus for next week is going to be on TDD, as I plan to use
pure TDD in all projects going forward.

I'll be trying to plan out for the entire next month at the beginning of next
week, and get as much of an estimate on what I can accomplish from there. I am
really happy with being able to practice my time estimates through my Kanban
board. I think I'll do a screencast or post on how I organize that as well soon.

Well, that's all the time I have for now. See you in two days!