{"id":1793,"date":"2022-06-29T23:48:37","date_gmt":"2022-06-30T04:48:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/?p=1793"},"modified":"2022-06-29T23:48:37","modified_gmt":"2022-06-30T04:48:37","slug":"weeknote-for-6-26-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/2022\/06\/29\/weeknote-for-6-26-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"Weeknote for 6\/26\/2022"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Elections<\/h2>\n<p>\ud83d\ude10<\/p>\n<p><strong>I researched my primary races and voted.<\/strong> I like to base my votes on some degree of principle, but since I don&#8217;t understand the issues or candidates in much detail, I end up relying on proxies, like newspaper endorsements. My favorite is the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.isba.org\/judicialevaluations\">Illinois State Bar Association&#8217;s judicial evaluations<\/a>. Very clear and objective looking.<\/p>\n<p>This time some of the candidates were impossible to find online, which made them easy to rule out. In my book, if you want to be a public servant, you have to communicate with the public. These days that means leaving a record of yourself on the web in the form of a website or at least media interviews.<\/p>\n<h2>Productivity<\/h2>\n<p>\ud83d\ude10<\/p>\n<p><strong>I&#8217;m reorganizing my email and task management around Kanban.<\/strong> This system update project is teaching me that even if your problems would be solved by implementing your grand vision, you can still make a lot of progress by making smaller changes. I&#8217;m hoping this Kanban workflow will be an example. But it will at least be an experiment.<\/p>\n<h2>Food<\/h2>\n<p>\ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p><strong>Maxwell House Colombian Ground Coffee: 4\/5.<\/strong> It&#8217;s a decent everyday coffee with only some occasional sourness, and I stopped noticing the inconsistency after a while.<\/p>\n<p><strong>My opinion of oolong tea has risen.<\/strong> I&#8217;ve been getting through my box of it by drinking it at work. Some teas get bitter as they cool. The oolong from Twinings tends to stay mild, so I&#8217;ve been content with it as my everyday plain tea. Next I want to see how green tea compares.<\/p>\n<h2>People skills<\/h2>\n<p>\ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p><strong>I&#8217;ve started a reading project on people skills.<\/strong> I&#8217;ve had this on the backburner for years, and the catalyst to finally start it was <em>Software Estimation<\/em>&#8216;s discussion of principled negotiation, largely drawn from the well-known book <em>Getting to Yes<\/em>. I have a reading order for the first few books in my head, so I&#8217;ll follow that and then see where things go.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Conversationally Speaking<\/em> is a nice intro to a central people skill.<\/strong> I found this back in college and picked it as the best general conversation book I&#8217;d found. The advice seemed on point and the examples not too stilted. It covers the core dimensions of conversation as well as some key trouble spots.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>The Art of Civilized Conversation<\/em> focuses on etiquette.<\/strong> I picked this up a few years ago just because I liked the idea. One helpful feature is its outline of a conversation&#8217;s natural flow. Keeping to this flow lets the interpersonal boundaries shift naturally. You&#8217;re not invading people&#8217;s space with strong feelings just after you&#8217;ve been introduced.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Elections \ud83d\ude10 I researched my primary races and voted. I like to base my votes on some degree of principle, but since I don&#8217;t understand the issues or candidates in much detail, I end up relying on proxies, like newspaper &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/2022\/06\/29\/weeknote-for-6-26-2022\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[146,183,213,50,155,167],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coffee","category-elections","category-people-skills","category-productivity","category-tea","category-weeknotes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1793"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1794,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1793\/revisions\/1794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thinkulum.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}