August 19, 2020
I’m usually annoyed with myself at the end of each day when I reflect on how little I accomplished with all the time I had. Today was no different. The only advancement I made on the Polish Elections was downloading the 2005 Presidential data and adding Warsaw’s districts to my shapefile. In total, this should have only taken an hour, but indulging in distractions like investigating Warsaw’s local elections, drawing the Vistula river, streaming my QGIS work, and (biggest of all) scrolling through Twitter, means I accomplished quite a bit less than I would like.
I think part of my issue is not having a detailed road map of how I want to complete my projects. Instead of breaking the projects into a few, still quite large, set of goals (like compile all Polish election data) it would be better if I formulate a detailed plan for how I’m going to complete the project. I’ve added a To Do section to the Polish Elections page where I have this plan laid out, and can cross off items as I go. As I continue to put more projects on the site, I’ll also be including these To Do lists. One additional benefit is they will remind me of how I planned to complete the project, rather than having to remember it all.
I’m also planning to institute some external restrictions on my Twitter usage, hopefully removing this deadly distraction from my work time, and allowing me to be more productive. Tomorrow should be a good test for these changes, and hopefully I’ll have a lot more to write about in my daily post.
Aaron Moriak 