Blog
The 12 Week Year by Brian Moran - Book Notes, Summary, Review
The 12 Week Year will fundamentally change how you think about goal planning and working towards those goals. Who Should Read This Book? I would recommend this book to anyone interested in setting and working on goals. Even if you have already read plenty of productivity or goal-setting books, this tactic of the 12 week year is extremely helpful and motivating. Take the time to try it out for one or two quarters and you’ll quickly see the value in this approach.
April 16, 2021
Jekyll - How To Determine Build Times
If you’re looking to optimize the build time of your Jekyll blog, it’s useful to know just how long each part of the build process takes. By using the profile flag at the end of your build command, you’ll be given an output of the build process summary and the site render stats. Here’s the command: bundle exec jekyll build --profile Here’s an example of the build process summary:
April 14, 2021
Overcoming The Blank Page As A Creator
As I sit down to write this article, I’m not starting from scratch. The idea for the article came from my Writing Topics list. The content for the article is being pulled from my Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) System in Obsidian. All I have to do is pull out the pieces and structure the content. Sure there is a bit more to it than that but by following this approach to content creation, I’ll never have the problem of starting with a blank screen.
April 12, 2021
Jekyll - How To Limit Posts During The Build Process
As your Jekyll blog grows in size over time, you might find that the build process takes longer to run. This can be frustrating if you just want to test out a small UI change. Luckily, the workaround for this is to limit the number of posts during the build process. Here’s the command: bundle exec jekyll serve --limit_posts 10 This will limit the build to 10 posts but you can change the number to be whatever you need.
April 7, 2021
Why Writing Blog Posts In Markdown Is A Game Changer
I enjoy writing my articles using Markdown as it offers a lot of benefits. I’m able to write without distraction. Plus my hands never need to leave the keyboard to format what I’m writing. I can make things bold, italicized, or underlined all while typing away on my keyboard. Markdown is a lightweight markup language that many people use in a variety of situations. From coding projects to technical writing to writing blog posts like I’m doing here.
April 5, 2021
Eat That Frog! by Brian Tracy - Book Notes, Summary, Review
Eat That Frog is all about doing that one thing, the thing that provides you with the most value in the long-term. If you can Eat That Frog first thing in the morning before anything else, you’ve set yourself up for success. Many of you will have heard of this concept before but if you’re like me you may not have read the original source. Who Should Read This Book? I would recommend this book to anyone looking to figure out the most important things they should be working on. The tasks or projects that will provide value to your life.
April 2, 2021
Jekyll - Creating External Links That Open In A New Tab
A common convention for external links is that they open in a new tab. The idea behind this is that you can easily go back to the previous tab if you need to. This makes it easy for users to return to your website. You might already know how to do this in plain HTML. However, if you’ve built your website in Jekyll like me, you’ll want to know how this can be achieved on your Jekyll website.
March 31, 2021
Keep A Web Dev Notebook To Learn More Effectively
If you have read my recent post: You Learn More Effectively By Practicing, you’ll know that I’ve consciously made an effort to continue building my web development knowledge. Over the last couple of years, I developed my knowledge in other areas to help with my current job. Topics like user guides and e-learning videos dominated my mind over keeping on top of the latest best practices of building a website.
March 29, 2021
Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky - Book Notes, Summary, Review
Cognitive Surplus was a thought-provoking but enjoyable book to read. It raised a lot of great points about the world we currently live in. A world where people are actively consuming media and have lots of “free time” when compared with previous generations. Read This Book On Amazon Who Should Read This Book? It’s difficult to recommend this book to a specific type of person as it provides a lot of value no matter who you are.
March 26, 2021
How To Remove A Post Category From The Blog Page In WordPress
If you have many different post categories on your WordPress website, you might want to funnel them to different pages. This is especially important to consider if you have included each of your post categories in your navigation menu. An overly-cluttered navigation structure can immediately turn users off from your website and can cause them to leave. On my website, for instance, you’ll see that I have an Articles section and a Book Notes section.
March 24, 2021
You Learn More Effectively By Practicing
I recently started back into building up my web development skills. A lot has changed in the time since I last actively made an effort to advance my knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript so I needed to catch up! With that in mind, I set about finding courses, tutorials, and YouTube videos that would help to build my knowledge. Let’s just say, there’s no shortage of great resources for this sort of thing.
March 22, 2021
Hooked by Nir Eyal - Book Notes, Summary, Review
Hooked by Nir Eyal outlines The Hook Model, a methodology for building habit forming products that improve a user’s life in some way. I found this to be a very interesting and informative book with lots of new concepts and terms related to marketing and product design. There’s something here for those working in the world of product design as well as outside observers. Read This Book On Amazon Who Should Read This Book? I would recommend this book to designers and to people working in product creation.
March 19, 2021
My Obsidian Setup - Mar 2021
I have been using Obsidian as my personal knowledge management (PKM) system for the last number of months. I, like many people, was hesitant to jump ship from tools like Notion or Evernote but after much deliberation at the time, I’m glad I decided to start using it. Just as an aside here, I didn’t stop using Notion completely. In fact, I think I’ve established an effective system using both applications but that’s a topic for another time.
March 15, 2021
How A UI Designer Uses Todoist
I recently revised the way I use Todoist to manage my work-related tasks as a UI Designer at the company where I work. After re-reading the book Getting Things Done by David Allen I realized that my task management process was over-complicated. This meant that I spent more time organizing tasks than doing them, which is a bad sign. After re-building my task management system, I thought it would be a good idea to share this setup with you to show you how a UI designer uses Todoist.
March 12, 2021
My Writing Workflow For Content Creation
I recently revised my content creation workflow to tie in better with my goal to develop a consistent writing habit. With that in mind, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to share with you my simplified writing workflow for content creation. This is how I operate each weekday to create content to share with you on this blog. My Content Creation Buckets If you’ve read my previous post on how batching tasks can increase your productivity, you’ll know that I operate my content creation by batching or chunking my work into defined groupings of tasks.
March 8, 2021
Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug - Book Notes, Summary, Review
Don’t Make Me Think was a transformative reading experience for me. It boils down a lot of complex and indepth usability research and best practices into easy to understand advice with examples. Read This Book On Amazon Who Should Read This Book? I would recommend this book to anyone interested or working in Usability design, Web design, and Web development. There are lots of great insights and guidelines for creating websites, apps, and designs that are highly usable.
March 5, 2021
UI Design Patterns - How To Handle Disabled Components
I recently had to do some research to figure out how to properly handle disabled fields and buttons (I’m collectively calling them components). This design pattern is quite often used across my designs so I wanted to be sure I was implementing it correctly. It turns out there was a lot I didn’t know about this design pattern. Despite that, I continued to research and develop my knowledge of designing disabled components.
March 3, 2021
Using Inboxes To Manage Your Thoughts And Ideas
Our brains are always thinking and processing. If each thought was a word, we would be able to generate enough content to produce a whole book every single day. You might not be completely shocked to read this if you are someone that is always having your best ideas in the shower or out on a run. Essentially anywhere that’s away from where you can action those thoughts and ideas.
March 1, 2021
Can A Rubik's Cube Help With Your Focus?
I recently wrote about the act of continuous learning and made a case for learning from and being inspired by others. In that article, I made reference to YouTuber Mike Boyd and in particular his video on learning to solve a Rubik’s Cube. In the video, Mike documents his journey of learning to solve a Rubik’s Cube in under 2 minutes, and in the end, he manages to achieve that goal.
February 22, 2021
A Simple But Effective Way To Learn Every Day
Just because you’ve left school doesn’t mean that you should stop learning. In fact, I would argue that you should never stop learning new things. From learning new skills to advance your career, to learning to making nutritious meals for your family, to learning how to build a website, there are so many possibilities. By embracing a growth mindset, that is, one that strives for continued learning and improvement, chances are that you’ll lead a more fulfilled and generally happier life.
February 15, 2021
Getting Things Done by David Allen - Book Notes, Summary, Review
Getting Things Done is widely considered a staple of the productivity world and is the go-to book recommended if you’re looking to become a more productive person. It’s the go-to book that many consider being the start of the “productivity revolution”. Who Should Read This Book? I would recommend this book to anyone that is overwhelmed by the tasks they have to do and manage in their lives.
February 12, 2021
Don’t Underestimate The Benefits Of A Day Job
In today’s day and age, many people can become their own boss by being a “content creator” or “knowledge worker”. The internet is full of ambitious and creative people that make their living solely online. This is absolutely amazing to realize and it’s easy to imagine yourself working in this way if that’s something you’re interested in. As someone that has the dream of someday working fully in this way, it is easy for me to feel less excited or passionate about my “day job”.
February 8, 2021
Peak by Anders Ericsson - Book Notes, Summary, Review
Reading Peak was an extremely motivational experience for me. The idea that everyone can improve with deliberate practice no matter how old you are is a really great message. By focusing on deliberate practice to build up your mental models you can grow far beyond a level that is simply “good enough”. I really enjoyed reading this book and would highly recommend it to others. Who Should Read This Book? I would recommend this book to anyone with a growth mindset.
February 5, 2021
How Task Batching Can Accelerate Your Productivity
As someone who writes blog posts pretty consistently and as a content creator in general, I find that I end up working on a lot of the same types of tasks quite regularly. Come up with an idea for a blog post, outline the post, research and write it, create a cover image, publish, share on social media. This content creation process acts like the process of tasks moving along a conveyor belt until completion.
February 1, 2021
The Accidental Creative by Todd Henry - Book Notes, Summary, Review
Reading The Accidental Creative by Todd Henry really opened my eyes to the fun and creativity that can be found in the world of designers and creators. As a UI designer, I now have a renewed motivation to continue to improve my craft and to create new things. If you take nothing else away from this book, then schedule time each week for unnecessary creating. This will build your creative muscle and help you to develop your idea generation muscles.
January 29, 2021