Episode 16 - Research Recap Eight: Life & Work Planning
Excited to be back
Just finally am at the end of a two-week cold. I hope my voice holds out for this whole episode…
Moved from /journal to /log
Yes I know that this is a downgrade in the short term, but I hope it will help me better organize my thoughts in the long-term. Also in the medium-term I will make the /log page better-looking.
Spent a few days on my Life Plan
Established my priorities
Work is #8.
Got clearer about my life mission
Enable thinking. Simliar to Doug Engelbart’s augmenting humans.
Dropped the word “master”
There are some negative connotations with the word.
My Future of Coding Plan
Three versions so far
I think it’s important to both show you my work, but also have a clean and readable final draft. Doing both is a little tricky…
-
/about was a good summary of the past two years, justifying my current path
-
/plan v1. Written at 10pm after inspired by Chris Granger’s Strange Loop talk. Very open, questioning. The most important part was the user/customer table.
-
/plan v2 is still just a (five page!!) outline at this point. Hope to develop it by the end of this week, maybe next week.
Articulating the goal
Programming language as powerful as JavaScript but as easy to use as Facebook. Needs to answer the question: how do I know when I’m done?
Strategy: writer & podcaster
I showed my user/customer list to Dan Shipper. He immediately said, #5 seems like the right one. The more I thought about it, the more right it felt. I started telling people about it and got some great feedback:
-
Me “Equal parts elon Musk (Hyperloop), Andre Staltz (CycleJS), Nicky Case (Explorable Explainations & Patreon), Bret Victor (essays and talks), Justin Lafazan (NextGen Summit FB community), Sam Harris (thinking in public),” “and zero parts humble” says my brother
-
Eli, “yeah this is clearly what makes sense for you.”
-
My mom says “building your brand”
-
Dad says “you keep teaching me”
-
Grandma says “I better take care of myself. Gives me incentive to live long enough to see what you come up with.”
-
Me “I feel like this is the right path for me because I‘m terrified both of success and failure.”
-
Ben “thought leader? You mean ‘pretentious asshole’? Scholar or researcher is better.”
Inspire others
This works as long as I don’t care about control or money, which works because I have all the privledge.
Elon Hyperloop
Bret Victor Learnable Programming
Emailed him the day after reading.
The Coding Space.
WoofJS.
Next Steps
1. Finish writing Future of Coding Plan
Should take another week or two.
2. Make is sustainable
Talk to foundations, think tanks, companies, and/or start a Patreon. Please hit me up if you have ideas.
3. Put “a bow” on The Coding Space and WoofJS
A series of essays which will also be talks:
- “So you have an app idea”
- “So you want to learn how to code”
- “So you want someone else to learn to code”
- “So you want to make tech more inclusive”