One of my goals for this year is to try to produce more and consume less. Not in the green, fixed-planetary-resources sense [1]. I mean to make more things, ideas, contributions. To be more creative. Creative in literal sense of that word: creating.

Rands said it well in his post this week, "The Builder's High'. If you haven't read it, go do so now. I'll wait. (and while you're at it, if you don't have him followed or bookmarked or whatever, do that too.)

I agree with pretty much everything he said in there. The good feeling that comes from actually making soemthing. How that's especially true now in light of the constant crush of everyone else's creations (he called them "moments").

Making takes many forms. Since I stink at woodworking and gardening and painting, I'll stick to the things I do enjoy, like writing and coding and cooking. Those fit less into the traditional mold of "building" or "making" but that's OK.

I want to take it one step further. Here are my three categories in value order. Numbers 1 and 2 we just spoke of, but 3 is new.

1. Consume. This is watching TV, playing video games, trashy reading. Sure I'm going to keep doing that, but it's not energizing.

2. Produce. Cooking a meal, learning something interesting. Maybe even reading something intellectually challenging, but that's pushing it.

3. Produce, In Public. Now, this is the toughie. It's one thing to do something creative, another to put yourself out there and tell poeple what you did, and why. By sharing the product, by talking people through the choices you made to get there, you're opening yourself up to criticism. But why not!

That is part of the reason why I reworked my blog over the holiday break, so I'd have a nicer platform for writing. Anything to lower the bar to produce.

[1] I'm not anti-green. I really appreciate the environmental warriors out there who walk the walk with real life choices to consume less. That's just not my bailiwick, for now at least.

I liked this week's episode of This American Life. The idea is there are seven topics that you should avoid in conversation because they are always boring. I like this list!

Here is the transcript.  I repeat the list here.

1. How you slept.
2. Your period.
3. Health. Of course if it's something serious, then that's conversation worthy, but normal sniffles, aches, and pains? No good.
4. Your dreams.  Not big aspirations, this is literally what you dreamt last night
5. Money.
6. Diet. What you can and can't eat.
7. Route. How you got here, what way you're going to get home.

I will endeavor to not waste all of your time droning on about any of these topics.

Today in a box I came across my old K&R. Probably the most valuable book I've owned. My copy has been heavily used.

But the unexpected, fun thing was finding an old label on the back cover.

There is a lot in there.

• January 1994. I had just graduated college, driven cross country with my friend Shig, and started my first post-college job. I would have been in that job four months or so and realized that I should just stop borrowing someone else's copy (probably Larry Claman's) and buy my own.
• Purchased at Quantum Books, a great technical bookstore in the shadow of MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It's no longer there. The bar that is there now (Meadhall) is a nice place, and I'm a big fan of beer, but it's not the same.
• According to an inflation calculator, $35 in 1994 is $55 today. That's expensive for a little book, especially to the twenty-two year old me.
• Note the email address: [email protected]. This was back when mom and pop dialup ISP's where what we all used, people and businesses alike. This particular one, Software Tool & Die, was my private email address at the time too. (Aside: they claim to be the first public dialup ISP, and I have no reason to doubt them)

It was fun being reminded of all this stuff. So the lesson of the story: it's still worth buying books, and when you do, don't remove the labels.

Update with actuals from Halloween 2012:  It was a banner year.

You may be giving out candy later today. What can you expect? Let's look at some data.  This post summarizes the past three Halloweens.

As you can see we live in a pretty popular neighborhood.  Each year has its own story.

• 2009 - our first year in our new neighborhood. We had no idea that this was such a popular trick-or-treating spot. I ran out of candy at 8:00, turned out the lights, and hid in the back of the house. Shameful.
• 2010 - a fine year.  No complaints.
• 2011 - we moved to a new house just around the corner.  I figured the quieter street would mean fewer kids -- not so! What I didn't appreciate was the attractive power of my next door neighbor's insane decorations. Luckily my wife came back with emergency supplies just in time.

And how busy do things get?  Darn busy.

During the busiest 15 minute period last year I was serving a kid every twenty seconds or so.  When bursting this is close to my max current candy-dispensing throughput.

If you come by my house this year you'll see me again, handing out candy with one hand and scribbling hash marks with the other.   I'll update the data in my public spreadsheet.

I've developed a nice little way to manage my work in progress folders.

I keep a bunch of folders around where I can stick things that are in-flight: one for home projects, one for blogs, etc. I like accumulating ideas in there, one idea per file, that I can come back to and fuss over until something is ready.

The folder is flypaper for ideas and notes.  My blog folder has about twenty files right now.

Using "ls", and relying on file and directory modification times, is a useful way to keep track of all these files.  Here's how.

As projects are finished I move them into a "done" folder. This gets them out of the way.  A useful side effect is the modification time of the done directly itself gets updated.

The in-flight projects I care about most are the ones most recently updated: as an idea gets older it becomes less and less interesting.  When looking at this directory I use the "ls -ltr" command.  "l" means long (so you can see dates), "t" means sort by modification time, and "r" reverses that sort, so you see latest modified on the bottom.

The old files are at the top where I don't worry about them.  Some even scroll off the top of the screen, that's fine.  The done folder is a nice visual line for when something was last completed (say, published).  Having a separate color for directories makes this visually apparent.  And the bottom of the list are those most recently modified. Generally I work on the bottom up. Sometimes I go back to an old idea and add some notes. That bumps it to the top of the line -- it is interesting again.

I probably type "ls -ltr" at least 5 times an hour.  I've never aliased it since my muscle memory is so strong (but maybe I still should).  

It's been nearly eleven years since 9/11 and I still think about Danny fairly often. Sometimes I think about the wife, sons, family, and friends that he left behind. I'm sure they miss him terribly.

More often, though, I think of how his life relates to mine. We were about the same age in 2001, but not peers. I was an engineer at his company, Akamai.  He was a force of nature.

So when I think of Danny, I think about...

• how much he did in his thirty-one years.
• all the great things that have happened to me since I was thirty-one. Two wonderful kids, amazing life experiences with my lovely wife, good career stuff.
• what a positive, can-do outlook accomplish. Both for yourself and others. Danny had that in spades.

If I was able to ask Danny how to best honor him, I think he'd tell me something amazing with urgency. He'd then kick me in the pants to go do it.  

I've lost my ability to concentrate. I knew this before I started my time off, but thought it wasn't so bad. Hey, maybe it's actually a sign of being a good multitasker. Obviously, that is crap.

Now that I'm on sabbatical and I really need to concentrate. The external distractions I can deal with: shut off email and IM, take the editor full screen. What has me concerned is even with those tricks I still have a hard time. It's me. My mind wanders. I think about of that other thing I was going to do; wonder what's going on with that news thing that has no immediate bearing on me.

As Yoda said, "you must unlearn what you have learned." I'm trying these things:

• Reading. Not blogs, but books. Business stuff is OK, but fiction is better. Best: dense science fiction -- that requires concentration. I don't view this as entertainment (which it primarily is) but exercise.
• Coding. Anything less than a three hour block of time is almost worthless. But once the Flow comes, it is sooo good.
• Watching lectures. The drier the better.

I'll report back in a month if my concentration is any ... wait, what was I saying?

Over the past 20 years I've worked on interesting problems, delivered some great software, learned a bunch, and worked alongside bright people. And had fun. It's a fulfilling career. What has gone well is due to a little hard work and a lot of good fortune for which I'm grateful.

But now I'm taking some time off, maybe a month or two, maybe as much as six. It's my first sabbatical of sorts. (I'm still not sure sabbatical is the right word.)

So, why? I have three reasons.

• I want to sharpen up my tech skills. I didn't like the atrophy I was seeing. Management will do that to you -- at least it was doing it to me. Sure, you write a few little things (utilities, tests, page-long SQL queries) and go to code reviews, but that isn't the same as "real software." More importantly, the longer it's been since you've coded, the harder it is to just pick it back up.
• I want to explore technical areas that I didn't have time or an excuse to explore before. Mobile is the first example, there are more.
• I feel the need to put myself out there. Being part of teams is useful and gratifying, but you can hide in there too. I want to work on my own projects, not for ego, but for motivation. I am already out of my comfort zone.

I'm not looking for a career change. I like software engineering management. And I know that I'm a better manager than code-all-day hacker. This is about proficiency with the tools and branching out.

So it's been two weeks now: what have I gotten done?

• Took a vacation to Hawaii.
• Got my first toy iPhone app running.
• Made three dishes from my Indian cookbook (thanks for the pointer Devin).
• Wrote my first blog post.
• Made it through the DMV and lived to tell the tale.

The biggest change so far has been in my mindset. When I first considered this I had no clue what I'd do; now my "ideas" folder is chock-full and growing. It is creative and exhilarating.

That said, this is all still new and I'm figuring out the how's and the what's. If you have suggestions or advice I'd love to hear it.