My 2016 Learning Plan: Timeboxing, Better Photos, and Tech

Every so often I decide it’s high time I start learning some new skills. My first “learning binge” was a pretty successful one, as I accomplished everything I hoped I would. My second one took a little longer than I hoped, but in the end I still hit a couple of good goals. There are a few kinks I need to work out of both projects but they are more or less in the wild. This time around, there’s a list of things I want to learn and project I want to work on and release. Much like last time I will use those projects to learn new things, but there’s a new challenge: time management.

Timeboxing

I’m sure plenty of you can related to me here, but between my phone, my iPad, and the Internet, I get pretty easily distracted. I’ve tried scheduling 2 Hours of No Screen Time, which has been great. However, when I working, I would like to be less distracted. I’ve decided to give timeboxing (and a few other things a try). Timeboxing allocates a fixed time period, called a time box, to each planned activity. So basically when I say I’m going to write a blog post, that’s all I do for 25 minutes. This is called the Pomodoro Technique. Based on a cooking timer, you are supposed to do 25 minute of focused work then take a 5 minute break. I will turn my phone over and silence it, and I have added the Strict Workflow Chrome extension. This will blacklist a bunch of websites for 25 minutes (or however you customize it) then whitelist them for 5 minutes. It’s been a big help! I have been slowly adding more and more sites to the list.

[bctt tweet=”Turning off most notifications and closing apps will help me focus on what I need to.” username=”jcasabona”]

Moving forward I want to learn how to just focus myself by completely eliminating other distractions. This includes turing off most push notifications on my iPhone, virtually all of them on my iPad, and closing chat windows and other things that vie for my attention while I’m working.

Take Better Photos

I picked up a Nikon D3300 over the summer and have been loving it. Erin’s parents also got the Tamron 55-300mm Telephoto Lens for me for Christmas so I’ve got to play around with that for the last couple of months. I have been making at attempt to shoot only in manual with manual focus. While I manage to get some nice shots, I should really learn what everything means and how they affect photos. My brother has been a big help with that, but since Erin and I are going to Italy for our honeymoon, I’d really like to be ready. Perhaps I will pick up a photography book. I’m open to recommendations!

The Tech Side

This wouldn’t be much of a learning plan for me without adding some tech based stuff to it! Here’s a shortlist, and how I plan to accomplish it:

• Grid Systems, specifically Susy: The question of which grid system I use comes up a lot and I haven’t had a good answer (or any, really). For each project, I’d really just start with my base Sass mixins and common CSS and that’s it. At work Susy seems to be favored and we just started a new project I’m heading up the front end stuff, so I’ve decided to do it with Susy Grids.
• Angular: This one has been on my list for a while, and while I’ve done a project or 2 with it, I don’t use it regularly enough. I’d like to brush up, and then deeply understand it. I hope to make this the primary way I interact with the WordPress REST API, something else I’d like to dig into. I plan to continue one of my side projects with Angular, as well as develop a simple WordPress site using the REST API; I have had an idea for a cigar plugin for a while, so I might do that one.
• WooCommerce: This could be due to all of the buzz from WooConf, but I’d really like to dig into WooCommerce a bit. I have long term plans for a WP in One Month store where it could come in handy, but in the meantime, I’ve signed up for WP101’s WooCommerce course. I’ve very excited to start watching the videos!

[bctt tweet=”I want Angular.js to be the primary way I interact with the WordPress REST API” username=”jcasabona”]

As usual I never feel like there’s enough time to learn everything I want to, but I think I’ve laid out a pretty good plan here and have concrete ways to accomplish it. Now it’s just a matter of balancing this with the wedding, which is 2 months away!