Qaad

I’ve decided that if I have to be in an ecosystem, it’ll be Apple’s. I currently have an iPhone, a Apple Watch, and I use the Airpods Pro daily.

I’m a programmer, and an engineer. I love to tinker with stuff. electrical, mechanical, software. Most of the time. But as I get older (now 26 so not too old, but old enough to remember my mom’s tiny blue Nokia as the first cell phone in the house) and busier with life, I’ve realized that there’s some stuff I want to just work. I don’t care if I can customize it, I don’t care if I have to spend a few minutes getting used to a new layout change that was “forced” on me… For me, my phone isn’t something to fool around with, hack, or mod out the wazoo. It’s a business tool. My watch helps me keep track of my health, and all I have to do is put it on and keep it charged. The Airpods are so seamless to use it’s silly. For this part of my life (phone, watch/health, listening), I want the absolute lowest amount of friction.

I can also defer software updates as long as I like, which is more than I can say for say Windows. I used the same OS from 2016 to 2020 because I didn’t want to update to the new layouts. My iPhone would ask me to update every so often, but I’d just hit cancel and that’d be it until the next major update.

Apple is also a hardware company to begin with, as opposed to other companies with ecosystems, so with that I at least feel like they care a little bit less about making money off my data because they’re already making money off me buying the hardware and iCloud.

I highly recommend the focus on the family Radio Theatre dramatization of Anne of Green Gables! Obviously focus on the family is highly problematic and this is no endorsement, but you can find the CD version used. The score and sound production is high quality, and Anne is played by Mae Whitman, who voices Katara in Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Currently reading Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte, and in tandem I’m also going through HBR Project Management by Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez.

I’m restructuring my whole organization structure around PARA and CODE as described in BASB (It resonated with me because I realized I was already doing a form of PARA with my work files), and with that using Project Management as a primer for establishing how to complete my personal projects (I’ve always been bad at this because somehow I never registered personal stuff as projects in the way that I register my work projects). I’m an engineer so I have some project management experience, but I know I’m missing knowledge here and there so this is a twofer in educating myself on managing both my projects at work and my projects at home.

I’m also reading my way through Hamlet after becoming obsessed with the Kenneth Branagh adaptation. I’ve listened to two separate Librivox dramatizations and bought a dramatized version on Libro.fm.