
The Shopify ["cancel all the meetings" article](https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/03/tech/shopify-meetings/index.html) has taken up a lot of room in my brain since I first read it yesterday.

My first thought was "Hey, that's cool, a bunch of people just got time back, maybe they'll be more effective."

My second thought was "Hey, what was missing about how they communicate that they needed 75,000 hours of meetings?"

This change is a classic example of a dramatic swing in a big system from something most people hate (meetings) that will likely end up in a dramatic swing back to something most people hate (more meetings).

"Why do you think it will swing back?" You ask? 

What happens when you remove thousands of hours of meetings that had _some purpose_ and the way the group communicates required synchronous communication.

When you cancel all these meetings, what fills the gap?

They cleared up "76,000" hours but what if some of those meetings were useful?

Cancelling all the meetings doesn't magically make everyone in the company happy with how they communicate with each other. 

Instead there's now a gaping void of communication and everyone is going to have to scramble and figure out "how do I work in this new system?"

Don't get me wrong, I think most meetings could be replaced with asynchronous tools and processes, but the important part here is that they _weren't_. 

It's feels great to blow away an entire organization's planned meetings, dust off your hands and say "hey, I did a good thing"  but **every existing meeting that matters needs a way to replace what was there or it will just end up on the calendar again.**

I had a few takeaways, from an organizational change management perspective:
- **start small, share what you learn along the way.** You'll be more successful, faster by starting small, finding what works and create a process for reducing the need for meetings. 
- **Strive for communication mastery.** Meetings suck, but absent or unclear communication sucks worse. If you and your team can strengthen your asynchronous communication, you can probably get rid of most of your meetings. 

In practice, getting cozy on my arm chair quarter backing chair, here's what I would have done as a C-Suite making this decision:

- Start with the C-Suite deciding what their least favorite meeting together is and use the second to last meeting slot to discuss why it needed to exist, if the content is still important 
- Use the last meeting slot to determine a few ways they think they can successfully communicate the content asynchronously 
- Test it out for the next few weeks and then asynchronously retrospective what's working and what's not 
- Bonus points: do it in a public channel in the organization's communication tool of choice and model the process
- Pick another meeting to cancel and do the same process

The above will take more work than canceling all meetings at once, but it's principled in its approach and it creates an alternative space for the communication to continue. 

# Try Using Murmur

A small plug:

[Murmur](https://murmur.com) is an asynchronous decision making platform and it's _built_ to make the process above delightful. You can use Murmur to propose this idea, get consent from the group asynchronously and once you've all decided you want to do it, it will nudge you in the future about how it's going.

As an alternative to using those two last meetings, cancel them instead and propose a decision to "Cancel Meeting X" in [Murmur](https://murmur.com) and propose an agreement called "How we Communicate". 


Canceling all your meetings sounds great but what fills the communication void it creates?

Maybe Don't Just Cancel 75,000 Hours of Meetings


I'm embarking on a new chapter of life: **joining Murmur, a platform that will change the future of work.**

On Tuesday, October 13th, I'll be joining the team (as employee #2) at Murmur to build collaborative software to help teams decide how they're going to work together. We're doing this by guiding them through the process of making working agreements where everyone gives consent.

[Aaron Dignan](https://aarondignan.com) (author of [Brave New Work](https://www.bravenewwork.com/) and Founder of [The Ready](https://theready.com/)) reached out to me to talk about self-management a few weeks ago and he introduced me to the vision for Murmur. When he asked me "what do you think?" the first thought in my mind was "my whole adult life has led me to this moment of saying 'this was what I was made to do.'".

Thankfully, Aaron thought so too, because he asked me if building the Murmur platform was something I wanted to be a part of! As an alternative, he gave me the opportunity to simply give advice about how I would build the software. If I did decide to join, the decisions would be the ones I'd want to make anyways.

I wasn't _looking_ for something new, in fact, I was preparing to dig into my path at Webflow deeper doing this same type of work, but within teams rather than as software. Because I wasn't looking, I had mixed emotions: I knew this was a rare opportunity that I would regret not taking but I had also started to settle in to making an impact at Webflow with people I enjoy working with on a product I think will also change the future of innovation.

After a week of grappling, I told Aaron that I'm all in.

I'm excited to be a part of the inception of Murmur and excited to see what's to come in building software to help teams decide how to work together in a way that puts humans at the center of the process.

# Summary

**Where are you headed?**

A startup called [Murmur](https://murmur.com).

**What will you be doing?**

Building a platform for teams to collaborate on how they decide to work together. I'll be involved in designing and building the software and helping to create a team.

**What's interesting about it?**

- This is a stepping stone to helping teams and companies move towards self-organizing. One of my greatest passions at work is helping teams do the meta work of deciding how they work together, work on process improvement and increase clarity.
- This platform _doesn't exist_ today. I'll be involved in helping get the software topology and software systems up and running and building out a team to help it start and help it scale.
- This will be the second self-organizing structured organization I've been a part of but the first one where there's someone who knows what works and what doesn't and how to figure out what works and what doesn't in a way that makes me confident we'll do it the most authentic way.

**What's scary about it?**

As always, I'll reach for an analogy involving canoes...

Every time I've changed jobs in the past, I've brought my canoe to an existing reservoir and helped clean it up or make it better, but the hole was dug and the water was there.

With Murmur, I'm coming into a plot of land, a map, a blueprint and some shovels and the reservoir has to be dug and filled. For me, that comes with a great amount of responsibility.



I'm embarking on a new chapter of life: joining Murmur, a platform that will change the future of work.

Joining Murmur


**_The most important part of being a successful contributor on a distributed team is being equipped with the right tools and frameworks to help you transition into this new paradigm._**

# My Distributed Journey

Before working from home, I'd worked at a number of in-office jobs, the last of which was working on Software at Zappos. I had a 30 minute commute both ways to an open-office where I would sit down at my desk around 9AM, interact with peers almost all day, clock out around 5:30 or 6 and drive again for 30 minutes.

I started working from home in 2015 for Walmart Labs on a fully distributed team, building software for other teams to use. I transitioned into a job where I could wake up whenever I wanted (which didn't change), my commute was 15 seconds to a guest bedroom in our house, where no one else knew (nor did they care, it turned out) what my hours were, where no one knew if I decided to wear jammies and by the end of the day, I could be confident I didn't have to worry about sitting in traffic.

If you go into a change like this unprepared, it's easy to end up confused, feeling lost and even in a place where you think that this "remote thing" isn't for you. Despite that feeling, I challenge you to consider some tips and techniques I've found to help keep me grounded and help me do my best work and stay on task without also sacrificing my personal life.

**The tips that I've found to be most useful for my success and mental health are:**

- **Maintain your personal routines**
- **Connect virtually with co-workers as often as possible**
- **Start your week and your day with a concrete plan**
- **Create a dedicated workspace**
- **Stop Working When You Should Stop**

# Tip 1: Maintain Your Personal Routines

Most people think that their greatest temptation when working from home will be _not_ to work, however, I've found that my temptation is to _keep_ working all the time. The best way you can equip yourself for either temptation is to **create and maintain _personal_ routines and rituals that bookend when you want your day to start and end**.

Here's what my routine looks like:


- I wake up and make a coffee between 5:30-6AM.
- I write or pursue a hobby (reading or 3d printing) for an hour or two before my daughter wakes up.
- I make my daughter her breakfast.
- I walk the dogs.
- I take a shower and get dressed for work.
- I make another coffee, fill up my water bottle, give my family a kiss and head to my office.
- I take my mouse and keyboard out of their box, turn them on, turn on my monitor and...
- START WORK...and work until END WORK.
- I turn off my monitor, turn off my external mouse and keyboard and put them in a box. I always try to leave my desk "pristine".
- I go downstairs and have dinner with my family.
- I do bedtime routine with my daughter.
- I walk the dogs.

As you can see, my day is bookended with things I care about and _can't_ skip. Find the things that matter to you and bookend your day with those so that you know "it's time to start work" and "it's time to wrap up work".

**Note: You may think you don't already have rituals or routines, but things like "eating breakfast" and "showering" are good anchors for setting up rituals and routines to fill the time you may get back from no longer having a long commute. It's easy to think "I can sleep in now!" but the best thing you can do to be successful is to find ways to fill that newly acquired time. It may be spending time reading, exercising, finding a new hobby or if you have a family, spending time with them.**

# Tip 2: Connect Virtually with Co-Workers As Often As Possible

If you're a knowledge worker that's used to putting on a pair of headphones at the beginning of the day and hacking away on the computer by yourself, you may think work from home is going to give you that much more time to hack away at stuff. Now that you're work from home though, there are probably a lot of opportunities you once had in an office to collaborate or socialize that's now been stripped from you.

## Setup Pair Programming/Maker Sessions

Whatever you work on, you're probably not in a situation where you need to do it alone, so check in with a co-worker and ask them if you can schedule some time to pair on something. As a developer, I setup 4-5 sessions a week that last anywhere from 2-5 hours (it's important to be aware of when you or your pairing partner have hit a wall, this kind of work is mentally a lot more taxing than it is when you work alone). In most roles, there are opportunities to collaborate with a teammate or someone else in the organization on work that either of you are working on. This time doubles as an opportunity to interact with others outside of your neighbors/roommates/family.

## 10% Time

If your company gives you 10% time, this is a great time to try to connect with someone you may not normally cross paths with. It's also a great way to use that time to interact. 10% time is an opportunity for you to step outside of your daily role/routine/tasks and focus on things like writing, finding creative ways to use existing tools or building tools. You can also start a book club with some co-workers and use 10% time to have a weekly zoom where you talk about what you're reading. If you do this, a great way to keep it up is to make sure that you make it a ritual, by doing it the same time every week and putting it on people's calendars.

## Team Building

One of the things I've done that I've found to be a lot of fun, especially at companies where team building is encouraged, is to play boardgames online together over Zoom.

If you're not using it now, **talk to your company about investing in Zoom**.

# Tip 3: Start Your Week and Your Day with a Concrete Plan

When I worked in an office it was common for someone to catch me within the first 30 minutes of my day and ask me to help with something reactive. If you're in this boat, you'll find that Slack (or whatever tool your company uses for communication) is now the avenue people will use to "tap you on the shoulder". Working from home has a happy side effect of giving _you_ the ability to control your day.

The best way to control your day: plan at the end of the day every day.

At the end of the day every day, I write down what I _plan to do tomorrow_. I write it down with as much concrete detail as possible. If you work on a team that uses sprints or iterations or some version of long-term (weekly or bi-weekly planning), use your planned tasks to determine what you'll do tomorrow and do it in detail based on where you left off today. I usually write down one big task and 2-3 little tasks.

When you sit down at your desk (more on this coming up), _just do what you had planned_. Don't open Slack. Don't check your email. Don't open Twitter. **Open the tool you use for doing work and check off your tasks you had planned.**

Something really amazing happens when you plan your day and don't have an easy way for people to interrupt you: you find yourself done with everything you planned to do and sometimes more than you planned in half the time it would've taken you in the office.

# Tip 4: Create a Dedicated Workspace

Having a dedicated workspace has been critical in working from home. Every time my wife and I have moved, we've looked for a place that has a room that I can use as a dedicated office. As you start to work from home and find that you're using video conferencing more frequently or find that your roommates/family are now a part of your "daily office", you'll find that those little interruptions can add up in a big way.

If you have the luxury of an extra room that's not your bedroom or a main throughfair during the day, use that room as your workspace.

## Get a Good Desk

An adjustable desk and a comfy chair can go a long way.

I've had a few desks (I built my first two. It seemed cool at the time, but trust me, invest in a desk from people who specialize in this) but I've found the [Autonomous AI standing desk](https://www.autonomous.ai/standing-desks/smartdesk-2-home) or the [Husky adustable workbench](https://www.homedepot.com/p/Husky-52-in-Adjustable-Height-Workbench-Table-with-2-Drawers-in-White-HOLT5202BJ1/307723266?) to be two I enjoy using.

## Get a Good Chair

As for chairs, I have _only ever owned_ a [Herman Miller Sayl](https://www.hermanmiller.com/products/seating/office-chairs/sayl-chairs/). Don't be cheap on your chair. Your butt's in it most of the day and your back will thank you if you spend the time and money finding the right one for you.

## Anything is Better Than Your Bed

**Whatever you do, don't work from bed.**

If you have a family or roommates, you're probably going to be tempted to campout in your bedroom, but beware of this because of the challenge you'll face of feeling like life starts to blend together. If you absolutely have to use your bedroom, still get a desk and find a "shutdown ritual" that helps remind you that you are no longer at work, you are at life.

If you don't have the luxury of an extra room, try out getting a [screen for a desk](https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/bekant-screen-for-desk-gray-70268811/), a [room divider](https://www.amazon.com/ACME-3-Panel-Wooden-Screen-Cherry/dp/B002WGJHB8/ref=sr_1_2?qid=1583705663&refinements=p_36%3A1253524011&s=home-garden&sr=1-2) or my favorite [an IKEA Kallax bookshelf that you can mount in the middle of a room](https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/kallax-shelf-unit-white-30275861/).

# Tip 5: Stop Working When You Should Stop

As I mentioned in a previous tip: you're probably going to find that you actually get _a lot more done_ than you used to in an office. This probably means that you'll be done a lot earlier in your day than you used to. In the first weeks and months, be kind to yourself and "clock out" when you're done. I can't tell you how many days I have wasted by trying to squeeze out a little bit more in the name of "I'm supposed to be butt's in seat until 5PM" when my brain was mush and I'd already conquered the day early on.

This new way of working is _amazing_ and the dopamine hit you'll get from increased effectiveness is going to think you're actually being more efficient. Don't trick yourself into thinking that you are a robot and you have increased efficiency (humans are terrible at efficiency, our greatest strength is our ability to be effective).

# Work Well. Live Well. Don't Burn Out.

Long-term working from home (or remote...or distributed, whatever you call it) has been one of the greatest things to happen to me in terms of being an effective contributor, a balanced person and as someone who wants to enjoy the fruits of having family. I see my wife and daughter at the beginning of every day, at lunch and I have dinner and do bedtime routine with them every night. I am so grateful to have that time back to invest it in the people I care about.

If you're in a position where you're working from home, I'd encourage you, try out these tips, be "present" at work when you're at work, be present at home when you're not at work and experiment with different tips and techniques yourself to find the balance you want out of life.


Tips that I've found to help me be successful in my transition into remote work, working from home.

Tips For Being Successful at Working From Home Long-Term


In a Gartner article on [how peer feedback boosts employee performance](https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/peer-feedback-boosts-employee-performance/), Jessica Knight, research director at Gartner, said "High-quality peer input has become an essential part of effective performance feedback".

Every company I've worked for—Zappos, Walmart Labs and Webflow—in the past 8 years has incorporated peer feedback in the annual performance review (Webflow is the only one that doesn't tie compensation to this feedback).

For high performers and contributors who interact with others across an organization this can be a really great way to receive feedback, but the hidden superpower for people in these roles is that they have the ability to _give_ insightful feedback.

One of the most important changes I made to how I give feedback was **to start keeping notes for all of the peers I interact with through the year, then to reflect on and summarize those to write my peer feedback.**

# Step 1: Keep Notes Through the Year

Immediately after interacting with someone for the first time, I create a file in a folder in Dropbox called `people` with that person's name in it and use a text expander snippet to add a list item for that interaction. As an example, if I need help with a particular feature I don't know a lot about from a peer named "Jim Johns", I would created a file in Dropbox called `people/jim-johns.md` with the following:


```md
# Summary

# Notes

- **2020-02-21T13:04** I needed some help with the slider element feature and Jane said "Jim knows a lot about it". Jim was really helpful and the way he walked through the internals of the feature felt like we were exploring it together and he was letting me learn it and ask questions. I was really comfortable asking questions that felt silly because he often responded to my questions by first saying "great question!".
```

Some things to note about the above example:
- **I keep a timestamp (format: [year]-[month]-[day]T[hour]:[minute]).** I find the timestamp to be helpful because it helps me zoom out and if I have notes that are negative, I can look at my journal and see how _I_ was feeling that day. I find that including "I was having a hard day" also helps to show that sometimes "negative" feedback comes from where I was that day and give context that "maybe this was just me on that day" if I have any negative feedback.
- **I write about _what_ our interaction was about.** The what's important to me because it will help me recall the situation better when I'm summarizing and will likely help the person I'm giving feedback to recall specific situations.
- **I write how the interaction made me feel.** How I felt during/afterwards is important because it helps express what behaviors make me feel special. I generally only write about the behaviors that were positive (if I experienced behaviors that made me feel hurt or frustrated, I try to address that as soon as it happens. I've yet to have an interaction that ended negatively that repeated itself.)
- **I include the person who connected us**. I believe connectors are critical contributors at work. Whenever I include the connector, it makes it easier to search the whole directory for people's names if they request feedback. If I find Jane's name numerous times, I can add that to the summary that I keep for her.

# Step 2: Review and Summarize

Once I have 4-5 interactions, I'll try to summarize feedback into my `# Summary` section. I don't usually wait until peer feedback time to do this, but I usually do it when I can see that there are patterns of strengths, behaviors and qualities of a person that stand out. I also add a ⭐to a few of the interactions that I want to highlight to my feedback. I find specific examples as a good way to indicate I genuinely mean what I wrote in the summary.

# Step 3: Identify Opportunities for Growth

There are always opportunities for a person to grow. Sometimes they'll feel negative, but other times it'll be opportunities around skills/strengths an individual has that they want to refine/get better at. A really great way to share this feedback is to find any interactions where you caught a glimmer of something _stellar_ that you think that person has an opportunity to do more of that will also help them shine.

# Give Awesome Peer Feedback

For the past 4 years I have had to give anywhere between 12-15 peer reviews per cycle and this process of capturing over time and collating at review time has made giving feedback an enriching, stress-free experience!

This is also helpful for people who you haven't interacted with in a long time or don't interact with that frequently. This is a wonderful gift to those people because it shows you cared enough to be prepared and that you, someone they chose to request feedback from, took the time to reflect on your interactions with them.

I should also note that people have asked me for feedback outside of these cycles and when they do, it makes it a lot easier to give that feedback because I've already done the work to collect my thoughts!

[Thanks to David Hoang for inspiring me to write this post. His twitter post recommending managers keep a document on "what they've done" nudged me to write about the documents I keep to give awesome peer feedback.](https://twitter.com/davidhoang/status/1230886326561492994)


Many companies are incorporating peer feedback into performance reviews. Here's how I prepare to give awesome peer feedback.

How to Give Awesome Peer Feedback


Friction is a force that affects our ability to do things. 

If you want to add good habits, reduce friction that makes those habits hard to do.

If you want to remove bad habits, create friction that makes those habits less easy to do. 

Do you spend to much money online? Delete your saved credit cards and keep your wallet or purse far out of reach. 

Do you spend to much time surging social media? Delete your apps and only log on through an Incognito window for 10 minutes, then close the window.

Friction is a powerful force to helping us shape the way we live our lives. If it's used to intentionally design habits, it becomes a leverage point to become the person you want to be. 


How I think about friction as a property of my habits.

Friction - A Secret Tool for Successful Habits


I am _not a_ remote worker, **I am a part of a distributed team.**

The word “remote” is loaded with negative baggage: something or someone that’s far away, distant; isolated. Something or someone that’s out of touch with the reality of how things really are.

As a software engineer, when I think about the term “remote”, I think about accessing a machine that’s out of sight, but one in which I can control. It’s uni-directional, communication is often flaky at best and creates frustration in the ability to be effective.

The term “remote” focuses on _where the team member is_ . It doesn’t address _what_ needs to be done or _how_ to do it. The _where_ is **totally irrelevant to the work.**

The term “distributed,” however, naturally lends itself to thinking about **what needs to be done and how we go about doing it together.**

Communication on a distributed team isn’t uni-directional, it’s not even bi-directional, it’s **n-directional** , as each individual now decides how they collectively work towards a common purpose.

An organization shifting from having remote workers to **the** **distributed model helps teams transcend the “remote vs in-office” mentality**. In a remote model, it’s common for those who are in an office (which may very well be remote from the home office) to ask, “why does that person get to work from home (or co-working space) and I have to be in the office?” It’s also common that a remote worker feels they’re left out of the loop because communication is done in person.

Shifting from thinking about people as “remote” to teams being distributed teams allows us to streamline communication, create stronger connections, expand the candidates we hire so we find the best fit for our teams, not just “local” talent.

**The distributed team paradigm focuses on...**

- _how_ we work being the driving force to our success (not _where_ we work)
- goals being concrete and achievable
- communication being clear and focused
- individual self-management equally contributing to the team’s success

  **The distributed team paradigm is _not..._**

- an opportunity to shirk responsibility
- a way to get out of being a part of a group
- the chance to get out of meetings or being around people

  **The distributed model** allows us to do our best work when our bodies and minds are most optimal, rather than feeling the need to be “butts in seats from 9–5 to be noticed.” As our technologies become more distributed (as they already have), our _teams_ becoming distributed facilitates our abilities to think of how our software works (and can be better) and how our software works helps us shape the way our teams effectively move our products towards their ultimate purpose.

So this is a call to join us in our journey to eliminate the idea of remote workers and **embrace the idea of distributed teams** . Over the next few months we’ll be posting retrospectives of what we’ve done and how it worked for our teams. We invite you to join us in doing the same and using the tag #distributedteams and sharing what you’ve tried, what worked and what didn’t go so well.

We are not remote. We are not in-office. **We are Distributed.**


The term 'remote' focuses on where the team member is. It doesn’t address what needs to be done or how to do it. The where is totally irrelevant to the work. The term 'distributed', however, naturally lends itself to thinking about what needs to be done and how we go about doing it together. I am not a remote worker, I am a part of a distributed team.

Remote is Dead, Long Live Distributed


**I want to be the best person I ever manage.**

This is a systematic approach at discovering and documenting who I am. Many of the high-level concepts in this document are heavily borrowed from Peter F. Drucker's _Managing Oneself_.

# Introduction

I believe I can be systematically discoverable.

When I left Zappos.com 4 months ago to work with Walmart Labs, there were many aspects of my professional life that changed and these changes catalyzed a movement in me to systematically discover who I was.

- I transitioned from being "required" to be in an office to being fully distributed & outside of an office
- I transitioned from being on a team with a project manager and sprints to a team that was fully autonomous and self-driven, and for a lack of a better term, was continuously delivering
- I transitioned from a reactive sense of responsibility to a proactive thoughtfulness
- I transitioned from the customer being my customer to engineers who served the customer's needs as being my customer

As is true of any new venture, I felt ill-equipped to successfully make these transitions with the toolset I had. By some strange twist of Amazon recommendations, I stumbled onto _Managing Oneself_ by Peter F. Drucker. **This is [one of three books that I recommend to anyone wanting to chart a path for being an impactful and effective person](/essential-books).**

One of the excerpts that stood out most to me was:

> "Successful careers are not planned. They develop when people are prepared for opportunities because they know their strengths, their method of work, and their values."

The key to success isn't planning, it's knowing _yourself_.

This documentation is the outflow of me attempting to know myself, in a pragmatic, systematic way, based on insights from _Managing Oneself_.

# Desired Outcomes

There are a few desired outcomes I have for doing this, in descending order of importance:

- **Capturing & Understanding Myself.** Ultimately, this guide is for me. I want to have an understanding of myself so I can make better, more prudent decisions based on what I've discovered. Whether it's "should I take this professional opportunity" or "should I engage in this in my freetime", this document and systematic discovery should guide me. If no one else ever looked at it, it would still be worthwhile.

- **Sharing Myself with Peers & Future Peers.** I know that if I work with (or for) someone directly, I want them to be the kind of person who wants to know these topics about me. I want to provide as much information as I can about myself so that I'm (1) a respected and impactful peer, (2) effective in the work where I collaborate and (3) available to be used for the clearly defined strengths, in the method that I do it best, while fully aligned with my values.

- **Sharing The Framework with Others Like Myself.** When I realized this project was a priority, I had no idea where to start...even before I realized it was a priority, I put off making it a priority for that very reason. I want to provide not only what I find about _myself_ by using this framework, but the framework itself. It would be exciting for me to have peers who say, "I took a systematic approach at documenting myself too!" If this document can help one other person, that is a huge win for me.

# Framework

The framework is simple, and as I said before, is heavily borrowed from _Managing Oneself_. As the book itself is really more of a long-form essay (you can find a free [pdf copy here](https://www.usb.ac.za/Common/Pdfs/usb-career-center/articles/HBR%20Managing%20Oneself.pdf)), this is an abstraction of what Drucker suggests any thought-worker should know about themselves and what process I went through to actually figure these things out.

## Strengths, Method of Performing & Values

The first task Drucker recommends is to answer the following questions:

- What are my Strengths?
- How Do I Perform?
- What Are My Values?

###  What Are My Strengths?

This one can be _really_ hard to figure out on your own, fortunately, there's a framework that exists to help you do that already!

I used [StrengthsFinder 2.0](https://strengths.gallup.com/110440/About-StrengthsFinder-20.aspx). If you buy the book, there's a code to take the StrengthsFinder assessment in the back and IMO, the introduction is worth the price of the book and the rest of the book makes a great reference after you've taken the assessment.

You can see the answer to ["What are My Strengths?" here.](/strengths)

###  How Do I Perform?

There are two questions here:

- Am I a Reader or Listener?
- How Do I Learn?

The first one is an easier question to answer: think about the times you've solved a problem or created a mental model of something. Did you do it by reading from texts and documentation or did you do it by having a conversation with yourself and others?

How Do I Learn was a little trickier, so I deferred to the experts and found a questionnaire on [vark-learn.com](https://vark-learn.com/the-vark-questionnaire/). It's a free test and the feedback is given to you on a scale for four categories (VARK):

- Visual
- Aural
- Reading/Writing
- Kinisthetic

Once you've taken the questionnaire and get your feedback, there's lots of great information on:

1. how to intake information
2. how to successfully take notes and
3. how to successfully perform in any test, assignment or examination.

I think 3 could also be general output, as I don't / haven't done any of those 3 tasks in a long time, but I believe how to best output would be great for preparing for meetings, deep-dives & presentations.

Taking this assessment was really helpful in giving me the information I need to know how I consume information to best perform at work and explained a lot about why I do my best work when I interact with people.

## What Are My Values?

This was probably the _trickiest_ one of all because there's no "discovery" framework that I could find that made it really easy to answer questions and get a response with answers about who you are, so I decided to do a self-inventory over time of what really mattered to me in the moment.

For 3 weeks every time I felt excited about something or really frustrated about something, I'd write it down. Whether that was at work or at home, I'd think about the "event" and write down some abstraction about what it exemplified.

As an example let's take "Do. Document. Distribute. Automate": Whenever I was able to automate a process that I used to do by hand, it'd put me on top of the world, so I wrote down "automate". Automation, however, was not the whole picture, it was the ability to start with something and work through the process of documenting it, having others help with it and eventually automating it so we could do _other things_ that were _more important_.

I did this for around 30 different phrases and then sat with those, removed many and prioritized the others as "inside out", meaning the values that impacted other values were at the top. "God foremost, Family first" is the lens through which everything els is filtered. After that "Glow In The Dark" because if I wasn't pursuing a life where I was glowing in the dark, the rest didn't matter.

# Final Thoughts

Using this framework to discover who I am has empowered me with one of the most important tools I could ever have: **To know myself.**

Knowing myself and having it documented allows me to revisit it so that I can grow in my strengths, challenge my values and use how I perform to be better in all areas of life. It allows me to give my current and future peers a look into who I am so they can decide if I'm a good fit for their team or organization and **give others a recipe for discovering who they are so they can _glow in the dark_.**


This is a systematic approach at applying 'Managing Oneself' to my life. Many of the high-level concepts in this document are heavily borrowed from Peter F. Drucker's Managing Oneself.

A Systematic Approach to Managing Oneself


[As I'm leaving Zappos to go to Walmart Labs](/2015/07/walmart-labs), I've been reflecting on some of the great qualities I appreciated over the years. One of the qualities that comes to mind over and over is the value people put on celebrating employees for their time, effort and work.

In this post, I'm going to highlight 6 ways that have resonated with me most. The crazy thing is, they have nothing to do with compensation and everything to do with **letting people know they're valued**.

![[1333490B-2B2B-48E7-B95E-69CFD8C242D9.jpeg]]
# Welcome Them During New Hire Graduation

When you join Zappos, _generally_ you go straight into New Hire Training: a month long endeavour to learn about the company history and get a better grasp on _our_ customer. On the last day of New Hire Training, we have a graduation where Zapponians pack the room, bring noise makers and hoot and holler for the new team members that will join their teams on the following Monday.

When I joined Zappos, I was on a team called "FEZ" (Frontend @ Zappos) and it's customary to give every new FEZZER a FEZ hat. I still have mine and plan on keeping it even though my time with Zappos is over.

I'm not advocating for a month long training course for all new employees, but having a big batch of employees start on the same day of the week/month and welcoming them with a big group of people is a really great first experience.

# Celebrate their anniversary

During New Hire Training, you get a temporary license plate to hang over your desk and Zappos honors your first year by replacing your temporary license plate with a real license plate with your name on it. Most teams will go to lunch to celebrate an anniversary and every anniversary generally comes with some sort of swag. Also...cake. Every anniversary comes with cake and a big shout across the floor: "Hey everybody, it's [fill in the blank]'s 5 year anniversary today!"

# Celebrate their hard work

This may seem like a no brainer, but it's really easy to glaze over celebrating hard work. In my opinion (and in my experience), this isn't done very well at a high level at Zappos, but leadership within my department has always done a great job of celebrating the work we've done.

It makes it a lot easier to get through the muck when you know that the people asking you to do it care.

**Note: Even if the work doesn't result in the high level desired outcome, it doesn't mean the people didn't do the best they could with the tools you gave them, so don't use "they didn't meet the results" as an excuse.**

# Co-worker Bonuses

...because your peers are the people who know who's working hard.

This one is probably my favorite: At Zappos everyone has a \$50 co-worker bonus to award to someone (per month) who's "Wowed" them. You may think to yourself, "that seems gameable!" but I think it's the most under-utilized tool we have. One of my favorite things to do is to give co-worker bonuses to somebody who's pushed hard to wow their team. When I receive them, it's one of the best ways for me to feel validated in the work that I've done.

# Ask them what problems they're facing...and do something about it

I'm getting on a high horse with this one: I've had some really amazing conversations with leadership for my teams and Tech and seen some great changes.

If a leader says, "what's holding you back?" or "what problems are you facing with xyz?" and an employee says, "abc is a problem." **do something about abc.**

# Sprint Awards

My team does two week sprints (which is a "regular, repeatable work cycle") and at the end of every sprint, someone's given the sprint award based on team nominations followed by a vote. We usually get a plush character (in the past we've had Luigi and Bowser, currently we have Stuart the Minion) and the winner gets to keep it on their desk for the sprint.

It might sound kind of silly (and it is because my team is awesome like that) but it's a great reminder that the team appreciates that individual. If you're on a team but you don't have a regular "cycle" for work, you could still have a 2 week celebration where a team member is awarded with a "we love you, you're awesome." award.

![[6D04DBD9-3736-4B84-9E88-574E61B68834.jpeg]]
# A Final Thought on The Weight of Leadership

One major takeaway here is that if you're a leader, your "title" matters for how people are going to receive a lot of these examples. For instance, if you are a CEO and you email an employee to say, "hey, I really appreciate the work you've done" (and mean it), it's probably going to carry a lot more weight than if I (as a peer) did it.

**Even if you're organization is "flat", the more recognized you are as a leader in the organization, the more weight your actions carry.**

_What are some ways you appreciate about how your organization celebrates employees?_


Celebrating your employees can easily one of the best morale boosters for your organization. Here are 5 of the ways Zappos has done that for me.

Celebrate Your Employees


It was 4:30 AM. I knew I had goals for the morning, but I thought to myself, "checking my work email won't hurt. Surely no one has emailed me between 9 PM last night and this morning." The next thing I knew it was 6:30 AM and I'd spent most of my morning reactively responding to work emails.

_Work_ emails.

That morning I knew it was time to declare a separation of work and life...but I had no idea where to even start.

Fortunately, my buddy Thai, a guy who I've looked to for honing my personal operational rigor, had been dealing with the same problem. That same morning we sat and had coffee on the bistro patio at Zappos and had a conversation about how to create that separation. These solutions are directly or indirectly inspired by my conversation with Thai ([He has an awesome blog about learning ruby](https://thaiwood.io/) and is working on a book about [system adminstration with ruby](https://thaiwood.io/books/ruby-for-system-administrators/)).

# Create A Work Uniform

The first key that almost seemed obvious to creating the separation between work and life was **"create a uniform"**. It didn't have to be a "true" uniform just a token that represented that I was "on", I was at work.

Thai worked as an EMT for a while, and one of the things he had to do was to wear a standard uniform. I could see there was a definite case for having some kind of consistent thing that when you put it on, you're at work and when you take it off, you're in your life.

The funny thing is that Zappos practically hires people because they hate uniforms or rules, which might point to why many of my peers either burn out or work so hard that they're just spinning their wheels.

For me, creating a uniform actually turned out to be pretty simple. I found a [silicone wristband](https://www.reminderband.com/) that I keep in the car and as soon as I get to my parking spot at work, I shoot Jackie a text to let her know I'm in the office and done my silicone wristband. I try to take it off as soon as I get back to my car and at the latest when I get to my driveway.

![usb wristbands](https://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31SJyHRxumL.jpg) If you're in an industry where you use a USB, there are also some cool [USB wristbands](https://www.amazon.com/Wristband-Flash-Memory-Drive-White/dp/B00HSW85V4/ref=pd_sim_147_6?ie=UTF8&refRID=1D1M8X1193AR8Z33V0JH) that could double as a uniform aid and storage solution. I might try this out, because I'm all about minimalist solutions.

An interesting anecdote after practicing "wearing a uniform" for a few weeks: I forgot to take it off one day and I was "tempted" to check my email...and only then did I realize I still had it on! I immediately took it off and forgot to check my email.

# Create A Work Routine

![working from the patio](/img/patio.jpg)

When I get into the office, I have a routine that involves taking the stairs to the second floor to grab a cup of coffee and two bottles of perrier, heading out to the Zappos Cafe patio and writing documentation or working on an internal project and finally making my way up to the 5th floor. I used to do this before team standup (which was at 10 AM), but now that we have a virtual standup (which is going _really_ well), I just try to get to my desk around 10AM instead of just before.

I try really hard not to check my email before 10 AM, so that I can be proactive about the first hour of my day. I find that email is almost always a great way to derail you from the tasks _you've_ decided are important to satisfy someone else's tensions...which keeps you from getting the important stuff done.

At the end of the day, I make some notes about how I spent my day in and how I could have spent it better in [DayOne Journal for Mac](https://dayoneapp.com/). I then shut down all the applications on my work laptop and shut my computer off. I don't turn it on until the next morning when I start my routine over again.

# Timeblocks & Tasklists

I have a set amount of time that I'm willing to work, with buffers on both start and finish and a _reasonable_ list of things I know I need to get done that day. Blocking your time and having a hard limit to how long you'll stay at the office is probably the most important component of all. Being able to create limits is a difficult discipline, but it's one worth doing.

Do I stay late sometimes? Absolutely. A few weeks ago I had to stay well past my normal hard limit four nights a week, but I knew it was coming because of the gravity of the project I was working on. I let Jackie know at the beginning of the week that I was going to be late getting home every night and she was totally fine with it. I'd like to think that it's because I've been better about guarding my time lately.

One last thought on hard limits and breaking them: If you stick to your hard limits, when you do break them, make it count. Choose to stay late for _good_ reasons, otherwise people are going to (both inadvertenly and intentionally) take advantage of that.

# Liberate Your Life From Work

If you've been in the workforce for any period of time, I don't think I need to tell you how hard it can be to separate work and life. It's even harder when you work at a place like Zappos where it's almost expected that they co-exist (happy hours, unofficial events outside of work that may or may not impact how others view your performance, working on "passion" projects on nights and weekends).

If you haven't burnt out already but you're working non-stop, I imagine burn out is close. You don't have to work all the time to be a machine of productivity.

You might be thinking to yourself, "this guy is an idiot, he has no idea what he's talking about." I, myself, have been there. That's okay. I think there are seasons when we just go full-throttle and we can handle burning the candle at both ends (and those are the seasons we should be chasing the hustle). But I'd like to encourage you, that when you do hit your wall, that you come back and revisit these keys for work-life balance and try and implement at least one of them.

_So what about you? Do you have triggers for how to separate your work/life balance? Do you think work/life balance is bunk in the first place? I'd love to hear your thoughts!_


If you haven't burnt out already but you're working non-stop, I imagine burn out is close. These are the steps I took to get my life back.

Separation of Work & Life


I had a specific border I wanted to use consistently in my web design, so I made a util for [[Stitches (styling)]] that took the position the border needed to be in and did the work of styling the border for light and dark mode.

```js
createStitches({
  utils: {
	  box: (sides: Array<"top" | "left" | "bottom" | "right">) =>
	      (sides.length ? sides : sidesOptions).reduce<{
	        [k: string]: string;
	      }>((prevVal, side) => {
	        prevVal[`border-${side}`] = "1px dashed $gray200";
	        if (!prevVal[`.${darkTheme} &`]) {
	          // @ts-ignore
	          prevVal[`.${darkTheme} &`] = {};
	        }
	        // @ts-ignore
	        prevVal[`.${darkTheme} &`][`border-${side}`] = "1px dashed $gray800";
	        return prevVal;
	      }, {}),
	},
});
```


Box util for Stitches CSS in JS


This is a running collection of my Weekly Reviews.

# 2023
- [[2023 W02 Weekly Review]]


Weekly Review

There are 6 types of power, as defined by French and Raven:
- Formal (legitimate)
- Referent 
- Reward
- Expert
- Coercive
- Informational
- Connection

Coercion has a positive form (reward) and a negative form (shame, guilt or fear)

referent power is difficult because it's based on likeability and trust.

Understanding the types of power helps an individual have better power literacy in the groups they're a part of.

Cf: https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_56.htm


Types of Power (6 Types)

Styling the [MUI Linear Progress Bar React component](https://mui.com/material-ui/react-progress/) is incredibly confusing when you want to change _both_ the colors of the whole bar and the foreground of the bar, even with the [LinearProgressAPI](https://mui.com/material-ui/api/linear-progress/) handy.

In order to get this working, I ended up styling the root element with the `&.${linearProgressClasses.determinate}` and to style the progress indicator color, I styled the `bar1Determinate` (`&.${linearProgressClasses.determinate} > .${linearProgressClasses.bar1Determinate}`).

In this example I used `styled-components` but this would work with any style library that exports a `styled` function that takes an element or react component.

```javascript
import LinearProgress, {
  linearProgressClasses
} from "@mui/material/LinearProgress";

import styled from "styled-components";

  

const StyledLinearProgressBar = styled(LinearProgress)({
	[`&.${linearProgressClasses.determinate}`]: { backgroundColor: "#f0f" },
	[`&.${linearProgressClasses.determinate} > .${linearProgressClasses.bar1Determinate}`]: { backgroundColor: "#0ff" }
});
```

Preview:
![[Pasted image 20230113140338.png]]

You can see this in action in [this CodeSandbox](https://codesandbox.io/s/styling-linear-progress-bar-6yfdgs)


How to style the MUI Linear Progress Bar.

Styling the MUI Linear Progress Bar


This is a collection I'm building of things I've learned as I've helped build a startup ([[30 - Collections/Organizations/Murmur]]) from scratch.

# Product Learnings
- [[Outsource What's Not Core To Your Product's Value Offering]]
- [[Start with user accounts, workspaces and teams]]


A constantly growing collection of what I'm learning as I work at Startups.

Startup Learnings


Looking back on the past year as [[Startup Learnings|I’ve been building a SaaS (Software as a Service) from scratch]], I think one the most foundational mistake I made was not thinking in terms of workspaces (we started with a single team) in the way I thought about how we would model relationships between individuals and groups of people.

# User
A user is someone who has created an account on the SaaS. They have profile information and the content they create is associated with them.

# Workspace
A workspace is strictly a **billing** and **membership** entity**.**

## Minimum Roles
-   Owner - The role that is able to pay for the workspace. They have all the permissions and privileges of an admin and a member
-   Admin - The role is able to create teams and add members
-   Member - The role is able to do basic actions in a workspace

# Team
A team is able is where all of the action happens for the SaaS. It has **Admin** and **Member** roles.


The entity types to always start with when building a Software as a Service.

Start with user accounts, workspaces and teams


I treated myself to the [LEGO Treehouse Ideas Set](https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/tree-house-21318) this year.

I'm really happy with how neat it is!

![[68912787-E69E-489F-B366-97010BFB005D_1_102_o.jpeg]]
![[0D50D16A-646F-4CAD-A93C-68134344EE12_1_105_c.jpeg]]
![[C665B204-189E-4ABB-BDF5-CDD3E38C46C5_1_105_c.jpeg]]


A summary of the LEGO Treehouse build I did in 2023.

LEGO Treehouse

The biggest update this week: **This weekly review!**

I decided I'm going to try out doing a weekly review...and doing it in public!

# Personal
- **Enchanted Princess Ball.** Friday night of last week (2023 W01) I took Elizabeth to an ["Enchanted Princess Ball"](https://gleneyrie.org/enchanged-princess-ball-header_website/) at the [Glen Eyrie](https://gleneyrie.org/) castle in Colorado Springs, CO. It was a magical time. ![[7CBA0738-5921-4E5E-AE4C-45B09E3C3A68_1_105_c.jpeg]]
- **Climbed 2 days, 20+ routes.** It was a good week for climbing. I onsited (first climb, no tips) my first 5.10b that's _all slopers_ which was exciting. 
- **Completed 100% of my [[Exercise Plan|Calisthentics]]** exercises for the week. I'm leveling up all of my exercises next week. 
- **Lego Treehouse**. I finished my [[LEGO Treehouse]] build. It's a very cool build!
![[C665B204-189E-4ABB-BDF5-CDD3E38C46C5_1_105_c 1.jpeg]]

# Murmur
- **Interviewed design candidates.**
- **Refined Decisionbot in private channels and group DMs.** I've been working on a [[Slack]] integration called [[Decisionbot]] at [[30 - Collections/Organizations/Murmur]] but we've mostly been handling public channels. Now it handles private channels
- **Implemented PostHog in all of our digital products.** We're using [[PostHog]] at [[30 - Collections/Organizations/Murmur]] to get better insights into our Marketing site visitors (hosted with Webflow), the [Murmur app](https://app.murmur.com) and Decisionbot.

# Writing
- [[Maybe Don't Just Cancel 75,000 Hours of Meetings]]. I think snapping all meetings out of existence is an approach that leads to worse problems. In this article, I explain why and propose an alternative approach.
- Published [[Startup Learnings]], a collection I started and want to pick back up.
- Published [[Start with user accounts, workspaces and teams]], a [[Startup Learnings]] for how to think about entities when building a digital product.
- Published [[Outsource What's Not Core To Your Product's Value Offering]], a [[Startup Learnings]] about the importance of focusing on the _value proposition_ of your digital product.
- [[List of Destructive and Non-Destructive JavaScript Array Methods]]. This is a very specific technical note about [[JavaScript]].


# Newsletter Update
I struggled to put hands to keyboards on the newsletter I wanted to start writing.

This public weekly review is a less scary, more gentle way for me to ease into thinking about a newsletter.

There were a few things I noticed at play:
- I was afraid of what people would think if my first issue wasn't "perfect".
- I was not _excited_ about the idea (the craft behind how people make things).

I'm going to explore a different topic in the meantime.

### New and Updated Topic Notes
- 🆕 [[PostHog]] 
- 🆕 [[Slack API]]
- [[My Digital Tool Stack]]

# Other Interesting Reading
## [Why aligned autonomy is an ongoing struggle](https://jchyip.medium.com/why-aligned-autonomy-is-an-ongoing-struggle-efa62e272d5d) 
Aaron Dignan shared this with the [[30 - Collections/Organizations/Murmur]] team. This problem of aligned autonomy is at the root of trying to get a Startup off the ground. 

> Autonomy, in a workplace context, is not about “I can do whatever I feel like” but rather “I feel free to act and fully engage to achieve a greater purpose.”

I think the critical misunderstanding of autonomy isn't just "free to act and fully engage to achieve a greater purpose", it's also that I have to do it within my abilities, skills and decision rights. 

I hold roles within the organization and those roles inform the way I contribute in my "freedom to act". 

When I learned to focus on my role to serve the purpose, it enabled me to move the needle.

# Music Highlights
- Electronic: [Enjoy the Silence (Depeche Mode cover)](https://open.spotify.com/track/4tz6qu4C4uqMksUb3CyNac?si=50a67457bc424d31) by DCCM
- Prog Rock: [Ego Death](https://open.spotify.com/track/0Qj7PB41b6XgkApKPwDy1r?si=6cf83529f4e547c9) by Polyphia (I can't stop listening!)
- Hip Hop: [Shine On](https://open.spotify.com/track/5X6xaHU3SnJgT6nlNGNWhR?si=9e3d0e01ece94a05) by Kristoff Krane (This song makes me want to bop my head)
- Metal/Djent: [Pure Imagination](https://open.spotify.com/track/63v6NOvLxA2VfuysgJnVs2?si=65e421de27574346) by Hearing Shapes (thanks to my friend Andrew Del Prete for sharing it!)


Updates on my newsletter, my personal experiences and my contribution to my work.

2023 W02 Weekly Review


I can never remember which JavaScript Array methods are destructive and which are non-destructive.

A **destructive method** modifies the original array that the method is being run on. An example of this is `pop`:

```javascript
const instruments = ["Guitar", "Drums", "Keyboard"];
instruments.pop();
// instruments = ["Guitar", "Drums"]
```

A **non-destructive method** does not modify the original array and instead returns a shallow copy of the original value. An example of this is map:

```javascript

const instruments = ["Guitar", "Drums", "Keyboard"];
instruments.map(instrument => `${instrument} toot`);
// instruments = ["Guitar", "Drums", "Keyboard"]
```

# Destructive Methods
- [`copyWithin`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/copyWithin)
- [`fill`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/fill)
- [`pop`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/pop)
- [`push`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/push)
- [`reverse`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/reverse)
- [`shift`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/shift)
- [`sort`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/sort)
- [`splice`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/splice)
- [`unshift`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/unshift)

# Non-Destructive Methods
- [`concat`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/concat)
- [`entries`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/entries)
- [`every`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/every)
- [`filter`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/filter)
- [`find`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/find)
- [`findIndex`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/findIndex)
- [`findLast`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/findLast)
- [`findLastIndex`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/findLastIndex)
- [`flat`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/flat)
- [`flatMap`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/flatMap)
- [`forEach`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/forEach)
- [`Array.from()`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/from)
- [`includes`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/includes)
- [`indexOf`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/indexOf)
- [`join`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/join)
- [`keys`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/keys)
- [`lastIndexOf`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/lastIndexOf)
- [`map`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/map)
- [`reduce`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/reduce)
- [`reduceRight`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/reduceRight)
- [`slice`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/slice)
- [`some`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/some)
- [`toLocaleString`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/toLocaleString)
- [`values`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/values)


A list of destructive and non-destructive JavaScript array methods for those of us who can't always remember.

List of Destructive and Non-Destructive JavaScript Array Methods


The Slack API is a way for anyone to build an integration to interface with a Slack workspace.

# How I've Used It
- Sending notifications for when a proposal advances in [[30 - Collections/Organizations/Murmur]].
- Creating a [[30 - Collections/Organizations/Murmur]] app for starting, making and storing decisions.

# Useful Links
- [Slack Event API](https://api.slack.com/apis/connections/events-api)
- [Verifying a Slack request in a Slack Integration](https://api.slack.com/authentication/verifying-requests-from-slack#a_recipe_for_security) 
- [What is a composition object?](https://api.slack.com/reference/block-kit/composition-objects#option)


Slack API


I use [Vercel](https://vercel.com/) for deploying and hosting [[30 - Collections/Organizations/Murmur]] and [[curiouslychase.com]].

Vercel enables developers to easily preview and deploy their applications to the internet.

Vercel increases developer productivity by allowing a developer to:
- deploy their websites to a preview environment with their preferred [[git]] hosting platform.
- continuously deploy their application to a production environment


Vercel is a hosting platform for web applications. Here's how I use it.

Vercel


[PostHog](https://posthog.com) is a "suite of product and data analytics tools". 

It enables anyone building for the web to track product analytics, roll out features based on feature flags, test ideas with A/B testing and it also acts as an event pipeline.

I enjoy using PostHog for a few reasons:
- PostHog has an autocapture [[JavaScript]] snippet that makes it easy to implement and start getting rich data
- [[Using PostHog Toolbar (Heatmap)|The PostHog Launchbar Heatmap]] helps me learn more about the user from a holistic view.
- They have a rich set of [documentation](https://posthog.com/docs/),
- The platform is open-source (so it can be self-hosted) and has a cloud offering (for people like me who are building products ourselves and shouldn't be fiddling with self-hosting infrastructure)
- Their team is quick to engage with requests in their Slack channel

I've started using [PostHog](https://posthog.com) for analytics for [[30 - Collections/Organizations/Murmur]] products and for my personal website ([[curiouslychase.com]]).

# Relevant Articles
- Since I use [[NextJS]], I found this article about setting up [Analytics for NextJS](https://posthog.com/docs/integrate/third-party/next-js#squeak-questions)  to be very helpful.


PostHog is a suite of product and data tools built for the modern stack. Here's how I use it.

PostHog


**[Karabiner Elements](https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/)** is software for MacOS that allows a user to customize their keyboard by remapping keys with rules.

# Relevant Notes
- [[Disable the built-in keyboard on my Mac so I can set my external keyboard ontop of it]]


Karabiner Elements

![[IMG_7618.jpg]]
I use [[Karabiner Elements]] to disable my built-in Mac keyboard when I'm on the go so that I can set my [[KeyboardIO Atreus (Mechanical Keyboard)]] on top of it.

To do this (after installing [[Karabiner Elements]]):

- Make sure your keyboard is plugged in (if physical connection) or enabled (if bluetooth)
- open the Karabiner Elements settings and click **Devices > Advanced**. 
- Under **Disable the built-in keyboard**, select set the toggle to on, so that it is a darker gray.
- Now, whenever your external keyboard is connected, your Mac's built-in keyboard will be disabled and it won't experience any keypresses from the built-in keyboard.


How to disable the built-in Mac keyboard so you can set your external keyboard on top of it.

Disable the built-in keyboard on my Mac so I can set my external keyboard ontop of it



![[291C5DCF-45D0-422F-88C9-22DE4AF9019C.jpeg]]

You may have seen photos floating around of my keyboard that look like this. Your next thought, if you're a discerning touch-typist would either be "hey, the top left keys aren't right." or "hey, he uses Colemak!". 

I prefer Colemak for my keyboard layout over QWERTY (what most people use) or Dvorak (the primary alternative other typists use instead of QWERTY).

I won't dive into the history of Colemak (I've included some links at the bottom), but I will summarize what's different about it:

- **Ergonomic** - The most used keys are on the homerow (better for your fingers if you type a lot)
- **Easy to Learn** - The most used _modifier_ keys are where they are on a QWERTY keyboard (Q, Z,X,C...all the keys I use for keyboard shortcuts)
- 

Pairing Colemak with my [[KeyboardIO Atreus (Mechanical Keyboard)]] (pictured above), I've seen an increase in my typing speed, my ability to type for long periods of time without strain/exhaustion and general use of the keyboard to increase. 

# Other Resources
- [Colemak Homepage](https://colemak.com/)
- [Colemak - The keyboard layout that may help you type faster](https://www.reliancedigital.in/solutionbox/colemak-the-keyboard-layout-that-may-help-you-type-faster/#:~:text=Colemak%20users%20have%20recorded%20typing,up%20and%20down%20the%20keyboard.)


Colemak Keyboard Layout


As someone who uses a keyboard _all day long_ almost every day, I've put a lot of thought into the tools and practices I use so that I can type with mastery.

This is a list of all the tools (physical and digital) I use to be a better typist:

- I use a [[KeyboardIO Atreus (Mechanical Keyboard)]] as my _only_ physical keyboard.
- I use [[Colemak Keyboard Layout]] as my keyboard layout.
- I use [The Typing Cat](https://thetypingcat.com/) to practice touch-typing.
- I use [[Raycast]] as my preferred operating system launcher
- At one point, I used [[Karabiner Elements]] for remapping standard keyboard keys. Now I use it to [[Disable the built-in keyboard on my Mac so I can set my external keyboard ontop of it]]


Interesting tidbits to know about my typing productivity.

Chase Is Typing


GitHub Actions is a tool within [[GitHub]] that allows a user to setup automation workflows based on events for running tests, doing continuous integration and continuous deployment, even run scripts based on time of day.

# Relevant Notes
- [[GitHub CODEOWNERS Directory Pattern Match Cheatsheet]]
- [[Fix Docker Error for GitHub Actions Entrypoint Executable Error]]


GitHub Actions


I started my **Work From Home** experience in 2015, when I worked for [[Walmart Labs]].

# Relevant Notes
- [[Tips For Being Successful at Working From Home Long-Term]]
- [[My Home Office Setup]]
- [[My Desk Setup]]


I've been working from home since 2015. I believe it's the best way for me to be effective and keep my home life flourishing.

Working From Home


**Bash** (or [Bourne Again SHell](https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/)) is a shell (a computer program that allows a user to interact with the underlying operating system).

# Relevant Notes
- [[Delete Command from Bash History]]


Why (and how) I use Bash, a computer shell.

Bash


You can find the tools I use on a daily basis in [[My Digital Tool Stack]] and programming languages and libraries in my [[Software and Programming Languages I Use]].

This is a list of tools that I use here and there and find useful, but don't use often enough that they make it into my tool stack.

# How many seconds in a day?
A nice calculator for converting a unit of time to another unit of time.
![[Screen Shot 2022-12-16 at 10.22.02 AM.png]]

Built with Coda

[How many seconds in a day?](https://coda.io/@hales/simple-online-calculator-for-dates-and-times/how-many-seconds-in-a-day-33)


An ever growing list of tools that I find useful.

Useful Digital Tools


![[291C5DCF-45D0-422F-88C9-22DE4AF9019C.jpeg]]

The MIGHTY Atreus!

This keyboard has become one of the few tools that I leave home without. 

There are a few features of this keyboard that make me a true believer...to the point that I haven't used a built-in Apple Keyboard on my MacBook in over 2 years.

What are these undeniable attributes that make the [KeyboardIO Atreus](https://shop.keyboard.io/pages/atreus) my go to keyboard?

- **Form Factor.** The Atreus is a 40% keyboard. That means it doesn't have a keypad, a function row or a number row. In fact, if you look closely, you'll see that the space _key_ is the same size as every other key. 
- **Programmability**. The Atreus is fully programmable. It uses Kaleidoscope, an open source firmware for keyboards. Once the keyboard is plugged in and the GUI for configuring a layout is installed ([Chrysalis](https://github.com/keyboardio/Chrysalis/releases)), it's just a matter of deciding what path you take towards making the Atreus _your_ keyboard.
- **It's Mechanical**. There's something about the "clickity-clack" of a keyboard that is undeniably satisfying to me. Beyond the immediate feedback (this is a USB-C keyboard, no bluetooth) between typing and the screen, the sound of a "click" motivates me to keep typing for fear of the silence it leaves behind.
- **Hot Swappable Mechanical Switches**. Not everyone likes the "clickity-clack", especially people who aren't the ones typing. The Atreus has hot swappable switches, so you can use those "clickity-clack" switches at home and opt for some quieter switches for when you're out and about or on a trip.
- **Thumbs Are The Workhorse**. You may notice that _all_ of the keys that would normally require a reaching pinky (special keys) have been moved to the center of the keyboard. This allows a user to use those big meat bags (your thumbs) to do a lot of what you used to rely on your pinky to do. It will help significantly reduce the strain on the pinky, reduce the amount of movement overall that your hands have to do to type and increase your overall typing satisfaction. It took me a few days to get used to using my thumbs for my special and modifier keys but once I got used to it I decided I can never go back to a standard keyboard.

# Preferences

- **Layout** - [[Colemak Keyboard Layout|Colemak]]
- **Switches** - Kali Box White ([Specs on MechanicalKeyboards.com](https://mechanicalkeyboards.com/switches/index.php?switch=Kailh-BOX-White))


The KeyboardIO Atreus is my sole keyboard for work and typing.

KeyboardIO Atreus (Mechanical Keyboard)


![[8135ACB3-9906-4D03-B48F-C7AA64017FA2.jpeg]]
One of the principles of [[My Desk Setup]] is "Every piece of functional equipment should be mounted to the desk". 

This under desk bracket allows me to do just that.

The **Under Desk or Wall mount for Anker 577 Thunderbolt Docking Station with Mounting Screws** is a bracket from Trella3dPrints (on Etsy) that I use for mounting my [[Anker 577 Thunderbolt Docking Station]].

It came with screws to mount it to my desk. 

I mounted it just behind the cable tray and next to my monitor arm.

Link:: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1186255956/under-desk-or-wall-mount-for-anker-577


How I use this bracket to mount my Anker Docking Station to my desk.

Anker Docking Station Bracket


Any tool should provide these critical concepts for a user to have an effective personal operating system:
- **Quick capture** - a user must be able to easily capture the object with simplicity while also being able to make a capture more complex. As an example, I should be able to capture a simple daily log ("started working on a blog post") or capture a book (by its title) and easily input the author, my status of reading it and automatically capture that it is of a type (a reference to a **Books** object)
- **Objects** - An object is a "document" or "file". The important part is that it is abstract enough that it isn't _required_ to have any special attributes for it to work.
- **Properties** - An object should be able to have properties: extra data that can be attached to the object. This extra data is the key to being able to easily filter and bucket objects. It lets a user see "what is alike, what is different and what is unique". For a book, a property could be **author** (and it's a reference to an **author** object) or topic (and its a reference to a **topic** object). 
- **Contexts** - A context is the _way_ a user thinks about their data. The flexibility of context is largely dependent on the flexibility of properties. As an example: A "book" is a context ("what is this?") and will have similar properties based on the fact that it is a book. Context can also be "what time of day is it?", "where am I?"
- **Views** - A view is a concrete way to _view_ data (rather than organizing it). A view allows a user to say "I want to see all objects with these properties in these contexts". The view is the "focus mode" of a context. As an example,  a view would allow me to say "I want to see all books that I read last year." And give me a list of the books that I read last year. I can add as much context and filter by as many properties as I'd like. The critical part here is that a view is an alternative to the need to organize to see things based on context.

# Thoughts
- **On Properties**: Properties should _reference_ other objects as much as possible, rather than being "plain-text" values. As an example, if I read a book by "Douglas Adams", the property should reference an object with the name of "Douglas Adams" that is its own document or file with its own data _about_ "Douglas Adams". Within "Douglas Adams", because it's a reference, I could create a view that shows me results for every _other object_ that references "Douglas Adams"
- If a tool provides these 4 concepts, it opens the doors for better capture, thinking and pattern recognition


I believe this is the future of tooling for the personal Operating System

Tooling for a Personal Operating System


GitHub is a platform for hosting and reviewing [[git]] version controlled code. It also has the ability to run actions inside of the repository.

# Relevant Notes

- [[GitHub Actions]]


GitHub


If you are working on a file that's version controlled with [[git]] and you realize, "whoops! I want to reset that file back to the way it was in a specific commit" or "I want to reset that file back to its state in my mainline branch", the command you want to use is `checkout`.

Let's say I want to reset a file named `some/changed/file.ts` back to the state it was in on my `main` branch, I would run:

```shell
 git checkout origin/main some/changed/file.ts 
```

This would restore the file back to the state it was originally in. If you've committed changes to it, you'll see that your `git status` shows that the file has changed by adding anything back and removing anything that was added.


How to restore a file to a specific state with git.

Reset specific file to its state on a commit or branch with git


I often find that I want to restore a MongoDB database locally from MongoDB (Preview database) Atlas to determine if I've made any breaking changes.

# Restoring your MongoDB database

1. Download a backup from MongoDB Atlas.
2. Unzip the backup. In this case, I unzipped it to my `Downloads` directory as `dump`.
3. run a [[Docker]] container with the following flags:
	- `-p <TO>:<FROM>` - **To** is the port that you are serving on your local machine and **From** is the container's process port for Mongo (unless specified otherwise, it's `27017`)
	- `-v <LOCAL DB DIRECTORY>:<DOCKER DB PATH>` - **Local DB Directory** is where I unzipped the backup. **Docker DB Path** is the directory Mongo will use to serve a database. Unless specified otherwise, this is `/data/db`
		```shell
		docker container run -p 27018:27017 -v $HOME/Downloads/dump:/data/db mongo:5.0.7
		```

# Accessing your MongoDB database

Now from [[Mongo Compass]] you should be able to connect to your locally running Mongo instance with this connection string:

```
mongodb://@localhost:27018?authSource=admin&readPreference=primary&directConnection=true&ssl=false
```

Notice the `27018`? In this case, because that's the port I designated for Mongo to serve from _on my computer_, this is the port I want to connect to. 


How to restore a MongoDB Database from Compass (the MongoDB database UI tool).

How to Restore a MongoDB Database from Compass


**Interstitial Journaling** is a technique of capturing notes, tasks and journal entries as _individual items in a list_. It's a really neat way to be capturing what matters without having to worry about where to put it while also giving the journaler the ability to scan or filter each list item (with code).

I use **interstitial journaling** in [[Obsidian]] by keeping a daily list under my `# logs` heading.

An example may look like this for a note called `2022-11-21 Mon`:

```
# logs
- 13:01 Had an [[impromptu meeting with coworker 2022-11-10]]
- [ ] Complete the last step of the [[Some Slackbot (Murmur)]] flow where the user can dismiss the ephemeral message [[Murmur]]
- 15:20 [[Elizabeth Adams]] said <SOMETHING CUTE> #journal/elizabeth 
```

I use a [[Dataview (Obsidian)]] query to [[Get all links to the current file with Obsidian and Dataview]], which lets me roll up all of the individual list items to their relevant notes.

This allows me to fine tune what information I see when I want to do reviews or combinatorial creativity.


How I use interstitial journaling in Obsidian

interstitial notes


[React](https://reactjs.org/) is a [[JavaScript]] framework for building user interfaces.

I have used it since 2012, starting with my time at [[30 - Collections/Organizations/Zappos]], then writing it for the core framework for [[Walmart Labs]], then at [[Webflow]] and finally at [[30 - Collections/Organizations/Murmur]].

# Relevant Notes

- [[Fix CSS variable keys in style attributes in React and Typescript]]


An overview of React (a JavaScript framework for building user interfaces) from my perspective and experience.

React (JavaScript)


> [!caution]
> I no longer use Emacs. I wanted a better shared developer experience with my teammates, so I switched to [[VS Code]]

**Emacs** is an extensible text editor. I used Emacs for a few years when I was at [[Walmart Labs]].

# Relevant Notes
- [[Getting Started with Emacs]]
- [[Emacs - Highlight $FlowFixMe comments in JavaScript]]


An overview of Emacs (the editor) from my perspective and experience.

Emacs


Link:: https://date-fns.org/

**date-fns** is a [[JavaScript]] date utility library. It has excellent [[TypeScript]] support, it's modular and it can be used in both a browser and with [[NodeJS]].

My team uses **date-fns** heavily in the [[30 - Collections/Organizations/Murmur]] application.


An overview of date-fns (a date utility for JavaScript) from my perspective and experience.

date-fns


These are my top 10 strengths, in order, based on my StrengthsFinder Survey:

1. [[Relator Theme]] (Relationship Building) 
2. [[Learner Theme]] (Strategic Thinking) 
3. [[Maximizer Theme]] (Influencing) 
4. [[Intellection Theme]] (Strategic Thinking) 
5. [[Achiever Theme]] (Executing) 
6. [[Belief Theme]] (Executing) 
7. [[Connectedness Theme]] (Relationship Building) 
8. [[Strategic Theme]] (Strategic Thinking) 
9. [[Responsibility Theme]] (Executing) 
10. [[Woo Theme]] (Influencing) 

[[StrengthsFinder Exercise]]


A list of the strengths I have based on the StrengthsFinder exercise.

Strengths


Link:: https://momentjs.com/

**MomentJS** is a [[JavaScript]] date/time library. 

I use it _solely_ for working with [[Dataview (Obsidian)]] in [[Obsidian]]. My preferred alternative [[JavaScript]] library is [[date-fns]]. 
# Relevant Notes
- [[Checking if two dates match with MomentJS]]


An overview of MomentJS (the JavaScript library) from my perspective and experience.

MomentJS


Someone once asked me: "If you could have any super powers, what would they be?" 

There were two that came to mind right away:

1. **Wonder**
2. **Amplification**

# **Wonder**

Wonder was inspired by a character from the [[📚 Renegades Series]] named Callum. I wish I could claim it as an original idea, but I can't. Marissa Meyer beat me to it.

> "My point is that Ace Anarchy, whatever his motives might have been, was ultimately a destructive force. He destroyed things. But we are so much stronger and better when we put our energy into creating things, not destroying them." - Callum in Archenemies, page 265

Wonder is one of those delightful words that can have multiple meanings:

- a feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unfamiliar or inexplicable
- to be curious about something

I want to feel that "surprise mingled with admiration". The beauty of the super power, however, would be that by being around me, my sense of wonder would lead to _others_ feeling a sense of wonder. If being around me inspired others to feel wonder, _that_ would be the most amazing super power.

# Amplification

Keeping in theme, **amplification** is the idea that the super power itself _is_ to enhance the super powers of others. 

I think it's a neat idea, because by myself, it doesn't make me that powerful. The power is in the fact that I'm in a space with others. My super power is only powerful _because_ it's making other people's powers stronger.

# Closing Thoughts (Maybe they're not super?)

I think the best thing about **wonder** and **amplification** is that even though real super powers don't exist, in a way these are something I could strive for and still be pretty close to doing in real life. All it takes to inspire wonder is a willingness to stay curious and present and whole. All it takes to amplify others is to recognize their gifts and figure out how I can contribute to them cultivating their gifts.

It's beautiful to think about it.


In which I answer what super powers I would want if I could choose some (and how some super powers are attainable).

If I could have any super powers...

With [[MomentJS]] ([[JavaScript]]), you can check if two times are the same with the `isSame` method.

First, instantiate `moment` with the date you want to check:

```js
const someDate = "2021-07-14";
const currMoment = moment(someDate);
```

Then use the `isSame` method: 

```js
const someDate = "2021-07-14";
const currMoment = moment(someDate);

const anotherDate = "2021-07-13";

const isSameDay = currMoment.isSame(anotherDate, "day") // false
const isSameMonth = currMoment.isSame(anotherDate, "month") // true
```

I use this heavily in my [[Dataview (Obsidian)]] queries for [[Obsidian]].

[reference](https://momentjscom.readthedocs.io/en/latest/moment/05-query/02-is-same/)

#javascript #programming #obsidian/programming

Created:: 2021-07-14 12:42:36


How to check if two dates are the same with the JavaScript libray MomentJS

Checking if two dates match with MomentJS


The first time I saw this error in [[Sentry]], my heart dropped to my feet. It wasn't clear that this was a client error and my initial thought was: how is someone attempting to delete a database?!

```
Database deleted by request of the user
```

As I looked through the stack trace, I realized it was an error for [[IndexedDB]], which is the storage mechanism we use for [[30 - Collections/Organizations/Murmur]] to store proposal edits in the client before sending them to the server. 



What to do when you see a database deleted by request of the user in your errors.

Database deleted by request of the user (indexeddb)


This Markdown file uses [[Literate Programming]] as a way to generate a shell script that will generate _all_ of my [[Dotfiles]].

# Install Homebrew
[[Homebrew]] is a critical part of my dotfiles: its the tool I use to fetch all of the applications and executables I use on a day to day basis.

I have to install Homebrew before I can do anything else:

```shell
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
```

I run this script manually and keeping it in this document is for the sake of copy/pasta convenience. I used to do an md5 hash of the file and install it automatically. Now I visit the URL for the install on the [Rawe GitHub User Content](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)

# Tangling Dotfiles

Run the following to tangle this file:

```shell
md-tangle~/vault/42\ -\ Dotfiles/One\ File\ to\ Generate\ Them\ All.md
```

## Obsidian Styles

```shell tangle:~/dotfiles/tangle-main.sh
md-tangle ~/vault/42\ -\ Dotfiles/Obsidian\ Styles.md
```

## TODO


The file that I use to generate configuration files from Markdown files (literate programming).

One File to Generate Them All


My [[Obsidian]] styles are [[Literate Programming|tangled]] from this note by using `md-tangle`. I tangle this file by running the following in my [[iTerm2|terminal]]:

```shell
md-tangle ~/vault/42\ -\ Dotfiles/Obsidian\ Styles.md
```

I use `Work Sans` for my system font:

```css tangle:~/vault/.obsidian/snippets/minimal-plus.css
@import url("https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Work+Sans:ital,wght@0,100;0,200;0,300;0,400;0,500;0,600;0,700;0,800;0,900;1,100;1,200;1,300;1,400;1,500;1,600;1,700;1,800;1,900&display=swap");

* {
  font-family: "Work Sans";
}
```

These are the root colors for my custom styling:

```css tangle:~/vault/.obsidian/snippets/minimal-plus.css
:root {
  --colors-curiousGrayscale50: #f9f8f2;
  --colors-curiousGrayscale100: #e0dfd9;
  --colors-curiousGrayscale200: #c7c6c1;
  --colors-curiousGrayscale300: #adada8;
  --colors-curiousGrayscale400: #94938f;
  --colors-curiousGrayscale500: #7a7a76;
  --colors-curiousGrayscale600: #61615e;
  --colors-curiousGrayscale700: #474745;
  --colors-curiousGrayscale800: #2e2e2c;
  --colors-curiousGrayscale900: #141414;
  --colors-curiousYellow50: #f9f8f2;
  --colors-curiousYellow100: #f9f6e5;
  --colors-curiousYellow150: #f9f4d4;
  --colors-curiousYellow200: #f9f1bb;
  --colors-curiousYellow250: #f9e770;
  --colors-curiousYellow300: #f9e24b;
  --colors-curiousYellow400: #f9dd25;
  --colors-curiousYellow500: #f9d802;
  --colors-curiousYellow600: #e0c302;
  --colors-curiousYellow650: #c7ad02;
  --colors-curiousYellow700: #ad9601;
  --colors-curiousYellow750: #948001;
  --colors-curiousYellow800: #615401;
  --colors-curiousYellow850: #473e01;
  --colors-curiousYellow900: #141200;
}
```

I style my Loom and YouTube `iframe`s so that they filled the width of my Obsidian Note:

```css tangle:~/vault/.obsidian/snippets/minimal-plus.css
.iframe-wrapper {
  position: relative;
  width: 100%;
  padding-bottom: 56.25%;
  margin: 2rem 0;
  height: 0;
}

iframe {
  border: none;
  width: 100%;
  height: 100%;
  position: absolute;
  top: 0;
  left: 0;
}
```

I use yellow for my link text decoration in both dark and light mode and I use a gray for link color in light mode and yellow for link color in dark mode:

```css tangle:~/vault/.obsidian/snippets/minimal-plus.css
.cm-s-obsidian span.cm-link {
  color: var(--colors-curiousGrayscale900);
  font-weight: 600;
  text-decoration: underline 3px;
  text-decoration-color: var(--colors-curiousYellow500);
}

.theme-dark .cm-s-obsidian span.cm-link {
  color: var(--colors-curiousYellow500);
  font-weight: 600;
  text-decoration: underline 3px;
  text-decoration-color: var(--colors-curiousYellow500);
}
```


A literate programming version of the stylesheet I use for my Obsidian setup.

Obsidian Styles


I use Homebrew to install dependencies on my [[MacOS]] machines.

I generate a `Brewfile` in `~/dotfiles` and run `brew install` from within that folder. I generate the file by running the following in a [[iTerm2|terminal]]:

```shell
md-tangle <PATH TO VAULT>/42\ -\ Dotfiles/Homebrew.md
```

# Packages I Install

```shell tangle:~/dotfiles/Brewfile
brew "ccat"
```
## Raycast

[[Raycast]] is the system launcher I use (as an alternative to Spotlight or Alfred)

```shell tangle:~/dotfiles/Brewfile
brew "raycast"
```

## VS Code

[[30 - Collections/Software/VS Code]] is the primary editor I use.

```shell tangle:~/dotfiles/Brewfile
cask "visual-studio-code"
```


An overview of Homebrew (the MacOS package manager) from my perspective and experience.

Homebrew


A **dotfile** is a configuration file that allows a user to customize the way their computer and applications on their computer are setup. 

**Dotfiles** is a term for a collection of configuration files, usually stored in version control (somewhere like GitHub, GitLab or BitBucket) so that the user can port their current configuration between computers.

# How My Dotfiles Work
I use [[Literate Programming]] to [[Tangling Markdown (Literate Programming)|document my dotfiles and generate the actual files from my documentation files]].

I rely on my [[One File to Generate Them All]] as the starting point for generating a _script_ that I can run, that then generates all my other dotfiles.


# Why Dotfiles?
One of my favorite things about programming is the *power* you have to make things work the way you want them to.

For me, configuring through dotfiles gives me so much power.


Learn what dotfiles are (and how mine work).

Dotfiles


To install `pip` with a Homebrew installed version of `python3`, run:

```shell
python3 -m pip install --upgrade setuptools
```

In order to use the binaries that `pip` installed, I also added this to my `PATH` in my `.zshrc`:

```shell
PATH=$USER/Library/Python/3.8/bin:$PATH
export PATH
```


how to install pip with Homebrew on MacOS.

installing pip with Homebrew

I want to experiment with tangling my Markdown files into code and configuration files.

# Dependencies

I'm experimenting with the [md-tangle](https://pypi.org/project/md-tangle/) Python project.

## Setup `md-tangle`

First, I made sure I had `pip` installed, by [[installing pip with Homebrew]].

Next, I installed `md-tangle` with `pip`:

```shell
 python3 -m pip install md-tangle
```

Next, I verified that `md-tangle` is in my `PATH` by running `which md-tangle` in the Terminal. If this was successful, it will show me a path to `md-tangle`.

# Usage

Now that I have `md-tangle` installed, I can create a new Markdown file in Obsidian. 

I'll create a directory in my vault called `42 - Dotfiles`, where all of my dotfile Markdown source will live. In that directory, I'll create my first file for my custom Obsidian CSS snippets, called [[Obsidian Styles]].

Once I've done that, I start writing out my documentation for my styles. I write the documentation and then I write a code snippet in a code fence.



How to tangle markdown in literate programming with a Python executable.

Tangling Markdown (Literate Programming)


"Speed, quality and cost. You can pick two at the sacrifice of one. Which do you choose?"

I've now seen this called [The Iron Triangle of Customer Service](https://digitalgenius.com/the-iron-triangle-of-customer-service-speed-quality-and-cost/) or the [Project Management Triangle](https://fractory.com/project-management-triangle-cost/).

This has come up a few times in my career when teams were overwhelmed and stressed because the people who had expectations about how the team worked together expected all 3 things in a binary way.

I think using this heuristic should primarily be used when _thinking about how people work together_ when considering these three things.


Understanding the 'speed, quality and cost' paradox. Why you can only pick two and the value of having to pick.

Speed, Quality and Cost


I use [NextJS](https://nextjs.org/docs/getting-started) for the React application framework for [[30 - Collections/Organizations/Murmur]] and for [[curiouslychase.com]].

It allows me to build server-rendered applications quickly and deploy to [[Vercel]].


NextJS is a React framework that handles server-side routing. Here's how I use it.

NextJS


A concept coined by Donald Knuth.

**Literate Programming** combines programming language with documentation language by embedding code blocks _in_ the documentation. The embedded code blocks as _tangled_, or compiled, into a file the target programming language understands.

Most developers write the documentation as comments (usually _after_ the code has been written) in the source code. Literate Programming flips the paradigm so that the documentation informs the code. The documentation becomes the source of truth that leads to the code.

As a trivial example, I write my `css` for my [[Obsidian Styles]] in a Markdown file (it's the [[Obsidian Styles]] source file!) and use a Python executable called `md-tangle` to generate a `css` file.

Here's an example gif of how that looks in practice.

In this gif, I demonstrate...
- There's no file called "minimal-plus.css" in my Obsidian dotfiles directory
- I show my Obsidian Styles [[Markdown]] note
- I then run a command with `md-tangle` to generate `minimal-plus.css` from the [[Obsidian Styles]] note
- I then show the "minimal-plus.css" file has been generated and that the styles have applied to Obsidian
![[tanglingobsidianstyles.gif]]


A brief overview of literate programming: the combination of a programming language where the code is embedded in the documentation.

Literate Programming

My workflow for frequently publishing content to my personal website with [[Obsidian]] relies on constantly fetching files from my Obsidian vault into my [[git]] repo and pushing it straight to GitHub, triggering a Vercel deployment.

# How It Works

I have a `yarn` script called `cpAndPush` that I run from the command line:
```shell
yarn cpAndPush
```

`cpAndPush` looks like this:

```shell
yarn prebuild:cpFiles && git add . && git commit -m 'update content' && git push origin HEAD
```

For this script to work, there are a few notes about my workflow:
- I work on `main` for my personal website, so doing this publishes to [curiouslychase.com](https://curiouslychase.com)
- I keep my local repo clean if I'm not actively working on something. If I need to run this and have development changes, I'll run `git stash save -u -k "wip"` before running `yarn cpAndPush` so that my working tree is clean

`yarn prebuild:cpFiles` runs a script I have locally that fetches files from my [[Obsidian]] vault into my `content` directory.


How I copy Obsidian notes into git so that I can author my notes in Obsidians and publish them to the web.

How I Copy my Obsidian Files into my git Repository


A **HTTP status code** is how a web server, serving content, communicates the status of that content to the client[^client].

Status codes are grouped in blocks of 100 so that different types of statuses can be easily inferred. There are currently 5 blocks or categories:

- 1xx (100-199) - **informational**
- 2xx (200-299) - **successful**
- 3xx (300-399) - **redirect**
- 4xx (400-499) - **client error, bad request**
- 5xx (500-599) - **server error, okay request, server failed**

Only some numbers in a block have a industry standard meaning. This is useful for edge and content delivery networks to more accurately debug customer issues. 

# 1xx Responses

An informational response is issued provisionally to let the client know how a request is being processed and that the client needs to wait for a final response.  

I don't see these often in the wild. 

# Common 2xx Responses

A successful response is the "happy path" of the internet. For the most part you want your responses to be in the 2xx category[^happy-path-response-exception]

## 200 OK

This is the standard response for when a request is delivered successfully. The majority of status codes are going to be a **200 OK**.

# Common 3xx Responses 

This category defines how a client should redirect a request based on other information sent from the server. 

## 301 Moved Permanently

# Common 4xx Responses

This category means that a request was made from the client that was malformed or incorrect. 

This doesn't mean the _user_ did something wrong (although that's possible too), it just means that the request as the server received it was not a request the server could process on the user's behalf.

## 404 Not Found

This is a common response status code that means the client requested a page or asset that the server didn't have.

In my experience, the majority of the time that this happens is due to a typo on the content creator's part or a URL was modified by the user and it wasn't the correct URL.

## Less Common
- **418 - I'm a Teapot** - this error code was an April Fool's joke that indicates the server is a teapot and can't brew coffee. It's sometimes used to respond to automated requests. [Read more on MDN](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/418) (thanks Matt[^Matt])
- **451 - Unavailable For Legal Reasons** - this is a proposed error for code for when a user requests a resource that can't be served for legal reasons. (thanks Dylan![^dylan])

# Common 5xx Responses 

This category is all about an error on the server, even if the request from the client was correct. 

This could be because of a bug based on a case the developer didn't think about during development, overload on the server or a server it's making requests from or a configuration issue. 

## 502 Bad Gateway
The server is a proxy or gateway to an upstream but the service it's supposed to serve responded with an invalid response.

## 504 Gateway Timeout
The server is available but was unable to respond. 

- [ ] add more status codes in the 2xx block
- [ ] add more status codes in the 3xx block
- [ ] add more status codes in the 4xx block
- [ ] add more status codes in the 5xx block

[^happy-path-response-exception]: Generally you want 2xx responses, but 3xx responses can be useful for "healing" of a broken URL.

[^client]: client can be a browser or another web server. The internet is a collection of servers, often many, stitched together to serve content. A server will often use the status code it receives from another server to determine what status code to send to the client, sometimes modifying it slightly to differentiate between the status the server received and the status the server sent. 

[^dylan]: my good friend [Dylan Garcia](https://twitter.com/_dylanga/status/1586061309488947206)

[^matt]: [Matt Ginty](https://mobile.twitter.com/matt_ginty/status/1586088203387572224)


HTTP Status Codes


The internet is a big place.

What's more: there are a lot of pieces, standards and concepts that make it work.

This is a collection I'm starting of all the things I think can be valuable for anyone to know about how the internet works. It will be especially valuable for anyone who's dabbling with web development who wants a good resource for all things internet.

One of the most common things everyone will experience in someway or another is [[HTTP Status Codes]]. If you've ever seen a "not found" page (404 status code) or visited a website when it was down (5xx status codes), you've probably seen numbers on the page that meant nothing to you. Those are [[HTTP Status Codes]].


My growing collection of stuff that's interesting to know about the internet.

The Internet


[Slate](https://docs.slatejs.org/) is a JavaScript library for building rich text editors. 

We use **Slate** (with [[Plate (JavaScript)|Plate]] at [[30 - Collections/Organizations/Murmur]] for all of our editors. 


An overview of SlateJS (a JavaScript library for building text editors) from my perspective and experience.

Slate (JavaScript)


Plate is a plugin ecosystem built on top of [[Slate (JavaScript)|Slate]].

We use **Plate** at [[30 - Collections/Organizations/Murmur]] for our editor plugins for custom node types, decorating changes and syncing operations to the server.


An overview of PlateJS (A JavaScript editor plugin ecosystem for SlateJS) from my perspective and experience.

Plate (JavaScript)


A **Segmented Control** is a set of two or more segments, each of which functions as a button. 

They act as a form of toggle and allow a user to switch between alternative views of similar content. 

Example: ![](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*TyETGsw81skeqIcfvfEdAw.png)

# Related Links
- [A better segmented control](https://medium.com/tap-to-dismiss/a-better-segmented-control-9e662de2ef57)


Learn what a segmented control is and when to use it.

Segmented Control


Dirty bean water. The nectar of life. Bringer of energy. 

I love the taste of a good plain black coffee. 

I don't put sweetener or any form of milk in it. If I can't drink it black, I don't want to drink it. 

We use a [[Breville Barista Express]] for making Espressos/Ameircanos at home but I prefer a  pour over most. 

## Beans
- 🌟 🌟 🌟 Papau New Guinea - Waghi Valley (molasses, orange, cinnamon, coffee cherry), Americano, [R&R Coffee Roasters](https://rnrcoffeecafe.com/webstore.html)**Very flavorful and smooth.**
- ⭐️ Sumatra - Aceh - Mansur Bener Meriah (sage, red bell peppers, smoky oak, bittersweet cocoa), Americano, [R&R Coffee Roasters](https://rnrcoffeecafe.com/webstore.html). **It's not bitter but not much taste, definitely not my favorite.** 
- 🌟 🌟 Forest Mist Blend - Signature Blend (earthy, leathery and rich with a bright sweetness at the end of the sip)
- 🌟 🌟 🌟 Ethiopia - Guji - Sidamo Region (orange zest, pomegranate, bing cherry)


An overview of coffee (the nectar of life) from my perspective and experience.

Coffee


There are 6 simple machines (they make work easier by changing the direction of magnitude or force):

- Wedge
- Pulley
- Lever
- Wheel and Axel
- Incline Plane
- Screw

At one point in history (Renaissance), these were considered the ultimate building blocks of mechanics. 

"Modern machine theory analyzes machines as kinematic chains composed of elementary linkages known as kinematic pairs." - [Ref](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_machine)

[Ref](https://www.generationgenius.com/simple-machines-reading-material/)


A quick overview of the 6 simple machines

6 Simple Machines


**Urchin Tracking Module** or UTM, is a query parameter added to a URL to help track where a user is coming from. 

This is used in marketing as a way to gauge the success of various sources (Twitter, Facebook, etc) and content types and use the data as a way to make better decisions about future marketing efforts. 

# How It Works

An example of a UTM:

```
https://curiouslychase.com?utm_source=twitter
```

In this example, if someone were to visit my website with this link, the query parameter would be used in my analytics software to attribute the visitor to the **source** of **twitter**


An overview of UTM (user tracking in the web) from my perspective and experience.

UTM - Urchin Tracking Module


I'm rarely confident I get the syntax correct for markdown footnotes[^confident], even though I find myself using them frequently in [[Obsidian]].

The most basic use of the [[Markdown]] footnote syntax is to use numbers:

```markdown
A footnote in Markdown is a set of square brackets, followed by a caret and a number, letter or character or combination of any of the three without a space.[^example_footnote] 
```

A footnote in Markdown is a set of square brackets, followed by a caret and a number, letter or character or combination of any of the three without a space.[^example_footnote]

[^confident]: it turns out I'm usually on the right track but without seeing it render in Obsidian Mobile in a way that's obvious I did, I second guess myself! Imposter syndrome maybe?

[^example_footnote]: this is an example of a footnote. 


An overview of how footnotes are written and rendered in Markdown.

Markdown Footnotes


I use [[Obsidian]] for interstitial journaling and wanted to list all of my specific list items containing the `#journal` tag. 

This DataviewJS snippet gets all items where they include[^1] a specific tag (`#journal`):

```javascript
//```dataviewjs
dv.list(dv.pages().file.lists.where(t => t.text.includes("#journal")).map((t ) => t.text))
//```
```

Being able to query individual list items is a  power boost for anyone using [[Obsidian]] for interstitial journaling and keeping their journal entries in a daily note!

[^1]: It doesn't have to be a tag, `includes` is a [[JavaScript]] string function, which means you could @ mention something, filter by some thing that could be queried with a [[Regular Expression]] or even link to another file!


How to get a list of items containing a specific tag with Obsidian and Dataview.

Get list items containing a tag with Obsidian and Dataview


**Dataview** is an [[Obsidian]] that I use heavily for fetching data from all of my files and rendering them as lists to make it easier to reflect on topics, interstitial journal or roll up tasks by project.

- [Javascript Code Reference](https://blacksmithgu.github.io/obsidian-dataview/api/code-reference/)
- [[Get all links to the current file with Obsidian and Dataview]]
- [[Get list items containing a tag with Obsidian and Dataview]]

###  Get all pages containing a tag

```javascript
//```dataviewjs
dv.list(dv.pages("#places").file.link)
//```
```
This will get all pages that contain the tag `#people`

###  Notes that were created on the current day

```javascript
// ```dataviewjs
dv.header(2, `Notes made on the ${moment(new Date()).format("DD")} day`)
dv.list(dv.pages()
	.filter(page => 
		 moment(page.file.cday.ts).format("DD") === moment(new Date()).format("DD")).file.link)
// ```
```
This allows me to see all notes that were ever created in the same day's date (28th of any month, for example) so that I always see all of my notes in a month's time.


An overview of the Obsidian plugin Dataview from my perspective and experience.

Dataview (Obsidian)


In the [[Obsidian]] Discord, I've seen a few people ask:
> How can I hid the "Powered By Obsidian Publish" banner?

You'll learn:
- **[[Obsidian Publish]]** - making change in `publish.css` and publishing

What you'll need:
- [[Chrome]] (Safari is similar, but different)
- [[30 - Collections/Software/VS Code]] (or some other editor you're comfortable with)

# Loom

<div class="iframe-wrapper"><iframe src="https://www.loom.com/embed/5ccaf045fe15410fb9369a70c3dc7210" webkitAllowfullScreen mozAllowFullScreen allowFullSscreen></iframe></div>

# Updating Obsidian Publish

Now that you know the element selector you want to use (`.site-footer`), you need to open your Obsidian vault with your editor. 

> [!info]
> The [[Obsidian]] app only supports markdown and image extensions, which is why it doesn't show up in your **File Explorer** (and can't be opened there).
> 

Once you've opened your vault, check if you have a `publish.css` in the root of the folder in the **Explorer**. If it doesn't, you'll need to create one.

Once you have `publish.css`, click to open it and scroll to the bottom of the file. 

For this example, we want to style the `.site-footer` as hidden:

```css
.site-footer {
	display: none;
}
```

Once you've added this, save the file and open your [[Obsidian]] vault. 

Click the **Publish changes** button (at time of writing it's a paper airplane). When the modal opens, you should see `publish.css` marked as **changed**.

Click **Publish** and go to your [[Obsidian Publish|Obsidian Published site]], refresh the page and the site footer should be hidden!

> [!info]
> If you don't see the change immediately, do a hard refresh in the browser so that the files are loaded from the network rather than your browser's local cache.


How to hide the "Powered by Obsidian Publish" label from you Obsidian Published site.

Hide "Powered by Obsidian Publish" in Obsidian Published Site


When working on [[JavaScript]] projects, I often find I'll remove a bunch of code but have left over imports.

In [[30 - Collections/Software/VS Code]], there's a command palette option for **Organize Imports** that will sort your imports _and_ remove any unused imports.

To access it, open your **Command Palette** and run **Organize Imports**. 

See it in action: 

![[Oct-21-2022 05-41-04 1.gif]]

# Automatically Organize Imports

If you feel confident you won't be creating a lot of work for yourself adding imports _back_, you can also setup your [[30 - Collections/Software/VS Code]] configuration to automatically **Organize Imports** on save.

- Open your settings (**Preferences: Open Default Settings (JSON)** in the **Command Palette**)
- If you don't have `"editor.codeActionsOnSave"` already, add the snippet below
- If you do have it, add `"source:organizeImports"` to `"editor.codeActionsOnSave"`

```json
"editor.codeActionsOnSave": {
    "source.organizeImports": true
},
```


How to use Organize Imports in VS Code to cleanup unused imports.

Cleanup Unused Imports with "Organize Imports" in VS Code


I need to add embeds to my [[Obsidian]] notes a specific way so that they render on my website ([[curiouslychase.com]]) _and_ so that they render properly in my notes.

When adding an embed, the `iFrame` needs to be added with a `div` with `class="iframe-wrapper"`.

As an example, a Loom would look like this:

```html
<div class="iframe-wrapper">
	<iframe 
	src="https://www.loom.com/embed/5ccaf045fe15410fb9369a70c3dc7210" 
	webkitAllowfullScreen mozAllowFullScreen allowFullSscreen>
	</iframe>
</div>
```

It would render like this in [[Obsidian]]:

![[Pasted image 20221021114454.png]]

and like this in my website:

![[Pasted image 20221021114629.png]]

The CSS that makes this work:

```css
.iframe-wrapper {
  position: relative;
  width: 100%;
  padding-bottom: 56.25%;
  margin: 2rem 0;
  height: 0;
}

iframe {
  border: none;
  width: 100%;
  height: 100%;
  position: absolute;
  top: 0;
  left: 0;
}
```

This allows the `.iframe-wrapper` to control the display of the iframe.


How to add an iFrame to an Obsidian Note.

Adding iFrame to Obsidian Note


**[Obsidian Publish](https://obsidian.md/publish)** is a service that the [[Obsidian]] team provides for users who want to publish their notes directly to the internet.

It's a neat service that I used for a brief period of time but found it didn't meet my needs for writing and publishing, so I decided to [[How I Publish Obsidian Files to the Web|publish my Obsidian notes my own way]].

Despite no longer using the service, I still contribute to solution-ing in the [[Obsidian]] Discord and keep my solutions as notes to share later.

Some notes I've published about making modifications to **Obsidian Publish**:
- [[JS solution for hiding an Obsidian Publish Sidebar]]
- [[Hide "Powered by Obsidian Publish" in Obsidian Published Site]]
- [[Using Fly.io and NGINX for Proxying Obsidian Publish]]
- [[Publishing my website from Obsidian files with Dropbox]]

# Tips

- **Image `alt`** - If you want to give an image an alt, you can do it by typing `![[Image.png|My Image Alt]]`. `Image.png` will be displayed and have "My Image Alt" as the alt. (**[[Obsidian Publish]]**)


An overview of Obsidian Publish (Obsidian's platform for publishing to the web) from my perspective and experience.

Obsidian Publish


I did a few experiments to see what serves my needs best for publishing my [[Obsidian]] notes to the web.

# Current Solution: A hand rolled script to copy Obsidian notes into my git repository


I use a script to copy any Obsidian notes as raw markdown (based on the `status: published`) frontmatter property and run all of the notes through a markdown compiler (with a few custom plugins for handling Obsidian's image syntax and callout syntax).

This affords me the ability to easily move files across into my git repository based on a frontmatter property (`status: published` ), build all of my note URLs at build time (reducing latency).

**Why it's working for me:**
- I can easily update a bunch of notes in Obsidian and run my script to copy them into my git repo and push. They're deployed as a part of my existing site.
- Page loads are _significantly_ faster because the pages are rendered at build time rather than request time
- Pages are server-side rendered, so they're better optimized for search engines and opengraph sharing
- I have total control over how the page renders
- I already have a website that I can add notes to rather than having a second place to point people
- I can setup my own URL paths so that I use a flat file approach in the URL schema (ie `/notes/<NOTE-NAME>`) and display the hierarchy in the note sidebar (if a note lives 3 folders deep, it displays as 3 folders deep)

# Previous Solutions

## Publishing in Dropbox

Details: [[Publishing my website from Obsidian files with Dropbox]]

I use [[Obsidian]] sync to sync notes between my computer and phone and had my computer's vault live in Dropbox. 

**Why it didn't work for me:**
- The Dropbox sync turned out to be really buggy between Obsidian and Dropbox.
- The Dropbox API authorization changed and I had to rewrite my fetch script
- I didn't find that I needed to publish 'on the go' as much as I thought

## Obsidian Publish

Setup Details: [[Using Fly.io and NGINX for Proxying Obsidian Publish]]

I tried [[Obsidian Publish]] but I found it lacked a lot of what I'd want out of it.

**Why It didn't work for me:**
- The pages are rendered on the client rather than being rendered on the server, making them look less good when sharing on social media 
- Modification meant updating a JS and CSS file and re-publishing them. I don't mind this, but I want more control if I have that flexibility
- I had to setup a reverse proxy to host my own domain. I know how to do that, but I don't want to own another piece of infrastructure.
- If I moved a file, the old path would 404

## Obsidian Publish ++ 

With this solution, I attempted to fetch the notes from the [[Obsidian Publish]] site files. This worked great for real-time publishing, having full control over look and feel _and_ having the ability to server-side render.

**Why it didn't work for me:**
- I couldn't justify the price tag of Obsidian Publish for a cached version of markdown files that I had to render on the fly
- Latency was significant for note files
- It's not a durable solution. If Obsidian changes the way they serve their files, it could break my notes quickly. 


# Related

- [[How I Publish Content to curiouslychase.com]]


All of the ways I've published my Obsidian notes to the web in the past (and how I do it now).