I'm switching to @obsdmd for note-taking. Until now I used either Todoist (for quick notes) or Google Docs (larger, persistent knowledge), but the former is not great beyond quick tasks, and the latter is horrible regarding the organization and linking. 🧵!

With @obsdmd everything is in local files. They have a sync service, but for the moment I'm using Dropbox and it's fine. And it's open source and there's a thrilling community that builds plugins. So, you own everything, that's nice.

I'm currently using it for:
- Daily journal: that's supported by a core plugin that works great. Template-based, the daily journal is automatically opened as you open the app.
- Content about Engineering Management. I'm moving a plain Google Doc where I was collecting notes.

For the EM content, I've installed some plugins:
- https://github.com/aidenlx/alx-folder-note so a folder has a default note
- https://github.com/zolrath/obsidian-auto-link-title so pasting a URL shows the title instead of the raw URL
- https://github.com/lynchjames/note-refactor-obsidian for creating linked notes from content
- https://github.com/simonpacis/obsidian-grammarly-plugin

Obsidian is awesome so far! I'll probably use it with a git repo for other kind of content (you can have multiple "vaults"). Looking forward to hearing your suggestions 🤗

Obsidian note-taking

A question about your task management! More specifically, about the (need for) feeling of progress. At Engineering Management for the Rest of Us, @sarah_edo explains that she uses @NotionHQ weekly planner, not only because of the planning itself, but for the final artifact: 🧵

"I like this (...) more than a kanban board or a homegrown to-do list (...), they feel unsatisfying and never-ending. In this model, the big picture is broken down day by day, and at the end of the week, it’s clear I’ve gotten things accomplished, which helps me feel motivated."

For team work, I tend to use GitHub kanban, and for personal tasks, @todoist , but it's true that it feels neverending. I'm not sure if @NotionHQ would work for me, as the resulting week is kind of a vanity metric, as it's "done tasks" instead of "accomplishments".

I'm now giving a try to complement it with a brag document (https://jvns.ca/blog/brag-documents/). What works best for you?

Task lists and feeling of progress

As a part-time manager for most of my career (as a tech lead and similar) I've read a lot about Engineering Management (https://juanignaciosl.github.io/tags/#Engineering%20Management). I want to recommend three books that complement each other, and ask a final question :) 🧵

The Manager's Manual, by @keyvanakbary , @flopezluis, and @xala3pa https://juanignaciosl.github.io/learning/2021/08/27/El_manual_del_manager.html . It's the best one if you want to know about the day-to-day tasks. Definitely, the closer you can get to a "manual" for the role.

Engineering Management for the Rest of Us, by @sarah_edo https://juanignaciosl.github.io/learning/2023/01/03/Engineering_Management_for_the_rest_of_us.html . It's the best for understanding why something is not working or how to improve. It covers the gap between "natural leaders" and "the rest of us" very successfully 👌🏻

Finally, An Elegant Puzzle, by @Lethain https://juanignaciosl.github.io/learning/2022/12/07/An_elegant_puzzle.html. An analytical, systems-based approach to the EM duties, from "mundane" (hiring interviews...) to "advanced" (engineering reorgs...). And beautifully edited 😍.

I think that my next read is going to be Thinking in Systems: A Primer https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3828902-thinking-in-systems . Which ones would you recommend, either for more generic content on EM, or for going deeper into specific topics?

3 books on Engineering Management

I'm cleaning my @Pocket (New Year's Resolution, you guessed it) and I'm getting to some older content. There's a talk about Uber big data platform https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdIJqW8zsdg that made me think about longevity of content at talks 🧵

They mention Marmaray https://github.com/uber/marmaray. The talk is from 2018, and Marmaray is discontinued essentially since 2019.

On the other hand, Hudi https://github.com/apache/hudi is now more active than ever.

But, above all, the "lessons learned" slides have some great advice (enforce schema!) that will last for decades.

I guess that all this makes this talk a good one: it has a good balance between new technology, making it attractive for the audience now, and long-lasting content.

Talks: balancing ephemeral and long-lived content

Maps are a blank canvas on steroids, showing places, distances, (cor)relations… They're powerful communication tools if you're enabled to use them liberally. I love throwing data on top of maps and looking for patterns🕵🏻. I did an exercise on the seams of Earth, tectonic plates!

You can find tectonic plates on every physical Earth globe (maybe there’s one with relief in your junk room). But how cool is it that you can see how earthquakes are distributed along with tectonic plates, so clearly that they hide them?

Wait, what happens in China, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan area? 😱

That area is very active but not on top of other tectonic plate lines, like most of the rest of the world 🧐

As usual, the reality is complex, and the visualization helps us understand that there are multiple reasons for earthquakes in the area, from faults to human hands!

The article about hand-made earthquakes led me to another outlier, a point in India that happened to be around a dam:

Bonus: not only earthquakes align with tectonic plates, the seams also open the Earth internals through volcanoes!

Of course, all this comes from a Felt map 🙂
https://felt.com/map/The-seams-of-Earth-JSUHLLtqTUGhjMUg9CjGi8D

There’s a countless amount of layers to stack on top of a map! Crime and social investment? Earthquakes and fracking? At Felt, we want both to provide as many useful layers to users but also allow them to load and play with their own. Join! https://felt.com/