January 2020: did I get better?

January 31, 2020

It’s the last day of the month.

The month started out shitty and then got better. At least it got better later on the first day.

But how about the entire month?

Is Mike Jan 31, 2020 an improvement over Mike Jan 1, 2020?

How would I go about measuring that?

Measuring changes in knowledge

If I had a way to measure my knowledge today, I could compare it to my knowledge at the start of the month. That might tell me something.

If.

There’s a problem.

Even if I could measure some of the knowledge I’ve gained, it’s not obvious how to measure what I’ve lost.

For example: what did I remember at the start of the month that I don’t remember anymore?

I don’t remember what I’ve forgotten.

So maybe I can’t measure what I’ve lost. But I could potentially measure what I’ve gained.

I think it’s worth considering how to to do that.

Why?

Because measuring knowledge will give me more knowledge, and I heard somewhere that knowledge is the measure of all things that matter.

Even thinking about measuring has increased my knowledge.

So HMB while I tell you what I learned by thinking.

Some conclusions

  1. I am better today than on January 1.

  2. I could have been better if I had measured. What gets measured, gets done, they say.

  3. The most straightforward measure: every day, write a “Today I Learned” blog post.

  4. Another measure: make a list of knowledge that I want to acquire, and note what I knock off the list, and what I don’t.

  5. I’ve written 22 posts in this blog this month (not counting this one and any others I finish today.) Each represents a gain in knowledge. Some of the posts represent significant gains.

  6. I read some past posts and gained from them.

  7. My OneTab saved tabs from the start of the month represent new knowledge. But if I don’t do something with them, I’ll lose that knowledge.

  8. I started an experiment in which I exported all my OneTab tabs, did some processing, and imported them in a spreadsheet. But I don’t remember how I did it, or where it is. Next month I want to recover that knowledge.

  9. I learned about OneNote from Alexey Guzey’s writing and started to learn to use it. I imported my first month’s worth of blog posts into OneNote, but haven’t done anything with them.

  10. Today I started writing something about “Debugging.” I think finishing that post and following up on it is probably the most important thing that I can work on.

I think I’ll do that shortly.

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