1% Better

Other Chit-Chat
#1

What are you going to do this week to make your life 1% better?

I’m going to set up the automatic timer for my plant lights so I don’t have to turn them on and off everyday by hand.

This thread is inspired by @Andrew_Schreiber weekly wins thread. Thanks again for doing it every week.

I recently learned from a fellow friend about the 1% better CS rule. Every time you open a file, no matter the reason, you look for some reason to make it 1% better. Over time, each file get really really good.

I then thought about the context of this for robotics. If every subte could get at least 1% better each meeting, you could make significant improvement. Maybe even more importantly, continual improvement.

Before I can ask my team to do it, I realized I need to do it myself. This is a great chance for you to join me!

9 Likes
#2

And this is how you end up with Tabs vs Spaces holy wars :frowning:

Im going to be more fastidious about writing my todo list out each morning.

11 Likes
#3

When youre old like me, you forget stuff you were going to do, minutes later. >.<
I use my Notes app on my iPhone religiously.
Writing things down and planning way ahead, has allowed me to do more things with less time. And you feel good too when you stick to the schedule and finish it with a :white_check_mark:.

8 Likes
#4

My answer is informed by the specifics of being a graduate student, but I’m going to recommit myself to writing a daily progress log at the end of each day. It’s been a good motivator to make sure I’m continuing to accomplish things in a pretty self-directed environment when I do it, but I’ve fallen out of practice too much lately. The other side effect is that it’s useful to have a record of anything I did that didn’t seem notable enough to pursue further at the time but might end up being later on.

3 Likes
#5

I use the reminders app on my iphone for everything I don’t need to do right this very moment. I have a terrible memory, especially with names - just ask my team!

2 Likes
#6

My life is already quite good. I don’t need another 1%! But I am going out on Thursday to try and catch my first ever catfish! I’m on a multi species life list quest.

More helpful to others, I am working on curriculum and such for our upcoming summer FIRST boot camp for up and coming middle schoolers. In addition to the normal stuff we will have a daily “snack challenge”. In theory the students need to solve a problem or else the teachers get all the snacks. This of course is not likely, nor at all needed for most of us.

  • calculate the weight of a specific object if made of various materials. Of course they need to figure out what the material is first. Then solve it by CAD and materials analysis or old fashioned measure and math.
  • an entire whiteboard sized crossword puzzle where they need to spell out acronyms. If a judge ever asks what FIRST, PVC. or .stl stand for, they should know!
  • programming limelight to recognize the box with the snacks in it and drive right up.

ETC. Any other suggestions in a similar vein?

TW

#7

I’ll start by finding a way to quantify that 1% improvement!

On a serious note, a few months back I started a spreadsheet for a daily journal of sorts. The three questions I answer are:

  1. What went well today?
  2. What did not go well today?
  3. What could I have done different?

A lot of days there isn’t much in there for question 3, because I’m too busy to self reflect. But I’m getting better at writing down ALL the good things that happen, rather than just the big stuff.

2 Likes
#8

I’m going to work on setting up my wifi LED lights throughout my house so that I can voice command all of the spaces I commonly spend time in. It both makes it easier to get around (because I walk around the house with my hands full most of the time, so hitting switches is difficult), and it also makes it so I can run them in nightclub mode when I want a cool rainbow light show :slight_smile: Some of them are also RGBIC lights, with 16 segments on each strip, that absolutely dance with color, or I can just have them turned on in static rainbow mode, or also I really enjoy alternating blue-red mode (I suppose that is because I’m used to it from FRC :stuck_out_tongue: )

Picture is of one set that I set up in my living room right after I got back from the US last week.

IMG_1410
IMG_14104032×2268 2.05 MB

Weird little things like this, make me happy, and make my life easier, getting around my apartment.

4 Likes
#9

I started using google calendar to box my time more effectively!

1 Like
#10

Started listing more things of my past life for sale. Most of them got washed and sorted in the time between when it became obvious my business was closing and when I started my current job, but I never completed the last step of listing them.

Also: If anyone wants some low-mileage WeDo 2.0 sets, Mindstorms EV3 sets, or random Technic or non-Technic LEGO, my DMs are open. :slight_smile:

1 Like
#11

I’m getting myself a new phone! My current Galaxy S6 is on its last leg, and I should be getting my first paycheck this week. On a related note if anyone has phone suggestions for under 350 please let me know…

1 Like
#12

I love the goal of this thread, but I’d like to bite on this. At work, there have been points when I’ve wanted to do this, but the process of testing that code and ascertaining that the behavior of that code under the client’s use cases hasn’t changed can be a pretty time consuming process. My point is, it’s important to strive for improvement, but it’s also important to be thoughtful about how to efficiently apply that effort and the potential consequences of well-intentioned actions

3 Likes
#13

Just to satisfy a personal goal, I working the 13 colonies special event ham radio stations. I just logged my ninth while typing.

#14

Wait and catch an iPhone SE on sale, or save up a smidge at catch it at its normal $399.

Things I’ve done lately:

  • Continued to advocate for process improvements at work, even if the chance to implement them is months or even years away.
  • We got a handful of iPads in lately, which as usual came with a bunch of Apple stickers. Nobody in my office has a use for these, so I had a stroke of genius: cut them in half and use them in lieu of scotch tape for our shipping forms. Better than going directly in the trash, I reckon.
  • List a handful of parts from my old business at a time on Bricklink, rather than trying to eat the salami whole.
  • Quit playing around and put a ring on it. (Why yes, I will bury the lede here.)
1 Like
#15

Ended up settling for a google pixel. It was a bit above my price range, but I felt like a good investment.

2 Likes
#16

I’m going to get off chiefdelphi and enjoy my family.

4 Likes