Clara Raubertas // Freelance Web Design, Web Development, and Web Consulting // Cambridge and Boston, Massachusetts clara raubertas design. development. consulting.

Most people who read this have noticed that the post frequency has stepped up a lot recently, and I’ve talked to a handful of you about why: I’m doing a 30-day project where I blog about something I have an opinion about, every day for 30 days.

I first encountered the concept of the 30-day project in fifth grade; we were given the assignment to write something every day for 30 days. There were a handful of rules about what happened if you missed a day (10-year-olds couldn’t be held to the exacting every-day-no-questions standard), but the basic premise was the same; thirty days of doing something is long enough to develop a habit.

I’ve encountered this concept a few other times on the internet. And I think it’s true: commit to do something every day for 30 days; tell your friends/family/teachers/acquaintances that this is what you’re doing; don’t allow yourself to skip a day, or you’ll have to start over; and you’ll have acquired a new habit.

This 30-day project of blogging is my second recent 30-day project. In March, I determined (while under the spell of the out-of-shapeness that comes to most people who take on jobs that require sitting at a computer, all day, every day, in your own home) that I would go running for 20+ minutes every day. It was a satisfying and successful 30-day project; today, I had my first public confirmation of my success, by completing a 5k charity run. Not only was I able to complete the 5k (under hillier terrain than I’m used to, and faster than I normally go), but I had enough stamina to keep going through Sunday afternoon pickup basketball (which itself exhausted me when I started playing, long before the 30-day run).

I have a lot of ideas about new 30-day projects to try after I finish this one — and I’d encourage any of my readers to join me! Weigh in in the comments — what habits do you want to build?

When I first started preferring Linux to Mac OS (which was my main OS for about six years before I started using Linux), my main motivation was tweaking the desktop — I started to hate the Dock’s lack of textual information, and I discovered that I could modify the look and feel of the fluxbox window manager to my tastes far more easily than any other desktop environment I’d used. That’s why it’s kind of ironic that I’m now using the less-customizable Gnome on all my installations (though I’m far from wedded to it — anyone with window manager recommendations, or tweaking-Gnome-a-bit-beyond-the-usual tutorials, please weigh in in the comments!).

There’s a lot of ease-of-use to like about Gnome, though. One thing I’m particularly psyched about is the keyboard shortcuts menu. Not only does it make it trivial to set up the function keys (volume control, play/pause, etc.) on my laptop to do what they look like they should do, but it’s customizable for far less obvious purposes. You can essentially assign any key combo or function key to any action. I already have my most commonly-used applications — the terminal and Firefox — as ready and obvious icons on the top panel, but who wants to use the mouse to go all the way up there? I have F2 open a new terminal and F3 open a new instance of Firefox. Every one of the several times a day I hit F2 to get a new terminal window, I smile a little thinking of the several seconds I’m saving.

And then I use those seconds to refresh LiveJournal. Every productive action has an unproductive reaction, I guess?

There’s a new blog in town! Aristocratic Rockstar is a collaborative blog by a handful of urban twentysomethings about living the lifestyle of an aristocratic rockstar while still being able to make payments on your student loans. I’m both writing articles and doing web development for this!

The first book of this year’s holiday haul that I’ve finished is Tim Ferriss’s Four-Hour Workweek. And — though it featured the “stop spending time on dumb stuff” tips I’d been reading it for, it’s definitely a little condescending and prescriptive.

Yes, he’s certainly right that most people spend far more time in meetings, “doing email”, or micromanaging than they need to; yes, much of what people do in offices they could do from home or from Buenos Aires (though he omits any reference to jobs that do need to be done in a particular physical location); and yeah, it’s probably true that most business owners have a few clients/customers they’d be better off dumping (but, “long-forgotten Italian economist”? Last I checked, Pareto was still sneaking into introductory undergraduate econ courses). And his main point — selling a lot of your time in the hopes of someday enjoying a pleasant retirement is dumb — is well taken. Heck, I don’t need to be convinced that spending 8-6 wasting time in an office is no way to live; that’s why I quit my job to freelance for less money.

But, he’s presenting the specific recipe that helped him to live his dreams as though it’s the recipe for everyone to live their own dream. It’s not — it’s the recipe for living Tim Ferriss’s dream. Don’t tell me that reading nonfiction (special exception: “Recommending this book might seem hypocritical, but it’s not”) is a waste of valuable time; at least at this stage of my life, I’d rather study philosophy or politics than tango or German. He acknowledges that standard office jobs provide desirable socialization, but doesn’t suggest how you could build a strong social network as a world traveler who doesn’t spend more than a few months anywhere. His assumptions are that everyone would prefer traveling to building a home, everyone can find fulfillment in leaving their existing friends for short-term friendships, everyone would rather do things than think about things; and this simply isn’t true.

Well, at least I applaud his cleverness in marketing/selling his book to a broader audience (myself included) than it’s really useful for.