Matthew Lang

It wasn't Ethan's day at the Stanley Morrison Trust event down at Dumfries & County GC yesterday. A lack of concentration and fast greens seen him finish well outside his usual scoring zone.

Still, he had a good time and great to see that one of the Renfrewshire Golf Union groups walked away with a prize.

Looking forward to seeing Ethan playing this event again over the next few couple of years. Still time yet for Ethan to bag a prize there.

It's back to basics over the next few weeks with some work to be done with his short game and putting.

On a day where a Brit has won his fourth Tour de France, the focus seems to be more on Jordan Spieth's win at The Open. Why isn't Froome's success more of a talking point then?

There is no fluking a yellow jersey. Three weeks of physical attrition, of relentless mental calculations and stress, of staying ahead of a shifting mass of rivals ganging up to unseat you, of managing egos and efforts within your own team, of high mountains and cruel cross-winds.

And yet when Chris Froome won his third Tour last year, having run up Mont Ventoux in his cleats on his way to victory, he failed to even make the 16-strong shortlist for the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year.

— Tour de France 2017: Is Chris Froome Britain's least loved great sportsman? by Tom Fordyce for BBC Sport

I was a long time fan of cycling. Ever since I first seen Miguel Indurain capture his Tour wins, I was hooked. Every year I would watch the Tour. Then I started watching the Giro and the Vuelta too. I love watching the big cycling tours. It was the highlight of my sporting calendar. Only the Super Bowl rivalled it in terms of how much I looked forward to it.

Then there was the Armstrong period, and then after that a number of incidents involving other riders. That's when I started losing interest in the sport. Despite those many years of following it, I just couldn't watch it anymore.

I tried watching a stage of the Tour this year but I couldn't keep my focus on it.

I admire Froome's success, I can't help but think though that perhaps there are other factors in this. Is the UK is falling out of love with cycling? Do we have success fatigue with cycling? It's a terrible thought considering a British rider has achieved his fourth win of the Tour, but with all the recent success that Great Britain has had with cycling, perhaps it just doesn't have the same appeal it used to have.

Perhaps the Tour de France needs a change of format to make it more interesting? One thing that usually happens in the tour is that the winner of the yellow jersey holds onto the jersey for a number of days before the last stage of the race. The last stage of the tour is frequently a foregone conclusion. Does it need to be changed up a bit to make it more difficult for riders to hang onto the yellow jersey?

I don't know why Froome isn't getting more spotlight in the media for his success.

All I know is that my preferred sport to watch on the day is golf rather than cycling. So I settled down today to watch what I could of the golf and enjoyed every minute of it.

It's a tribal thing. I used to be part of the cycling tribe, but recently I started enjoying golf more. I still cycle every now and again but it just no longer has the pull that it had in the past.

Time for another quarterly delivery of Field Notes memo books. This time it's the Campfire edition.

There are three memo books in a set but the boys were quick to snag the "Night" covers of this set and lucky for them there was two of them. This is why in the picture above I'm only left with the "Dusk" and "Dawn" covers!

When I subscribed to Field Notes I wasn't really banking on the fact that my sons would be using them as much as they are are. Ethan is using the memo books for his golf and Drew is using them for drawing. I may have to bump up the order number next year!

It's often the case with me that I look for a big solution to what I perceive to be big problems rather than the small solution.

The client upgrade

Take for example an upgrade I'm doing for a client. There's a number of steps that I always take when it comes to upgrading web applications for clients, but in this case the steps didn't go as planned.

For a few hours I was banging my head against a wall because of an obscure error. Stepping back I decided to go through the application in more detail. After just a few minutes I finally found the problem and made the change to ensure the upgrade process was working. The error itself was a bit of a red herring, but the obscurity of it had me thinking that I had to do something more to get move forward with the upgrade.

The change to get the upgrade was to update an obsolete library to the latest version and then the client's application was working again. I've updated my notes for further upgrades I do for clients so that the same thing doesn't happen again.

The same thing happened with Ethan last week.

The golf swing

Last week, Ethan had an playing lesson with the club pro, Andy. For a couple of weeks now, Ethan's game has been slipping. It was frustrating to watch as I don't know what to look for in his swing when things go wrong other that what he has learned in the past from his coaching. Heading out to the first tee, Ethan got setup, did the usual pre-shot routine and then Andy chipped in with a little nugget of wisdom, "Stand back further".

The change was instantaneous. The drive went right up the middle of the fairway. Through the lesson the recurring theme in Ethan's swing was that he stood too close to the ball and needed to go back a few inches in order to get the ball going in the direction that he wanted. Whether it was a driver off the tee, a hybrid or iron from the fairway or even a wedge leading up to the green, Andy's advice was always the same, stand back further from the ball.

The small (and effective) solutions

Ethan's focus now is to start including a small check in his pre-shot routine that ensures he's the right distance from the ball. Checking the distance between his belt buckle and the end of his club and making sure he can fit a hand span between them is enough to ensure that he's the right distance from the ball.

In both cases the problem was significant, and yet the solution to each problem was the smallest change imaginable. I wouldn't have thought for one second that an out of date library could have had such an effect on upgrading a web application. I also wouldn't have thought that such a small change in Ethan's swing would have such an effect on the resulting shot.

What this has taught me though is that the smaller solutions should be the ones that we look towards first. Using tried and tested approaches and notes on previous upgrades, I've managed to stream line the upgrade process for a clients web application so that in most cases it takes days rather than weeks. Eliminating the small problems ensures that I'm always working towards a functioning upgrade.

It doesn't always work this way though. Every client upgrade is different and there are exceptions to the rule, although there shouldn't be that many. Most of my clients have similar technology environments when it comes to their web applications so upgrades should fall into the timeline of taking a few days, a week at most. Any number of issues can stall an upgrade and due the technicalities of it, it's not always the case that a simple solution can move it forward.

Keep notes on those solutions

It also doesn't hurt to document your experiences. They're all different but from the notes that I have built I have a process in place that eliminates most the of the problems I encounter when it comes to upgrading client's web applications.

As for Ethan's golf swing, he's determined to use the time over the summer to practice more. Ethan has a full summer of lessons, competitions and medals to play for so that he can keep working towards lowering his handicap. To do that he'll need to remember the small fixes that can have such a positive effect on his swing and resulting shot. He's keeping a notebook of his yardage and his lessons so that he has something to go back to and review.

A lot colder tonight than last week, but glad to get out for a hit with Ethan.

Enjoyed a few holes with Ethan out on the course tonight.

Just when I think we're out of the woods with winter, Drew gets a nasty cold. We skipped his Taekwondo this weekend as he was loaded. Thankfully he started to get better on Monday and he's back to his usual cheeky self.

The weather is finally taking a turn for the better which means there's normally plenty of work to do in the garden. This year its less work than usual to thanks to Victory Gardens & Landscaping who came out last week and did a big chunk of work to tidy the place up. Just got the new BBQ to assemble and we should be ready for plenty of outdoor grilling.

Sunday was another day on the road for me and Ethan as he was playing in the second round of his junior flag challenge at East Kilbride Golf Club. Conditions were great and he really looked a lot more settled than he did last week. Highlight of the day was his eagle on the 7th. He finished the nine hold round with a score of 44 which he was delighted with despite a couple of putts that just lipped out. Next round is in a couple of weeks, so Ethan gets to play in the medal next Sunday at his local club which means I can put my feet up for the day!

Is it April already? Where did March go? Yip, it's been one of them months where it's over before it's even began.

The last three weeks have definitely been like this. I've been busy working and we've been out and about a bit more now that the good weather is with us and getting the boys outdoors isn't such a problem.

Saturday was errands day. Heading to a few places to get some ideas for the garden. We invested some time and money into the garden last year and this year we're ready to finish most of the heavier work in the garden. I can't wait for the day that I can just put me feet up in the garden, fire up the grill and start on a couple of cold beers.

Sunday was Ethan's return to weekly medals at Paisley Golf Club. He's spent a fair amount of time over winter putting in extra practice and it's starting to pay off. Once the course dries out a bit more though and he's had a few more practice rounds he should start to see his handicap fall.

Easter holidays have started for the school kids. I took Ethan up to Paisley for a round of golf. Weather was favourable (it wasn't raining) and the course was in great condition. Ethan played very well as always. I was a little slower to get started and couldn't hack the pace at the turn. By that point my back and arms were tired. We're heading back out on Wednesday again, so hopefully I'll be a better playing partner!

Again, this was sitting in my drafts. Doh!

The weekend was something of a blur. After a trip down to see a client and a few days back at my desk catching up, I was glad to have some downtime with the family.

Saturday started as it always does with Drew's Little Tiger Cubs class. As always he's slow to start with the warm ups but as soon as they get to the kicking and punching he's front and centre! After that it time to head home as Jen was going for the day so it was just me and the boys. Drew was invited to a birthday party next door so I took him through for that will Ethan entertained himself on the Playstation.

Sunday was Ethan's first group lesson with the rest of the Juniors at Paisley Golf Club. Even though he's hardly had a chance to play on the course over the winter, Ethan's been improving his swing over the winter and this will be a big year for him. His lesson went well and he learned a few things the hard way but it's sometimes the only way you learn.

Sunday morning was also my first jaunt back out on the mountain bike. The first bike ride of the year is always rubbish. You find out it now that your bike needs a service or new parts and you're also getting back on the bike after a number of months since the last time you were on it. This year was no exception.

With a slow puncture at the rear I decided to top up the wheel with air to see how slow it was. Unfortunately my pump split in two and couldn't get any air into the wheel. I had enough air to get back to the card, but it did cut my ride significantly short. Added a new pump and a new rear tyre (it is blading) to the bike shopping list.

Sunday afternoon saw Drew heading out for a Little Tiger Cubs assessment. He's been attending the classes for a few months now and he's earned the stripes for his belt. At his assessment he earned his next belt up and walked away with a certificate.

It's that time of year where people are starting to tail off on their new year resolutions. Let's face it, for most of us new year resolutions are nothing more than pipe dream. I don't do new year resolutions but what I do believe in are habits.

Habits are easier to build than new year resolutions and once they're part of your routine, you'll find that don't need to spend as much time building that habit again if you break it. This also makes your goals (or resolutions) much more achievable.

Ethan's golf has been progressing nicely over the past year. He's comfortable with his new clubs, he's familiar with his local course and he's getting to know more and more people through different levels of coaching and playing. His handicap didn't fall much last year, but he's adamant that this year it will come down and he's set himself the target of being at a handicap of 20 or less by the end of this year.

Rather than getting him to focus on the long term goal of reducing his handicap though I started him on something more manageable.

Building the habit of practicing every day for 20 minutes.

It doesn't matter what part of his game he practices on, it could be his swing, chipping, putting or playing out on the course.

He started off well. He needed reminders to practice in the first week, but he managed to get there. After a couple of weeks, his calendar now looks like this:

16 days of daily practice and all without a break in the chain.

I don't need to remind him to practice anymore. He just does it. He takes a look at his calendar and puts in the practice so that he can keep put the next 'X' in and keep the chain going.

The habit is now part of his daily routine but Ethan is still a long way away from that goal. Once the golf season starts in earnest he should see better scores on his scored cards and start to see that handicap fall.

Apologies. Missed a couple of these in November and December!

After the feasting and festivities over Christmas, the New Year weekend was a chance to get some sense of normality back.

Me and Jen took the boys to the ten pin bowling on the Friday morning just to do something different. Poor performances by all except from Drew who won both games!

New Years Eve was a quiet day and a chance for the boys to mess about with their presents.

New Years Day involved dinner at my parents house. While most people might have ordered their steak pie from their local butchers (not a bad option by the way), my mum opted to make hers from scratch. It went down a storm, especially with the boys who love their steak pie.

To round off the long weekend I took Ethan up to the golf club for a few holes. The weather wasn't great but it didn't stop him putting in a solid nine holes. I'm starting to find some consistency as well which is good.

Working on Friday right down the to wire again and then a quick turn around to get ready to go out for dinner and celebrate my Dad's birthday. Caffe Royale was tonight's choice and it didn't disappoint. Italian theme restaurant with a great selection of food. Highly recommended.

We've been looking at purchasing a "nearly new" second car for quite some time, but nothing has shown up that matches our price point. A car showed up on the web through the week, but no pictures meant we had to go down to the showroom to get a closer look. Glad we did. Found ourselves a great little runaround car within our price point. Later on, went to church with Ethan and then headed home for dinner and few hours in front of the television catching up with the golf.

The weather on Sundays has been terrible over the last few weeks. Ethan did have a medal scheduled for Sunday but he's been loaded with the cold. He wasn't up for a full round so I took him out for nine holes just to get out the house for a while. He's playing well with his new Ping clubs and I'm sure by the start of the season next year he'll be ready to slash his handicap down.

Rounded up the weekend by finishing my sketchnotes for the Ryder Cup and then watching the final matches come in. Europe didn't play their best and the USA did. You can't argue with a simple point like that, but hats off to each of the European players for a good effort. It's not always going to work out on the day and it didn't for some of the European players but that's just the way golf is.

A few weeks ago my wife bought a Fitbit Alta. She’s been on a health kick for the last couple of months and she wanted an easier way of tracking factors that were contributing to her progress. Simple things like number of steps in a day, calories burned and the amount of time she spent being active are all little things that can help. After reviewing a few different health trackers she eventually decided on the Fitbit Alta. A couple of weeks later and she was regularly meeting her steps goals and seeing general health and fitness improvements.

It was a couple of days later and I my own Fitbit Alta arrived from Amazon. Having already setup Jennifer’s Alta, setting up my own was a two minute job and within a few minutes it was tracking my step count.

Like many health trackers, the Alta looks like a ultra-modern watch and yes it does give you the time. I don’t tend to wear a watch during the day and only opt to wear a watch when I’m going out. At times like this I’ll move the Alta over to my other wrist and wear it there for the time I’m out.

The tracker itself is fairly narrow and with the screen being more longer than it is wider, you’d probably miss it if you seen it on my wrist. The slender design is one of the reasons why I liked this particular model. Too many health trackers try and replace your watch with a huge screen but I’m not using it for telling the time or keeping an eye on my running distance. It’s purely to track my movement over the course of the day.

After three weeks of use I’m starting to see the benefits and drawbacks of health trackers.

The Benefits

On the plus side there’s the ability to see how well you’ve done over the course of the day. Number of steps, walking distance and number of minutes I’ve been active for are three factors I try to keep on top of. Anything else is a bonus. You don’t realise how much walking you done when you look back at your day. I never considered walking Ethan round the golf course to be much of an exercise, but the tracker picks up the activity and works out how many steps I’ve taken.

I took the Alta out on a bike ride to our favourite deli. The tracker worked well and could workout that I was on the bike. Comparing the time spent on the bike with the time logged by Strava (which I also use for tracking bike rides) proved to be consistent.

The Drawbacks

The downside of the health tracker is the accuracy of such a device. Like any technology fan, I’ll take their promise as being accurate with a pinch of salt. I mean, how accurate is it?

I did do some research on the accuracy of health trackers, and there has been some debate of the accuracy of health trackers. While I know there is always going to be cases where steps were missing or added, the health trackers today do a good job of tracking your movements.

I’m not completely sold on the calories tracker within the app. I do a lot of home cooking and portions and ingredients can vary from those foods listed in the Fitbit app. For that reason I tend to ignore this part of the app.

My own cooking is fairly healthy so I don’t see that as being a big issue in the march to better health.

Room for Improvement?

With such a small screen on your hand you would think that it’s hard to read incoming messages on your phone. Well it does only display the first few words from your message, but that’s not a deal-breaker. The display is good and the information that you display on it is adjustable from your phone. I would like to see more customisation though on the information that I can display.

The one feature of the tracker I’m disappointed in was the reminder to move setting. During each hour you set the Alta up to track your movements, it reminds you 10 minutes before the end of the hour to fulfil your hourly quota of steps. Seems a little silly to remind you 10 minutes before the end of each hour.

When I read about this feature I thought it would allow you to configure the Alta to notify you at set intervals to get up and move about. Having just completed a running course of physio to get my back into shape again, the physiotherapist reminded me that I shouldn’t be sitting for any longer than 15 minutes at a time. I thought the Alta’s reminder to move would be configurable to do this but sadly it isn’t.

Overall the purchase of the Alta has been a good thing. I'm more aware of the amount of sleep and exercise I'm getting. I'm also cutting myself a bit of slack as I now know that I'm getting exercise in just by getting a few walks in during the week. Whether that's walking Ethan to school or round the gold course, all the steps add up.

It's taken me a while to warm up to purchasing a wearable but the good thing about it is that I'm getting a clearer sense of the exercise I'm doing. As long as I'm getting in a daily dose of exercise then that can't be a bad thing.

Ethan had a fun night at Paisley Golf Club with the rest of the kids that get coaching there on the Friday night. Hats off to Andy Carlton and Claire-Maire Macauley for putting on a great event and bringing all the kids together. No prizes for Ethan but he did score quite well in the putting.

Twinged my back early on Saturday morning which ruled out any work I was going to do in the garden that day. That was nothing though compared to Sunday morning when I completely put my back out and put out any plans we had for the day. A visit to the out-of-hours GP got me some pain killers. My back is on the mend today after a treatment of physio this morning and I'm going back on Wednesday for more treatment.

I had a great time with Ethan yesterday playing at Paisley Golf Club.

Friday. Wrapped up client work and finished up packing for the holiday.

Saturday was a long day travelling with the family. It was the first time I decided to eschew technology for the flight. No laptops, iPads or even a Kindle. All I had was Cal Newton's Deep Work book and the job of entertaining our two boys for a while. For a device-free flight it was quite quick. Touched down in Toronto mid-afternoon and had some ribs for dinner at my in-laws house which is our base for the next couple of weeks.

The day after the flight is always the recovery day. The boys were up early as predicted so we had a hobbit style breakfast comprising of an early breakfast at 5am and a normal breakfast at 9am.

For the second time I joined my brother-in-law and his friends for five-a-side football. I've still got a good touch, but I definitely don't have as much energy as I used too.

Me, Ethan and my father-in-law headed to a nearby nine hole golf course for a quick game of golf today. Ethan destroyed myself and his Granpa with accurate green shots and some great putting. After a few errands on the way home, I cooked up some fajitas for the family and then headed to the park with the boys.

Pretty much a damn good weekend.

(Trying something new. Mini posts on the last weekend of the month.)

Made a home cooked dinner on Friday night. Sat down with Jen to watch a movie.

Saturday morning bike ride with Ethan. Lunch and then a family walk with the boys on their bikes. Coded my own replacement for an online product I pay too much money for. Another home cooked meal on Saturday night.

Sunday morning painting the fence. Dropped Ethan off at the golf. Trip to the garden nursery for the rest of us. Tidy up the garden before dinner. Picked up Ethan from the golf. Sunday dinner. A couple of hours on the PS4.

Yip, the weekend was pretty great.

Another Sunday, another medal under the belt. Ethan's settling in well at Paisley Golf Club and the boys in the junior section have been great in welcoming him.

When Ethan was at golf coaching before Christmas, he asked the professional how many balls he would need to hit to get his swing perfect or as close too. His reply straight to the point, “10,000”. Given the chance I have no doubt that Ethan would have started that night trying to rack up as many swings at the ball as he could.

If you practice something long enough you’ll eventually be good at it. Great? May be. Good? Most likely. It doesn’t matter if you’ve already got prior knowledge or your new to something. Spend enough time at it and you'll get better.

The same goes for writing.

When I first started blogging I looked for something to write about that people would like to read but that’s a rookie mistake. If you want to find something to write about then write something that you will want to read as an individual. Write the web you want to read.

Yes, we’re borrowing slightly from Austin Kleon’s “Write the book you want to read”, but the goal in each case is the same.

I also don’t write straight into my blog anymore. I did this for a year, but there came a point where I was just going through the motions. I was filling up the space for the day and when I read back what I was writing, I didn’t like what I seen.

Instead I write far away from any digital interface that will allow me to easily publish. I write in notebooks, plain text files, and in some cases, even on an index card. Write anywhere that doesn’t have a big “Publish” button at the side of it. It will give you a chance to read, review and edit your writing.

I’m certainly not an expert on whether my writing has improved using a scale of measure but I would like to think that after this amount of time writing on this blog, I have improved my writing in some respects.

Ethan played in his first competition of the year at Paisley Golf Club. He's still struggling with the longer tees in these competitions but he enjoyed the challenge. Looking forward to seeing him out on the course a lot over the rest of the year and getting his handicap down.

As I'm writing this in my editor in Ghost, the title reads "Social Media Sucks". Yeah, I know. Strong words in that title. I don't like them either, but having them at the top of my editor as I write this actually reminds me of all the great things that social media brings. Here's a few of the positive things I get from Twitter:

• My son's golf course and coaching updates from @paisleypro.
• What's on the grill at the home of @culturaloffering.
• Local news and updates from @paisleyorguk.
• Deep thoughts and revelations from @patrickrhone.

There's so much more as well and from the 300+ accounts I now follow there are so many more that I could list. It's a tailored timeline that I curate to my own needs.

If I don't like something that someone says, then I unfollow.

Disagreeing with someone though is a different thing, and while I might disagree on certain topics with people I follow, it doesn't mean they're wrong and I'm right or vice versa. It's a difference of opinion and that keeps my timeline interesting. I enjoy that.

The worst of Twitter is something that I haven't been personally experienced but I see time and time again. People with a large number of followers become easy targets for the Twitter mob and their flaming torches and pitchforks. The mob that prides itself on correcting every wrong done. The mob that stands for justice and equality. What they actually stand for is easy pickings. They find the easiest wrong to correct and pounce. This is the worst of Twitter and is going to drive people away from the platform.

Stephen Fry was the latest victim of the Twitter mob. I don't blame Stephen Fry for leaving Twitter. I also don't think he overreacted in leaving. He made his decision based on not one past experience but several. It's sad that people are driven to such measures. It makes Twitter a less entertaining place.

I've update the title of this post, to reflect the changing tide of Twitter. I just wish it was more like it was in the beginning.

This blog has been gradually winding down in activity for the last few weeks. You've probably noticed. It's been hard to watch as I used to be a frequent poster. Daily blog posts, links and other trivial things that might interest you the reader.

Truth of the matter is that client work has all but consumed my week. I've got two projects on at the moment and I'm splitting my time between them in fortnightly periods. The work is good and it looks like it will carry through to the new year which I've no complaints over.

The problem has been dividing my time so that I'm not always hunkered over my desk. My desk is where you'll find me through the day, usually wrestling with some code, but sitting there outside of my client hours makes it difficult to 'switch off'. Lately though, once the client work is finished you'll usually find me playing with the kids until bedtime and then its television for an hour or two before the exhaustion kicks in.

A couple of years ago I had a good routine going. Writing in the morning, 3 periods of client work throughout the day, as well as time to work on new languages and frameworks and working on side-projects. I was getting things done. Not just that, but I was also getting out on the bike and keeping the weight off. Last time I was out on the bike was a few weeks ago with Ethan. I haven't been out on the bike since.

Last night I took a look at the heat map on my Timepage app for December. Aside from the usual calendar functions, it shows your calendar as a heat map where you're busy and not so busy. Almost nothing showed up. There's a day where Ethan has golf coaching and a day for the Star Wars showing. Apart from that there was nothing. It seems I have lost sight of one of the fundamentals of any productivity system. Schedule it.

Client work has become such a big part of my day that I no longer plan for anything else getting done. Without the planning of the day most stuff falls through the cracks. It's usually the little things like writing and side-projects. They've suffered the most.

Out of sight, out of mind. If you don't see something often enough you tend to forget about it. Like my calendar. I didn't plan for anything and therefore didn't see the need to look at my calendar. Everyday was turning into the same work getting done so why bother scheduling anything?

I've just proven to myself that there's nothing gained from an empty calendar. Time to change that.

The morning pages habit trundles on with my Moleskine Volant notebook filling up by the day. Some days it's easy to get started while other days it seems like a struggle. It shouldn't be like this.

Every year we visit Jennifer's family just outside of Toronto. The holiday usually revolves around shopping for the girls and golf for the boys, but on those days where we want to spend the time together as a group we sometimes head down to the lake. It's a great spot for a picnic and a walk, it lets the kids explore and of course there's that love of skimming stones. You spend a couple of seconds looking for a good stone and you throw. There's no concern about the quality of the throw, a few throws is all that's needed to get better. Also you know that once it's thrown that stone is gone forever. Well at least until it's washed back up back onto the shore again.

Your morning pages should be like this. Just writing, seeing where it takes you and never worrying about that writing coming back. It's an exercise to clear your mind and nothing more. Also it doesn't matter about the content of your morning pages. It's all for you. No-one else. Once it's written it can disappear from the eye of the public forever. Just like your little stone skimming across the water and disappearing, your morning pages can hide forever.

This morning I was stuck for something to write about, so I just started writing. Half a page in and it started to get easier. The next time I start my morning pages it won't be so hard to get started. I just need to remember it's just like skimming stones.

I was watching Ethan this morning as he was playing with a friend on the Playstation. A session of Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare was in full play and the boys we're chatting about new video games, golf, going back to school as well as planning their next zombie assault. It got me thinking how different things are for kids today when it comes to media and whether that change is causing kids to mentally age faster.

The biggest difference I see is the prescence of media now. Everywhere we go, we have instant access to the latest news and headlines, trending topics and sometimes things that are just too horrifying to believe have happened.

I remember being the same age as Ethan and growing up in Canada. We had a record player, tape deck and a television. That was the extent of our media devices in the house. Most days my parents would get their fill of news from newspapers that they bought on a daily basis, but I never read those. I don't remember ever watching the news on television but I always watched cartoons like Spiderman and shows like Knightrider and the ice hockey was always on at night. I just don't remember the news at all.

Compare this with Ethan who has his own iPhone and a Playstation. He gets his fill of news from the BBC Newsround website which is news for younger kids. It's good because it explains what's happening in the world without complicating the story. They report most of the events that are in the news and explain why it's happening. We tend not to watch the news on television unless it's something serious but that's thankfully not happened for a while. If we are watching and Ethan sees it, we explain as best we can why it's happening.

As for exposing him to other media, we certainly draw the line on movies and games. Me and Jen use our own judgement when it comes to these but games like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto are out until he's older. The same goes for movies. There's ratings on them for a reason.

Most of us have probably played some kind of war based game as kids but when we did we drew on our knowledge from television and movies that we had seen. When we were kids and running about shooting each other we used our experiences from movies to feed our imagination. That has changed and the advancement of technology means that movies and games now have a better sense of realism. Whether it ages your kids mentally though is difficult to measure but I always like to err on the side of caution.

Controlling and curating the media that our kids consume doesn't mean they won't grow up fast, after all I'm sure he's getting an education in the school playground. It just means we're slowing down the rate at which they grow mentally and that's not a bad thing. There's plenty of time to experience what the world has to offer but as a kid you get more from using your own imagination. And I rather see that for as long as I can before they experience the reality of the world.

This post highlights the benefits that youngsters get from playing golf. Ethan's first year on the junior team has been a huge learning experience for him. Learning etiquette, being responsible and managing your emotions have been at the forefront.

I'm glad to see Ethan developing with his golf. It's definitely a great sport for youngsters.

Ethan played in the Junior Open at Elderslie Golf Club yesterday. He had a good time but it was a long slog for him. Playing off the longer yellow tees made some of the holes extremely difficult for him. Good experience for him though.

After a rocky start to the year, it seems that Ethan is finding his form again. It was a big ask for Ethan to beat James in his match but despite losing, his scorecard was made up of fives, sixes and sevens. Well done kid!

Elderslie Golf Club continues to be a great place for Ethan and the rest of the juniors to develop their game. Hat tip to Scott and Craig and everybody else involved in helping develop the junior team there.

It was a good weekend for the members of Elderslie's Junior Newton Shield squad. Coaching on the Saturday with the club pro followed by an opportunity to play on the course for all levels of members in the junior section on the Sunday. All those involved with this in the club should be commended. It's great to see kids of all ages being encouraged to play and compete.

I've already mentioned how I use projects in Todoist. Well this time it's the turn of the humble label.

The label. This is Todoist's context tag that can be applied to any task if you need to organise them by more than just their priority. Let's get something clear before we start. Colour coded labels are a premium feature in Todoist. If you're using the free plan on Todoist, you can still use the labels suggested below but not the label colours.

Having decided that tagging tasks with labels would give me more flexibility I started tagging everything in my list with labels. It quickly turned into a nightmare with inconsistent labels, labels with typos and even obscure labels that didn't end up making sense to have. I needed a strategy, so I took the advice of Mike Vardy and started using labels in a more structured manner.

Looking at the range of colours available I started to setup label groups by colour. First off I created six labels for my six personal compass points giving each compass point its own colour. This is the basic categorisation of labels regardless of where they are in Todoist. Almost all tasks get labelled with a compass point.

Next I took the groups that Mike Vardy suggested. Using the colours for these labels I grouped them under time, event, person, location and energy. What I eventually ended up with was a wide range of labels for different contexts as well as having a couple of free colours left over that allowed me to have labels that could be used for general purposes.

Labels are also useful with Todoist's email feature. As well as emailing tasks to your inbox, you can append labels in the subject or the body of the email and they will be added to your task when Todoist receives it.

So what's the point of labelling everything then?

Well, aside from the fact that it provides some meta-information on the task, it also allows you to search for related tasks. Do you want some low hanging fruit to pick in the morning? Search for the @5mins and @low labels. Kids birthday coming up and you remember taking a note of their preference for a Minecraft book. Search for @birthdays and your kids owns tag using their initials.

You can search for individual tags, combination of tags, tags in a project, tags due on a specific day. There are lots of possibilites to using this and Todoist keeps a nice count of how many times each label has been used so that you can weed out the ones that are unused or break down a label if it's being overused.

All this now means that I can quickly filter and sort my master list according to labels that provide context. This leads on to next week's post about filters. Be sure to check back for this and see how you can utilise labels to group tasks together using filters.

Inspired by Mike Vardy's series on using Todoist, I thought I would share how I use Todoist and the benefits I get from using it. In this post we're going to look at the projects feature of Todoist.

Todoist's projects are a fairly standard feature. It's a place where you can bring together related tasks. However that's where the similarity to projects ends. Where you might be expecting a start date and an end date for the project, there aren't fields for this in Todoist. A project is just the name and the colour that you've chosen to assign to it.

Keeping this simple means that projects can be used in different ways. I try not to think of them as projects and instead think of them as lists. Lists can expire, be completed or be allowed to run on forever. The idea of a list triggers a more flexible collection of tasks than a project, which is why I always think of projects in Todoist as lists. I have a number of projects that behave more like lists then projects:

• Reading - All books that I plan on reading in the future. Fiction, programming and career and some others as well.
• Writing - A list of writing ideas for my website. It starts with scheduled ideas planned for the near future and graudally moves down to ideas that I might one day use.
  Home - I have a list for everything related to family life. Golf coaching, birthday parties, shool activies, days out. They all go here.
• Sharpen The Saw - Recently I started capturing things I didn't know about the tools I was using. Everyday I pick one of these off and find out more about it. It's a quick way of learning more about the tools I'm using.

Todoist has a feature where you can indent projects under one another. I try to avoid doing this. In the past I did indent a number of projects but quickly I ended up with three level deep projects and it made getting a top down view of my list more difficult to read. I try to use the indentation of projects as a last resort and even then it's only a temporary measure until I can find a better place for a group of tasks.

I use Nicholas Bate's idea of a personal compass as a basic grouping for tasks. Six compass points that represent six aspects of my life. It's a fairly easy way to ensure that you can group things sensibly and that you're not allowing one part of your life to have an adverse affect on the others. Using this I give each compass point a colour. When a project is created it is assigned the colour of the compass it closely relates too. This makes tracking my progress on different compass points easy to do since I can only ever see six colours of my compass points in the productivity trend window of Todoist.

That's it for how I use projects in Todoist. Nothing should surprise anyone here as most people must use similar ideas. Projects in Todoists are simple but flexible and can be used to group your tasks accordingly. Next week I'll discuss labels in Todoists and their use.

Update - You might want to read my thoughts on deciding if a project is in fact a context.

Yesterday was such a glorious day in terms of weather. An ideal day to get Ethan back out on the golf course. Unfortunately the course is still a bit damp from the last couple of weeks of rain but hopefully it will dry out soon.

via Kottke.org

Meet my son Ethan.

He loves playing golf. He's also quite good at it. He might not be the next big thing in golf, but he's better than most kids his age. He attends golf lessons for one hour a week and this year we even got him in as a junior member at a golf club in the area where most of his family play. A chance for him to meet other kids his age and also to get out onto a proper golf course for a change.

Now as parents we all want the best for our kids. It's natural. The best criteria though is interpreted different by different parents though. My interpretation is that I want my kids to be happy and do what they enjoy the most.

Me and Jen don't do the pushy parent thing. He plays golf when he wants to play golf. We don't make him practice for hours on end at home, nor do we make it his exclusive hobby. Just for variety he goes swimmming, plays tennis and wants to up upgrade his bike to a mountain bike for Christmas so that he can go mountain biking with me.

He also does all the usual things kids do, watches television, plays video games, plays outside with his friends and a whole heap of other things that kids are supposed to do (and sometimes not supposed to do!). Quite a good mix for any kid if you ask me.

I'm hoping that this no pressure approach to his golf gives him enough breathing space to be himself and not be put under pressure. He's still a kid and needs to experience his childhood. Sure we still give him a gentle nudge now and again, but that's all it is, a nudge.

Being productive means keeping track of everything you want to do. This is the first step in being productive. We do this by keeping a master list. This is where you list everything you want to do. And I mean everything. The master list isn't a to do list. To do lists are started with the best of intentions and then neglected. Just the mention of a "to do" list makes me not want to do anything on it. The master list is different. It's filled with things you must do and the things you want to do¹. Think carefully about these two types of actions for a minute. They're very different.

Yes, you must book the car in for a service, you must pay that bills before the end of the week and of course there's hundreds of other things you must do. What about the things you want do? Write a novel, produce a movie, backpack across Asia. How many of these things do you have on your list? If you don't have any then why not? These are still things you want to do. If you don't list them, how are you ever going to start on the path to actually doing them?

Here's a selection of actions from my master list:

• Pay tax bill for the year
• Learn to play the guitar
• Submit academy membership for the golf club
• Take a family holiday in Vancouver
• Take a family holiday in Las Vegas and The Grand Canyon
• Write and publish a novel

Do you see any mundane chores here? Yes there's two, but there should be more to your master list than the things you must do. It should also have the things you want to do. I know the stuff that needs to be done on a day to day basis so I dump it on my master list so I don't forget, but I also dump the things I want to do. Otherwise I'll never get round to doing the things I want to do. Your master list is a reminder of everything you want to do.

So my advice to you is to list everything you want to do and must do in one place, your master list. You don't need a fancy app to do it in either. Pick up a notebook and pen and start writing your master list. Go offline for a bit and think about the things you must do and the things you want to do. The things you really want to do. You'll be amazed by how many things you want to do that get added to the list if you don't think of the list as a todo list.

1. I can't claim the idea of master list. Credit for the master list goes to Nicholas Bate, where I first read about it.

I have a new hobby, sort of. Last weekend I bought myself a new set of golf clubs and last night I took my oldest son to the driving range for a boys night. He got to fine tune his swing and I got the chance to become familiar with the first set of golf clubs I've had in 20 years. It's sure been a long time since I played a round of golf, so I wasn't sure what to expect with a new set of golf clubs. The surprising thing was that I could actually hit the ball reasonably well.

This new hobby isn't about me though, it's more about my son. Being a great little golfer means I want to get him on the course as often as possible, but access to golf courses for kids isn't easy, especially when you thrown in the unpredictable Scottish weather. Also he's a bit young to be out playing a round on his own.

So I decided to arm myself with some clubs and get into this golf thing with my son. Hopefully over the summer and autumn I can get him onto some public courses near us, but more importantly he can teach Dad how to play golf!

Some of you might already know this from my tweets in the past but for those that don't here's the thing. My son has been playing golf since he was 1 year old. Yes you're reading that right. 1 year old.

In the last 5 years we've slowly encouraged the sport with him by taking him to the driving range, local golf courses and he's had some coaching from a couple of professionals in the past. He loves the game. He watches all the majors when they are on and cheers for his favourite golfers.

In order to develop this little talent further we decided to take our son to coaching a couple of years ago. The coaching was one to one with a professional. I would drop my son off and then observe from a distance while he hit some balls, played some games and then after half an hour I would collect him.

After a year it seemed like he wasn't making any more progress, but I decided to let it go on the basis that he is only a kid after all. The most worrying part though was that he wasn't really enjoying it anymore.Then one Saturday, during one of our frequent trips to the driving range, we just happened to see that the driving range were doing group lessons for kids. We asked our son if he wanted to go and he jumped at the chance.

He now gets coaching alongside other kids and since moving him to the group coaching, he has come on leaps and bounds. His progress in the last six months has been great. The best part of it is that he enjoys his golf again and wants to do better.

In hindsight the one to one coaching was the wrong choice for our son, but as a parent you want the best for your kids and to give them all the opportunities you can.

Rather than wanting the best for your kids, you should also remember to let them enjoy being a kid. I'm glad now that our son is enjoying his golf again but more importantly, he's enjoying it with other kids his age.

Golf ... more golf ... and even more golf. Ryder Cup weekend begins today and me and my oldest son are going to be glued to the television cheering on Rory, Graeme and the rest of the European team.

I initially drafted this in August 2011, during my stint on
750words.com. Since then it's been sitting in a file waiting to be published, until now.

I've just had to run back up the stairs and console our 4 year old son who was scared that the aliens and robots in space would come down from space and get him. Poor little guy. He's probably the biggest fan of Star Wars I know, and he watches and plays with his Star Wars stuff everyday. Since we moved him into the larger bedroom though, he's become a little restless at night and he frequently worries about things coming into his bedroom.I was a kid once, and I remember going through the same thing. E.T. the Extra-Terrestial had just come out at the cinema and I think it was my birthday. As a treat, my mum and dad took me to the movies to see it. At the time I had no idea what the movie was about and at the start you are faced with this creepy little creature being chased through a forest.Now when you've barely just started school and you're not very wise to the world and everything in it, the first thing that springs to you're mind when a bunch of guys are chasing something through a forest is that whatever they're chasing, that thing is dangerous and should be caught right away. Eventually the guys give up and the creature finds itself, looking down on the suburbs of a sprawling American city.

After that experience I had plenty of nightmares about the strange little alien getting chased through the forest (who wouldn't at that age), but nothing compared to the thoughts I had at the last house that we lived in before moving back to Scotland.We had a nice detached house with bedrooms upstairs. I always remember being similar to the Elliot's house in the movie. The similarities don't end there though. Across the road from our house was a spot of wasteland and next to that was the dual carriageway. After that was a hill with trees dotted all over it. I didn't know what was on the other side, but I didn't need to ask. My imagination was running riot.Every night my imagination told me that there was a stranded alien over that hill and it would be my house it would be curious about. I think the worse thing was that my bed was at the top of the room and when I lay in my bed, I would look down at the bottom of the room, where the window was. What did my window look onto? The tree covered hill across the road.Now at the time, I didn't know why my bedroom window was open. Apparently it was too hot at night, so my mum would leave the window and curtains open slightly to let some cool air in after the house was baking all day in the summer heat.Now you might laugh and mock, but when you're a kid, there's no bounds to your imagination. You don't know about the physical constraints around the world. In your eyes, anything can happen. The cardboard box that your parents new television gets delivered in becomes a space ship, the back garden becomes the venue for an epic battle with giant robots, the stairs become the biggest mountain in the world, and you must scale it all the way to the top. Too bad most of us lose that imagination as we get older.

I think it's great my son has such a vivid imagination, he creates anything out of whatever he has and he loves pretending and using his imagination. Looking back at my episode in Calgary with E.T., I realise how much of an imagination I had. I know I had seen the movie and I simply lifted that scenario to my own world, but it was my first experience of really using my imagination. Since that chapter in my life, I've been a frequent reader of sci-fi and fantasy books, and I've started writing my own short stories. All because I freaked out over an alien that I thought lived in the forest across the road from me.

When my son is a bit older and wiser, I'll remind him of how great his imagination was when he was little boy and the things that he used to make believe about and be scared of. He would do well to keep his imagination fed with a genre of his choice. I know he's going to be a great golfer when he's older, but there's no harm in having a backup career in case that falls through.

... a long walk with the family, spending the time with your kids and their pastimes, a good book, preparing a large family dinner, catching up with friends over a coffee, a round of golf, a bike ride. Whatever your rest day is, make sure it is restful.

I'm 35 today!

It probably doesn't mean much to many people when they turn 35 or any other age really for that matter, but for me this year feels different and that's in a good way. Let's wind the clock back a few years first though.

When I turned 30 I was pondering on my career and what I wanted to achieve. I hadn't produced anything that I would call art (well in my case as a developer, a web application of some kind), and so I started thinking about what I wanted to achieve in my career in the next five years. I had thoughts and ideas, but no plan. Five years later I still haven't produced anything that I could put out there and say "Yip, I made that".

After a couple of years, I lost track of my ideas. I carried on with my job as a developer for a small consulting firm and tried to keep my development skills up to speed by playing with some programming languages in my spare time. I even produced a small mind mapping blog for a couple of years that let me practice some writing for a while.

Fast forward to today and I still haven't produced anything career wise that I would call mine, but it's not something that I am going to lose any sleep over.

Which brings me back to today. So why do I feel like everything is in the right place?

Well at the start of the year, my wife and I found out that we were going to be parents again. We already have a five year old son, so it's great news that he will have a younger brother or sister in August when the baby is due.

At home, we're also kicking off a project to convert our garage into a multi-purpose room. Mainly it will be sitting room, but I'm also claiming a section of the room as a more practical place to do more sideline work. I don't have what you would call a great area for working when I am at home, so it's good to know that in the future there will be a better place for turning some ideas into reality.

My career is in a good place at the moment. I'm using my preferred tools and languages on a daily basis and I'm also gaining more experience in working in agile software development teams. It's not long term though, no job ever is, but it's good being in place where I am learning new things everyday.

So what's different from today than the same day five years ago?

Well I'm more grounded in plans and expectations for the future. I know that I can't do it all, but instead I'm focusing on things that are close to my heart and really interest me.

I'm also a bit more realistic about my strengths and weaknesses. I know I've got skills in programming and I enjoy writing. Okay my strength in writing might be me being biased, but I do enjoy it and that's what counts. On the weakness side, I do find it difficult to maintain my focus on one thing. I've not seen my projects through from start to completion but I'm hoping to change that this year.

So what does the next five years hold?

Who knows. I certainly know that on the home front, I'm as content as a I'll ever be. I can't wait for the new addition to our family to arrive in August. Our son will be so pleased to have a younger brother or sister who could share in his love of golf!

On the career front though that's a different thing. I've started work on a small micro-product that I am hoping to launch in the spring. It's a helper for those who like keeping a plain text journal. The idea for the journalling product came after I wanted to continue writing everyday but on a smaller volume than doing my three pages of writing every day. Also I wanted a plain text archive that was in the easiest format to slice and dice as I needed. I've tried many note-taking applications in the past, but none offered the simplicity of plain text. More on that later though.

After that I have my eyes set on a second product that I hope will help people make with their decision making. These might never take off, who knows.

At least I know that I will have tried.