I’ve spent a lot of my time over the past years evangelizing the power of having a system and the David Allen Getting Things Done (GTD) method. One thing I haven’t talked much about is that while having a trusted system has huge advantages it doesn’t come for free. Like all systems it must be maintained or it breaks down slowly until one day it either stops working completely, or you’ve given up on it for it’s inefficiency. Having a system isn’t unique to GTD but it is my favored variant of system. There is a lot of GTD flavor and verbiage here but absolutely nothing in this post is unique to GTD, this will apply to most of the systems I have used. ...

Every day people say horrible things to me, constantly judging me, tearing me down, and invalidating me. Sometimes it’s my friends, sometimes it’s my family, other times it’s just me looking in a mirror. It starts first thing in the morning when I open my eyes and I feel gross by the time I get out of the shower. Most of these things never actually come out of another person’s mouth though. We can say “this isn’t real” but the fact it’s all in my head makes the feelings and emotions no less real. ...

Sometimes it’s a little odd to hear these things from other people so I thought I’d leave a nice open letter to whom it may concern. No wait, this isn’t a generic letter to just anyone. This is a letter I am writing specifically for you. That’s right, directly from me to you; Just you. You probably heard some confusing things, or caught wind of some stuff you don’t understand. I am here to make some clarifications, set the record straight, just in case you missed the news. ...

For those that don’t know I’m a Chef for a living. Not the kind that works with food but one that works with code. What you may not know is I’m a FreeBSD guy, or at least claim to be one. I’ve been building a new FreeBSD workstation and discovered that there is no chef-dk for FreeBSD. Building it isn’t bad, but there is a trick to it. So without further ado, here is building Chef-DK for FreeBSD 10.3 (and probably most >=10.0) ...

I wanna take a moment to to address what I like to call Burnout as a Service; how I see burnout as a product of the tech industry and culture. My friends, coworkers, and I have all experienced it in various levels, sometimes to crippling physical side effects. In this article I’m going to use strong language like need, and should, and I won’t work with you if you [don’t|do] $thing. While I have strong opinions about this subject and feel I have developed a powerful framework for helping avoid burnout it’s bound not to be perfect or complete. I do study this subject at great length in the name of personal development and productivity/energy management so if you have thoughts, opinions, feedback, or insights further into this topic I’d be happy to hear about them in the comments. ...

In my personal experience not everyone wants to be happy. When I say that I’m not talking about that one friend either. I’m talking about me. For a very long time I didn’t wanna be happy. It was a very frustrating time. I can’t say I knew I wanted to be unhappy, I just was all the time. I was angry, depressed, and off and on apathetic. It was actually my mother who coined the phrase “You just need to be unhappy.” somewhere in my early to mid 20s. ...