As part of an excercise for DYL: "Designing your Life", I'm maintaining a "block journal" to describe when I get blocked during this week, what type of block that is (according to Jim Adam's Conceptal Blockbusting), and how that block feels:
Friday (1/16)
At PennApps and we're at a brainstorming block trying to decide what to build. Caught between the tension of procuring a "flashy demo" vs. solving a meaningful problem. As more of a perceptual block, I think the issue here was trying to be mindful of the practical limitations that we had given the time constraints while working to build something substantial over the course of the weekend. I personally felt a little light-headed and lost in the world of possibilities that we were exposed to.
Saturday (1/17)
Still at PennApps, and I'm stuck on figuring out where to begin with the application that we're working together on. This is probably more of an intellectual block, and it feels sort of like an itch that I can't quite scratch. Though we're all talented and not very choosey engineers, it's hard to decide on an idea that we feel would be worthy of working on for 36 hours. Taking some cues from design thinking, it would probably would have been worth the time to spend a good deal of time just brainstorming before the hackathon.
Sunday (1/18)
Blocked deciding what to write on for my CS181W course. This feels like an intellectual block because though I feel like I can easily learn enough to write and understand the technical details of any bug really. However, it's hard to decide on a problem that would be substantial enough outisde of technical details to talk about other social and cultural impacts of the bug.
Monday (1/19)
Blocked on actually doing work...I think this is more of an emotional block. I think a change of scenary might help - I tend to not do a ton of work in my dorm room. The palpable feeling now is more of a tastelessness or grayness that seems to pervade the senses.
Tuesday (1/20)
Blocked on how to narrow and focus more pointedly in my paper for CS181W - how do I refine and polish a rough draft effectively. The jagged nature of the paper and the inability to cut material makes it hard for good ideas to sieve through and for a cohesive flow to materialize out of the piece of writing.
Wednesday (1/21)
Blocked on deciding whether to drop a class (CS193P). The palpable feeling here is a shakiness or hesitation probably rooted in what Jim Adams would describe as an emotional block. Despite the hesitation, I begrudlingly know in my hearts of hearts that the right thing to do is to make more time for other classes and commitments.
Thursday (1/22)
Blocked on deciding exactly how to approach this next research project dealing with some more serious AI and NLP knowledge that I've been previously privy to. It's an intellectual block that sort of makes me feel a little underprepared and underwhelmed to take on the next step in the process. I'm determined to get over the block just by trying to use the open-source tools that the research provides and getting used to the conceptual parts through the practical side of coding something up.