2/7/2020

Paul Kasaija

11:08 

 

Around this time of year, I take a few days off to leisure for the most celebrated holiday in the world: one's own birthday. Whatever I would normally be doing, I replace it with spending time with family, talking with relatives, and eating a year’s worth of sugar. For the days prior to today (the 7th), I have made some progress in an article that I plan to finish and release today; however, the only trade-off is that I took a break from writing journals these days. So I'll use this journal to summarize the general happenings and my routine for the past few days. 

 

2/4/20

While writing extended commentaries on entire books can be cumbersome, it also provides a consistent source of content to write on. That is why the biggest tradeoff for instead writing articles on unique topics every Monday and Thursday is that it is hard to find any interesting enough topics to write about. Over the past few articles I've written, and from scanning sections of news and journalism sites, I've had multiple realizations. For one, it is impossible to make a comprehensive and outstanding article without spending ample time researching the subject. That sounds obvious, yet many articles just comment on the obvious facts with little in-depth personalized analysis. Some opinion articles on sites like NYT or BusinessInsider or Bloomberg offer no impressive research that deviates the writer from the rest of the bunch and produces concrete and interesting results in their article. Meanwhile, in my own articles, I am also frequently limited in that aspect. That is why, in retrospect, I’ll have to change my release date to write articles that push the two articles a week deadline sometimes— especially if there is something that is worth spending some more time to complete. On the subject, although it took a while to find a potential subject to write about, I got on the right track before the day ended: I decided to research the technologies of smart homes, beginning with the hypothesis "Is the Next Generation of Smart Home Technology Acceptable?"

 

2/5/20

Every day one should improve on their previous best in order to ensure confidence in their growth and to earn the best possible results of their efforts. The days one spends to grow in their respective focus can be a slow, incremental process of improvement. However, the standard of improvement should always be wholly personal, because it's only necessary to compete with yourself. Growth should be motivating, not degrading. For me, I think that making progress is no longer just possible by doing simple rote learning as kids do in school, I need to put myself into the equation as well: what are my priorities and how do they relate to my professional focus? One example is today, I made a personal best timing for my exercise routine while also listening to a podcast on Smart Homes in order to gather material for my article I'll write later on. The time shared multitasking between exercise and learning shows that the value I put on making myself physically fit and healthy is on equal standing with doing research for an article, which reflects my focus on the nexus of technology and business. 

 

The particular podcast that I listened to today was the 186th episode of The Smart Home Show, which I found the most relevant to the topic I wanted to research. I actually haven't listened to their podcast before today, but from a quick scan, one can see that each of their episodes is self-contained and informative. The podcast was fascinating in how it explained the benefits and drawbacks of various Smart Home technologies from the perspective of a third-party developer as well as a fastidious consumer. In between listening to their different topics, ranging from consumer security vulnerabilities to popular products like Amazon Echo, I also took the liberty to make memos and notes to keep track of the varied perspectives that the developers held on different products and companies. I wrote a basic outline of my article, now entitled “Discovering Next-Gen Technology: Smart Homes”, which includes those topics and more. As I near Monday, I will finish the article and put all of these notes to work in a—hopefully—well-rounded look into the second wave of Smart Home tech and the growing industry it brings to market.

 

2/6/20

Just celebrated my 19th with family and had a jolly time. 

 

2/7/20

 

As I’ve detailed the past few days, I am putting the finishing touches on the article to present a more well-rounded and interesting article, one that incorporates in-depth research along with multiple perspectives that complement each other holistically. While I plan to continue my routine today, I’ll mainly focus on this task and get to work on editing the final article to answer the question of "acceptable Smart Home technology". As the main audience that I’m directing the article towards: I would suggest that any prospective smart-home technology buyer or anyone looking for a generally interesting topic check out “Discovering Next-Gen Technology: Smart Homes” on my site for the big picture of the future of the technology.