Chuck Grimmett

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  • 100 Ways to Work Out Loud

    100 Ways to Work Out Loud

    https://discoverpraxis.com/100-ways-to-work-out-loud/Archived Link

  • How I Approach Social Media

    On a recent episode of Office Hours, a listener asked about the purpose of social media. Isaac and TK recommended taking a pragmatic approach. Here is my take on what that looks like.

    How I approach social media in general

    • Consumption and projection, not discussion – I find things people share and share my own work and things I find interesting, but I very rarely participate in discussions. Meaningful discussion is very difficult online, especially on social media. I prefer to take discussions to more direct, personal mediums like Messages, Slack, and Voxer. I prefer in-person when that is possible.
    • Sparingly and intentionally – I’m not a Waldenponder. I get a lot of value out of social media. But I don’t recommend indiscriminately spending time on it, either. It is designed to keep you there so they can serve more ads to you. It is inherently manipulative. Some (like Twitter) are so full of negativity that you’ll get worked up if you aren’t careful. Photo-heavy services distort reality and have the unfortunate effect of making you feel like your life sucks. Social media is a dangerous place, so make sure you engage sparingly and intentionally. Know what you want to get out of it. Put blockers in place so you don’t spend more time than you pre-determine is worth it for you. I recommend 1Blocker (Safari on macOS and iOS) and StayFocusd (Chrome). Remove the apps from your phone (best) or at least put in limits with iOS 12’s new Screentime feature.
      • I prefer to replace social media time with reading and podcasts as much as possible.
    • Whenever possible, post from a third-party service – Most of my Facebook and Twitter posts come from Buffer. This keeps me from having to log in or have the service’s apps on my phone.

    Here’s how I use the major social channels:

    Facebook

    I like Facebook less every week. I only hop on a few days a week now. The content there is mostly trash. I go on to keep up with friends from high school and college, as well as family. I rarely comment and I almost never engage in a discussion there. It isn’t as toxic as Twitter because you generally have closer ties with someone involved in the thread on Facebook, but it is still usually bad.

    I think people waste too much time on Facebook unintentionally and would do well to delete the apps from their phones and only check it from one specific device that you use only as a secondary or tertiary device. For me that is my iPad. I keep Facebook blocked on my computer and my phone to reign in my unintentional time wasting.

    Twitter

    Twitter is my second favorite social service to browse. It is where I get a lot of recommendations, find out about new apps, and get my news. I don’t read traditional news outlets unless I find an interesting story linked on Twitter or a blog I read (see below).

    I curate who I follow pretty regularly, so I have a pretty good “content to garbage” ratio, or at least one I’m willing to tolerate enough to check out during breakfast and lunch.

    Mastodon

    I still want something like Mastodon to take off, but I haven’t found any communities that are active enough to invest in. I prefer using the internet as a place to consume (find recommendations, keep up with what friends and family are doing, learn new things) and project (write and share my own stuff), but not converse. Most of the internet is a terrible place for conversing. It just isn’t set up for that. Perhaps Mastodon can fill that gap if I find the right community?

    I’m trying out https://refactorcamp.orgArchived Link right now and having a pretty high hit rate of good content. Still not great for discussion, though.

    If you have any Mastodon communities you recommend, I’d love to hear about them.

    Instagram

    I’m photographer. I love posting to Instagram. It is probably my favorite social service to browse, too. So much good stuff in my feed! That said, it is the one I’m most likely to waste too much time on because I like it so much. So I delete it from my phone most of the time and only download it when I want to post to it, keep it around for a few days with 15 minute time limits set with Screentime, then delete it until I want to post again.

    Reddit

    Oh, Reddit. I want to love you, but I can’t. The comments are so toxic, even in decent subreddit communities. Every subreddit I start getting involved in inevitably devolves to inside jokes, gatekeeping, and beginners asking the same question covered hundreds of times. (On the Kombucha sub, it is always “is my scoby okay?!?!). It gets tiring.

    I love reading AMAs, but I never get there in time to ask a question. And when I did ask questions in AMAs a few times, I got banned for asking for a month because I asked the same question each time: What are you reading right now? Apparently that isn’t allowed.

    Also, the search is completely terrible. There is probably tons of useful stuff locked away in threads that no one can find, forever lost to the ether.

    I’m over Reddit. My RescueTime stats show that I visit the site less and less each year.

    Pinterest

    I don’t use Pinterest. I can’t reliably find anything in that awful sea of ubiquitous images. You have to sift through a pile of garbage to find one useful thing. I prefer to avoid the whole mess in favor of other services. I use http://Are.na as a personal pinboard.

    YouTube

    I only watch YouTube videos I find embedded elsewhere or that someone sends me. I can’t remember the last time I went directly to YouTube.com to just see what was happening. I don’t like the video medium unless I’m trying to learn something, and I tend to find those videos through search engines. I don’t watch YouTube videos recreationally.

    Likewise

    This is too small right now to be super useful, but I’m hopeful for it. A service dedicated to book, show, and restaurant recommendations. Requests for this sort of thing on regular social media tend to get lost in the sea of other garbage and algorithmic timelines, so people often don’t respond until days later. Likewise keeps these asks front-and-center. You should join me on Likewise! https://likewise.com/invitedby/5bbe223985965466d44255eb

    Hacker News

    Great tech news source. I don’t participate in the comments/community there. I’ll often click through to the comments section to get a tl;dr of the article or get hot takes on current events. I find a lot of products and tools here that I bookmark and end up using or recommending later.

    Product Hunt

    There was a period where I checked Product Hunt daily and found a lot of cool stuff there. Now I check it maybe once a week and only find a fraction of the cool stuff I once found there.

    LinkedIn

    I hate it. I refused to be on it for years. I have a profile now to set a good example for Praxis participants, and I may even cross post one of my articles there, but I get very little value from the service.

    Quora

    I went through a phase where I answered questions on Quora, but I got bored by it pretty quickly. I didn’t invest enough to get over the hump and get a large return, so it just felt like I was wasting my time. Plus, there are so many shitty answers on there by people who just spend all day answering questions they only know a little bit about. Costless question asking and costless answering lead to a pretty low quality of content. The early days were cool because it was costlier to be in a small community like that instead of elsewhere. But now it sucks.

    Stack Overflow

    I’ve never asked a question on SO, but I sure am glad it exists. I’ve had dozens, maybe hundreds, of questions answered by previously existing questions there. I have chipped in and answered some questions there, but I don’t make a regular habit of it.

    Where else do I get media?

    • Blogs – marginalrevolution.com – kottke.org – daringfireball.net – macstories.net – ribbonfarm.com – complete-review.com/saloon – stratechery.com
      • lesswrong.com
      • seriouseats.com
    • Podcasts – Conversations with Tyler – Data Stories – Design Matters – The Knowledge Project – Longform – Mac Power Users – The Memory Palace – Presentable – Recode Decode – The Speakeasy – The Talk Show – Waking Up – Cortex – Hello Internet – Thoroughly Considered – Planet Money – This American Life – Office Hours – Serial – Accidental Tech Podcast
    • Newspapers and magazines – I don’t read newspapers often, but I occasionally like to pick up a NYTimes or WSJ on the weekend and spend an hour going through it. – I like reading the short fiction in The Atlantic and The New Yorker. We don’t subscribe to them anymore, but I’ll pick one up at the news stand in Grand Central occasionally. – I read Lucky Peach for a few years until they shut it down. I loved it. I’m looking for a replacement. Any recommendations?
    • Newsletters – Breaking Smart – Ryan Holiday’s Reading List – Studio Neat Gazette – MacStories Weekly – Tim Ferriss’s 5-Bullet Friday

  • What work/life balance means to me

    , ,

    I have a certain capacity for creative output. That level may increase or decrease over time, but it stays relatively constant day-to-day.

    You can think of this capacity as tokens that I have available to spend each day. I can either spend these tokens at my full-time job, at a side gig, or on a personal project.

    I feel most balanced when I use 80% of my creative capacity at my full-time job and 20% elsewhere.

    When I use 100% of my capacity at my full-time job for an extended period of time (say 2 weeks or more), I feel unbalanced. My overall creative capacity starts to decline. Some might call this feeling burned out.

    When I use more than 20% on personal projects or side gigs (i.e. less than 80% at work) for more than two days in a row, I feel unbalanced, like I’m neglecting my work responsibilities. Like I’m falling behind and my output isn’t up to par.

    I’ve never taken complete breaks from creating things. The manifestation just tends to shift. On vacations I tend to pick up photography and journaling to fill the creative gap. Sometimes drawing. During the holidays I tend to make more elaborate meals and try making new cocktails.

    I’ve also never shifted 100% of my capacity into personal projects for an extended period. I haven’t been unemployed for more than a week in the past 7 years. Vacations are breaks from personal projects as much as traditional work, so that is why the output tends to shift to photography, journaling, and drawing.

    I routinely go 3-4 weeks at a time at a 95/5 split on work/personal. Those times my personal creative output tends to be listening notes from podcasts and cooking. Days during high work periods where I manage to put out a longer blog post, I’m almost certainly eating leftovers or takeout. (Tonight, for instance: 3 blog posts plus curating a bunch of book recommendations on Likewise and I ate leftover soup for lunch and made a taco salad from leftovers in the fridge for dinner.)

    I radically cut down the amount of side gigs I take on in order to prioritize personal projects. In fact, I have no side gigs going on at the moment.

    What would my creative output look like when focused 100% on the personal side? I haven’t experienced that since high school and college, but the photography projects I focused on during those periods still rank among what I consider my best. Even periods where I’ve shifted to a 20/80 split on work/personal resulted in projects I’m proud of and look upon fondly.

    In the next few years, I’d like to take a complete month away from full-time work and focus on personal projects for the entire time. Deliberately throw myself out of balance in a way I’m not used to and see what I create.

  • On Creative Blocks

    Creative people commonly lament about being “blocked,” perpetually stuck and unable to produce work when necessary. Blocks spring from the imbalanced relationship of How and Why: either we have an idea, but lack the skills to execute; or we have skills, but lack a message, idea, or purpose for the work. The most despised and common examples of creative block are the latter, because the solution to a lack of purpose is so elusive. If we are short on skill, the answer is to practice and seek outside guidance from those more able until we improve. But when we are left without something to say, we have no choice but to either go for a walk or continue suffering in front of a blank page. Often in situations like these, we seek relief in the work of others; we look for solace in creations that seem to have both high craft and resounding purpose, because they remind us that there is a way out of the cul-de-sac we have driven into by mistake. We can, by dissecting these pieces, begin to see what gives the work of others their vitality, and better understand the inner methods of what we produce ourselves. If we are attentive, with just a dash of luck, we may even discover where the soul of our own work lies by having it mirrored back to us in the work of others.

    But we must be careful not to gaze too long, lest we give up too much of ourselves. Forfeiting our perspective squanders the opportunity to let the work take its own special form and wastes our chance to leave our fingerprints on it. We must remember Why we are working, because craft needs objectives, effort needs purpose, and we need an outlet for our song. If we stay on the surface and do not dig deep by asking Why, we’re not truly designing.

    From Frank Chimero’s The Shape of Design

  • Jerry Saltz on The Longform Podcast

    Podcast: http://longform.org/posts/longform-podcast-311-jerry-saltz

    Notes:

    • This was a breath of fresh air for me. Saltz didn’t start writing until he was in his 40s. Now he is one of NYC’s top art critics, if not one of the world’s top art critics.
    • Saltz’s thoughts on being nice to gallery staff, always signing the book, and the need for ushering in a new generation of artists, gallery owners, and critics made me think about what it takes to start the next generation in any well-established field.
    • Real criticism needs both praise and critique, but must be completely free from cynicism.
    • Saltz’s art criticism is a breath of fresh air. It is free from the nonsense jargon and faux deep meaning/symbolism that made me think art writing isnt for me. His writing is approachable and I finish his articles having learned something.
    • His openness about his background and current financial situation is was eye-opening, too. Real people can become art critics and use that as a means to make a living, not just rich people with too much time on their hands.
    • His instagram is a great way to find up and coming artists.
    • I’ve added his weekly column to the list of things I read each week.

  • Notes on Office Hours: Debate and Unmotivated Friends

    ,

    1: The Value of Debate, Is Self-Improvement Overrated, and Dealing with Haters

    Notes:

    • The question: Is debate valuable?
    • I side with TK here on the value of debate. Most debates suck, but there is some value in the format if done well. The Sam Harris/Jordan Peterson debate is a great example of this. There were able to map out where they agree and find the boundary along which they disagree, which helps both of them better understand the other and helps the audience decide the correct arguments for themselves. That would have been impossible with separate lectures.
    • Debates done well should look more like a spirited but respectful conversation between friends. Not just signaling for crowds.

    2: What to Ask In a Job Interview & Is It Worth it to Help Unmotivated Friends

    Notes:

    • The question: How do you deal with friends who have ideas but never take action on them?
    • I think the best way to deal with friends like this is to take their claims seriously. They may be signaling other values with their actions, but if we take their claims seriously, we give them the opportunity to confront their reality, which can take two forms: 1) Take their own claims seriously and take actions necessary to make them a reality or 2) Put those claims to rest and embrace others that align with their true values.
    • A few ways to do this are to show them paths to get to where they want, talk through their ideas with them, show examples of others doing similar things, and encourage them to take the first step. Perhaps even taking the first step with them.
    • I don’t think you must do this, but I do think you have the responsibility to do this if you’ve confronted the question of whether or not to do it. You are free to reject the responsibility, but taking hold of that responsibility is an opportunity to strengthen your friendship and help someone change their life in a positive way.
    • A few ways this has helped me when others took this approach:
      • Cook Like Chuck was born out of encouragement and help taking the first step by my best friend. I tossed around the idea for about a year, until one night he said, “You should take photos of this and it can be the first recipe.” Then an hour later he said, “Let’s buy the domain. What do you want to call it? I think Cook Like Chuck would be a great name.” – At the end of that night I had the skeleton of the site set up and half of the first post written. Without that catalyst it would have taken me another year to get to that stage.
      • Back in college, I wanted to blog more, but wasn’t consistent about it. My suite mate started a 365 day photo challenge on his own blog a few months earlier, so he encouraged me to join in starting Jan 1, which was a few weeks away. He talked me through how he makes time, how it strengthened his photography skills, and how people naturally started following his site. That put me over the edge and put me into a situation where I grew dramatically through that year-long challenge.
      • You could argue that I might have done these things anyway, but I’m grateful to those friends and I greatly appreciated the marginal push that got me past the hang up. I want to do the same for my friends. Not in an annoying or judging way, but in an encouraging way.

  • Series are eclipsing movies

    ,

    Cameron Sorsby asked the Praxis staff today what our top 3-5 favorite movies are, off the top of our heads. I came up with 3 easily, but none were recent. Then I realized that no movie I’ve watched for the first time in the last four years is memorable. Series are getting so much better and eclipsing movies since they are free from networks and ad breaks.

    What will the next leap forward for movies look like? Netflix/Amazon Prime hasn’t changed much for that format. What’s next?

  • Not Unreasonable Podcast interview with Tyler Cowen

    Podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/126848/814311

    Notes

    • I enjoyed hearing Tyler Cowen speak about his new book from Stripe Press, Stubborn Attachments, which I preordered a while back.
    • I admire Cowen aligning his actions to his beliefs and optimizing his life with things that bring him joy, including constant learning.
    • The number of times they used the word “Straussian” got on the annoying end of the spectrum
    • Writing for different audiences in different lengths and styles is a great way to make sure you understand a subject.
    • The interviewer did very little naval gazing/meta commentary on the interview, which is one reason I liked this episode much more than Cowen’s episode on The Knowledge Project podcast.

  • Legends & Losers 212: Mike Maples, Jr.

    Podcast:

    Notes:

    • Networks need rules from the beginning. Imposing after (like Twitter) is a mess.
    • You need a sense of purpose other than growth, or else you’ll build things that addict people. Addicted people without a sense of purpose lead to fake news, spam, and vitriol.
    • We do have an inequality issue in the world right now, but it is probably not wealth (outcome-based) inequality, but rather opportunity inequality. Some people have more opportunities than others. Race, social status, gender, and other things play into this. Fixing the opportunity inequality issue will go a lot further to raising income and wealth for everyone than redistribution.
    • It is time to start a media company that focuses on something specific. Don’t go the HuffPo model of no rudder, ad-based. Go the Stratechery model of focused on a single topic, direct pay model. Most media sucks right now. Lots of opportunity. 

  • Praxis Daily – Happiness Requires Action

    Happiness isn’t our natural state, and that is okay. You just have to take deliberate steps to get there.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcVK7wAQx6A

  • Praxis Daily Video – Compound effects on your career (Part 1)

    Why you need to stick it out in one position for two years.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahcvewis-34

  • Compound Your Career Opportunities

    Ways to build your personal brand, featuring examples from the Praxis community.

    https://discoverpraxis.com/compound-career-opportunities/Archived Link

  • Praxis Daily – Building a Personal Brand

    Ways to build your personal brand, featuring examples from the Praxis community.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fg9FICZ1pE

  • Portfolio Project Ideas with Python

    So, you are learning Python and want to build a portfolio that helps you land your first technical job at a company. Here are some project ideas for building your portfolio.

    https://discoverpraxis.com/portfolio-project-ideas-python/Archived Link

  • 10 Ways to Build Your Personal Brand

    College degrees don’t send the signals they once used to. You have to take charge of building your personal brand and work out loud instead. Here are ten ways to build your brand.

    https://discoverpraxis.com/10-ways-build-personal-brand/Archived Link

  • Praxis Daily – Clipboard Managers

    What if you didn’t have to copy, switch window, paste, switch window, copy, switch window, paste, switch window, copy, switch window, and paste just to copy multiple items? With a clipboard manager, you don’t have to.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i74J0n650QQ

  • How to Leave Your Job

    So you have a job offer from another company and are ready to leave your existing role. You want to leave without burning the social capital you’ve built up over time. What do you do?

    First, relax. Having that first conversation with your manager is usually nerve wracking, but everything will be okay. Switching jobs is expected, and chances are that your manager has been on both sides of the table before. Follow these guidelines below and you’ll be on your way to your new gig in no time.

    http://discoverpraxis.com/how-to-leave-your-job/

  • Celebrating 10 Years

    I started this blog ten years ago today. I was in a room at the Doubletree in Tarrytown, NY. It was a Sunday and it was the weekend in-between my first FEE seminars. I ordered a pizza and some ziti from Capri Pizza and decided to tear down my old HTML site and give blogging a try. I figured out how to install WordPress 2.5.1 and went to town. Here is what the site looked like:

    original blog

    Here is the post that started it all.

    Since then, I went on to work at FEE and move to NY, passing that Doubletree regularly. I blogged for a year straight. I’ve lived in 5 different cities and posted from every single one. I’ve written 763 posts on this blog since then and I average about 20,000 unique visitors a month according to my server logs.

    The blogging has paid off. Here are things that have come from my blogging and showing my work:

    • Photography gigs
    • Selling my photos
    • Photos published in dozens of newspapers, magazines, and websites because they were licensed as Creative Commons
    • The Light Graffiti Guide Sean and I wrote has been used by teachers all across the world.
    • Photos being shown at the 2008 Nuit des musées at Le CompaArchived Link, Conservatoire de l’agriculture in Chartres, France.
    • More contract gigs than I can count
    • My second full-time job (eResources)
    • My third full-time job (Praxis). Here is the post that put Isaac over the edge.
    • Weekly emails from people who found my tutorials helpful.
    • Meeting authors whose books I wrote about
    • Invitations to meetups and discussion groups
    • People using my code for their own projects
    • I’ve served up appliance repair manuals to hundreds of thousands of people. I let my Dad upload the ones he had back in 2008 to so that people could find them for free. Just doing our part to keep the Right to Repair/Fix It movement strong.

    Also, not only is today my 10 year blogging anniversary, it is also my 5 year wedding anniversary! Amanda and I had just started dating when I put this blog up, so she’s been here since the beginning. Little did I know that we’d get married exactly five years later.

    It’s been a fun ten years and I’m not done yet. cagrimmett.com is here to stay. Check out my archives and stay tuned for more.

  • Automated Accountability Check-ins

    The Need

    During the Praxis bootcamp, participants are expected to make every single day a non-zero day. Most participants ask us to hold them accountable, so they email one of our staff each day and that person emails them the next day if they miss a check-in. This takes an enormous number of emails, staff overhead to keep track of, and is difficult to search. Isaac asked me, “What can we do to automate this?”

    It needs this functionality:

    1. The ability to submit what you’ve worked on that day.
    2. The ability to see what you’ve submitted.
    3. The ability for staff to see what you’ve submitted.
    4. The ability to send an email to people who didn’t submit a check-in the previous day.
    5. The ability for logging who missed a check-in.

    The Restrictions

    There are existing systems that do this sort of thing, so why make our own? During the bootcamp, our customers use what we call The Portal, which is a curriculum platform I built on top of WordPress with the help of Restrict Content Pro and wpcomplete. I didn’t want to add another destination into the mix. I wanted a reason for customers to go to the Portal every day and keep their work moving forward. Plus, they already have logins there. No need to add yet another login for them to keep track of.

    The Solution Sketch

    1. USP Pro for front-end post submission
    2. Custom page template to display the content box but hide the tedious stuff: User ID, today’s date, user email
    3. New WordPress user meta field for keeping track of accountability opt-ins
    4. Custom script to check if opt-ins have posted within the last 28 hours and fire off a webhook to Zapier to send the email and log missed check-ins to a spreadsheet
    5. Zapier time trigger with a GET hook to run the script at a specific time to kick off the accountability check
    6. Custom template to display all opted-in participants and their check-ins to make it easy for staff to see everything in one place
    7. Hide the check-ins from search results

    The Solution Details

    Front-end post submission and showing posts

    USP Pro handles all sorts of complexity when it comes to submitting posts from the front-end of a WordPress site: The form, the custom post type, assigning the current logged-in user to be the author, and displaying success and error messages. They also have hooks and filters to make using the posts in templates easier.

    I used a custom template to hide some of the things I’d need to make the whole process work: User ID to assign as the post author, name and today’s date for the title of the post.

    After the form, we also want to show all the posts someone has already submitted. I do that with a WP_Query_  Note: I added a Delete button here in case some makes an accidental post. If you want someone to be able to delete their check-in post, they need to have the role Author.

    Here is the code I used for the template and comments about what it does:

    // Check if user is logged in. Display the check-in form if so, login form if not. if ( is_user_logged_in() ) { //Get the logged in user, today's date, and the PHP session ID 	$current_user = wp_get_current_user(); 	$today = date("F j, Y"); 	$ses_id = session_id(); ?>    class="usp-pro-form">  	 	 id="usp-pro" class="usp-pro usp-form-4102"> 	 id="usp-form-4102" class="usp-form" method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data" action="" data-parsley-validate="" data-persist="garlic">  		 class="usp-fieldset usp-fieldset-default"> 			 for="usp-content" class="usp-label usp-label-content">
    What did you do to make today a non-zero day?
     			 name="usp-content" id="usp-content" rows="5" cols="30" maxlength="999999" data-required="true" required="required" placeholder="Today I..." class="usp-input usp-textarea usp-input-content"> 			 type="hidden" name="usp-content-required" value="1"> 		  		 class="usp-hidden"> 		// Get first and last name, today's date, set that as the title. 			 	echo '. $current_user->user_firstname . ' ' . $current_user->user_lastname . ' ' . $today . '" type="hidden" />'; 		// Get user ID for author 				  	echo '. $current_user->ID . '">'; 		// Get PHP session ID. Plugin thing. 				  	echo '. $ses_id . '">'; 			?>  			 type="text" name="usp-verify" id="verify" value="" style="display:none;" class="exclude">  			 type="hidden" name="usp-form-id" value="4102">
    echo do_shortcode('[usp_form id="submit"]'); ?>
    class="submitted-checkins">

    Your submitted check-ins:

     // Show posts from this user ID with the type usp_post $post_query = new WP_Query( array( 'post_type' => 'usp_post', 'author' => $current_user->ID, 'orderby' => 'date', 'order' => 'DESC', ) ); if ( $post_query->have_posts() ) : while( $post_query->have_posts() ) : $post_query->the_post(); ?> post_class(); ?>>

    the_time('F j, Y \a\t g:i a') ?>
    the_content(); ?> href=" echo get_delete_post_link(); ?>" style="font-size: .8em;">Delete this check-in
     endwhile; else: echo "

    You have no check-in posts. Submit one above!

    "    ; endif; ?>
    } else { ?> style="padding:50px;"> echo do_shortcode('[login_form]'); ?>
} ?>

The page (with a little bit of CSS added, which I’ll leave as an exercise for the reader) looks like this: Automated Accountability Check-in Home Page

Adding custom user meta field for accountability opt-in

This goes in functions.php:

add_action( 'show_user_profile', 'accountability_opt_in' ); add_action( 'edit_user_profile', 'accountability_opt_in' );  function accountability_opt_in( $user ) { ?>  	
Daily Accountability
  	 class="form-table">  		 			 for="checkin">Opt in to daily check-in accountability?  			 				 type="checkbox" name="checkin" id="checkin"  if (get_the_author_meta( 'checkin', $user->ID) == 'True' ) { ?>checked="checked" }?> value="True" /> /> 				 class="description">Yes, opt me in. 			 		  	  }  add_action( 'personal_options_update', 'save_accountability_opt_in' ); add_action( 'edit_user_profile_update', 'save_accountability_opt_in' );  function save_accountability_opt_in( $user_id ) {  	if ( !current_user_can( 'edit_user', $user_id ) ) 		return false;  	update_usermeta( $user_id, 'checkin', $_POST['checkin'] ); }

So, at the bottom of the user profile, it now shows this: Automated Accountability Check-in User Meta Field

Checking to see if opted in user has submitted a post in the last 28 hours

Outline:

  1. I trigger this by hitting the URL once a night. So no one else can trigger it, hit it with a long random key as a query string, which I first get and check.
  2. Load WordPress so I can use pre-built functions.
  3. Get list of opted-in users.
  4. Check to see if they have posts. If so, get the most recent one. If not, send a webhook to Zapier.
  5. If they have posts, check the date of the most recent one. If it is within the last 28 hours, do nothing. If not, send a webhook to Zapier. 28 hours gives a little wiggle room for early/late posts.

I like to leave the echos on for debugging if something goes wrong. Like, for example, if you use the_date instead of get_the_date and occasionally get NULL instead of a date and can’t figure out why. (Hint: the_date only fires once in a loop. Thanks for the help debugging, Eric Davis!)

Also, I know I’m using two different types for formatting for if statements. It helps me keep them separate.

 $key = $_GET['key'];  if ($key == 'RANDOM_KEY' ) {  	require_once($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/wp-load.php');  	function get_user_by_meta_data( $meta_key, $meta_value ) {  		// Query for users based on the meta data 		$user_query = new WP_User_Query( 			array( 				'meta_key'	  =>	$meta_key, 				'meta_value'	=>	$meta_value 			) 		);  		// Get the results from the query, returning the users 		$users = $user_query->get_results();  		return $users; 	}  	$opted_in_users = get_user_by_meta_data( 'checkin', 'True');  	foreach ($opted_in_users as $user) { 		echo $user->ID . ' ' . $user->user_email . '
'; 		$post_query = new WP_Query( array( 			'post_type' => 'usp_post', 			'author' => $user->ID, 			'post_status' => 'publish', 			'orderby' => 'date', 			'order' => 'DESC', 			'showposts' => '1', 		) );   		// The Loop 		if ( $post_query->have_posts() ) : 		while ( $post_query->have_posts() ) : $post_query->the_post(); 		  $date = get_the_date('U'); 		  echo 'last post date: ' . $date . '
'; 		  //echo 'now: ' . time() . '
'; 			if( $date > (time() - 100800)) { 				echo 'Within 28 hours 

'; 				continue; 			 } else { 				echo 'Not within 28 hours 

'; 				// Initialize curl 				$curl = curl_init(); 				$data = array( 					'user_id' => $user->ID, 					'email' => $user->user_email, 					'first_name' => $user->first_name, 					'last_name' => $user->last_name, 					'last_post' => $date, 				); 				$jsonEncodedData = json_encode($data); 				$opts = array( 					CURLOPT_URL             => 'https://hooks.zapier.com/hooks/catch/1503890/aqztv5/', 					CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER  => true, 					CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST   => 'POST', 					CURLOPT_POST            => 1, 					CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS      => $jsonEncodedData, 					CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER  => array('Content-Type: application/json','Content-Length: ' . strlen($jsonEncodedData)) 				); 				// Set curl options 				curl_setopt_array($curl, $opts);  				// Get the results 				$result = curl_exec($curl);  				// Close resource 				curl_close($curl);  				echo $result;  			 } 		endwhile; 		else : 			echo "No posts 

"; 			// Initialize curl 				$curl = curl_init(); 				$data = array( 					'user_id' => $user->ID, 					'email' => $user->user_email, 					'first_name' => $user->first_name, 					'last_name' => $user->last_name, 				); 				$jsonEncodedData = json_encode($data); 				$opts = array( 					CURLOPT_URL             => 'https://hooks.zapier.com/hooks/catch/1503890/aqztv5/', 					CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER  => true, 					CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST   => 'POST', 					CURLOPT_POST            => 1, 					CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS      => $jsonEncodedData, 					CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER  => array('Content-Type: application/json','Content-Length: ' . strlen($jsonEncodedData)) 				); 				// Set curl options 				curl_setopt_array($curl, $opts);  				// Get the results 				$result = curl_exec($curl);  				// Close resource 				curl_close($curl);  				echo $result;  		endif; 	}  } else { 	exit("You are not authorized. Go away."); } ?>

Template for viewing posts by user

Viewing posts in the wp-admin area is less than ideal. They are grouped by date instead of author and the full contents doesn’t show unless you click. No want to view updates at a glance. So I made a template for that.

// First, check if user is an admin. if ( !is_user_logged_in() || !current_user_can('administrator') ) { 	   wp_redirect( site_url() );  exit; } else { // User IDs are passed via query string. If no string, show all names 	$user = $_GET['id']; if ( $user == null ) {?> 	
Participants who have submitted check-ins:
 	 		$args1 = array( 		 //'role' => 'author', 		 'orderby' => 'first_name', 		 'order' => 'ASC' 		); 		$authors = get_users($args1); 		foreach ($authors as $user)	{ 			$user_post_count = count_user_posts( $user->ID , 'usp_post' ); 			if ( $user_post_count > 0) { 				echo '. $user->id . '">' . $user->first_name . ' ' . $user->last_name . '
'; 			} 		} } else { 	$user = get_user_by('id', $user);  	$post_query = new WP_Query( array( 		'post_type' => 'usp_post', 		'author' => $user->ID, 		'orderby' => 'date', 		'order' => 'DESC', 	) ); ?> 	 /> 	
 href="/check-ins/">← Back to all participants with check-ins
 	
 echo $user->first_name . ' ' . $user->last_name .'\'s check-in posts';?>
 		  			if ( $post_query->have_posts() ) : 				while( $post_query->have_posts() ) : $post_query->the_post(); ?>  					  post_class(); ?>> 						
 the_time('F j, Y \a\t g:i a') ?>
 						
 the_content(); ?>
 					  				 				endwhile; 			else: 				echo "
You have no check-in posts. Submit one above!
"; 			endif; 	} }

Here is what the template outputs:

check-in post user list

user posts

The best way to do this is to hook in to when the post type is initiated and toggle the ‘exclude_from_search option so ‘true’. I added this to functions.php:

add_action( 'init', 'usp_post_hide_search', 99 );  function usp_post_hide_search() { 	global $wp_post_types;  	if ( post_type_exists( 'usp_post' ) ) {  		// exclude from search results 		$wp_post_types['usp_post']->exclude_from_search = true; 	} }

Using Zapier

I opted to use Zapier for two things:

  1. Triggering the nightly post checking script via GET. wp_cron isn’t super reliable if you need something to run at a given time, and since I’m hosting on WPengine, I don’t have access to the server cron. We already use Zapier for a ton of stuff, so I fire off a GET to my script with the query string random key.
  2. Sending the email and logging emails sent. I could have done this all in the script, but I wanted staff to be able to easily change the email and possibly add more post-email items like sending a message to Slack and Salesforce, or sending a text message to the user.

Going Forward

Here are a few ways I want to improve this when I have time:

  1. Extend the template that staff uses to see check-in posts to include filter criteria.
  2. Let users opt-in and opt-out of automated accountability instead of admins opting them in or out.
  3. I might want to expire or hide posts
  4. USP by default doesn’t preserve line breaks. I’ll need to update that.

  • 12 Tips for New Managers

    Praxis alumni Nate Baker and Nick Rundlett both became new managers this month. Congrats, guys! Nate asked the community for tips on how to be a good supervisor. Here is what our advisors and alumni had to say.

    https://discoverpraxis.com/12-tips-for-new-managers/Archived Link

  • 16 Books That Shaped How I Interact with the World

    Yesterday my friend Derek Magill asked the Praxis community, “What books have had the most impact on your career/education?”

    I love this question. Notice the use of the word impact. He isn’t asking for your favorite books, the books you recommend on a specific subject, or the books you agree with the most. He is asking for the books that have had a significant impact on your education. Books that influenced and changed the way you think and interact with the world.

    Here is my list, in order of when I read them. I explain what impact they had on my education and how that shifted the way I interact with the world.

    https://discoverpraxis.com/16-books-shaped-interact-world/Archived Link

  • How to send custom conversion events back to Facebook advertising with ConvertFlow

    I made a video that shows you how to send custom conversion events to Facebook whenever a visitor, lead or customer engages with one of your website’s calls-to-action – all without having to touch your website’s code. It was featured on the ConvertFlow blog!

    Check it out here: https://convertflow.com/blog/how-to-use-convertflow-with-your-facebook-ad-campaigns/Archived Link

  • New book notes: Reamde by Neal Stephenson

    Reamde is a wild ride that traverses half the globe, has multiple storylines intertwined, and jumps back and forth from the virtual and physical world. Stephenson is a captivating writer who pulls you into the story. He makes 1000+ pages feel like 300.

    Check it out here: http://cagrimmett.com/book-notes/reamde_neal_stephenson/

  • Improving Jekyll Build Time

    When I migrated all of my old posts to Jekyll, my build time skyrocketed. The average time was 39 seconds for 853 posts. Abysmal. This is especially annoying when I’m actively working on the site with jekyll serve and waiting 40 seconds for changes to reflect.

    The first step to figuring out what takes so long is running the Liquid profiler: $ jekyll build --profile

    This is what it output for me:

    Filename                                                | Count |    Bytes |  Time --------------------------------------------------------+-------+----------+------ _layouts/default.html                                   |   853 | 9652.42K | 7.462 search/feed.json                                        |     1 | 1394.16K | 4.148 _includes/header.html                                   |   853 | 1230.35K | 3.485 _layouts/post.html                                      |   755 | 5119.00K | 2.301 _includes/opengraph.html                                |   853 |  870.67K | 1.694 _includes/icons.html                                    |   810 | 1752.89K | 1.454 sitemap.xml                                             |     1 |  203.34K | 1.321 _includes/footer.html                                   |   853 |  109.12K | 0.273 til/posts.yml                                           |     1 |   14.27K | 0.147 about.md                                                |     1 |   18.02K | 0.085 _posts/2016-07-04-posts-heatmap-calendar.md             |     1 |   16.78K | 0.080 isotope.html                                            |     1 |  389.52K | 0.048 _layouts/book.html                                      |    34 |  198.47K | 0.039 til.md                                                  |     1 |   58.76K | 0.023 feed.xml                                                |     1 |  139.11K | 0.022 ... with a dozen more tiny blog index pages from paginator  done in 39.359 seconds.

    I tried a bunch of random stuff that made tiny improvements before I started doing research: Removing extraneous files, cleaning up if blocks that I no longer used, hardcoding things in the header that relied on variables from _config.yml, etc. None of this made significant improvements. I had already moved extraneous plugins long ago and I keep Jekyll up to date, so there was nothing more to do there.

    I eventually came across this post by Mike Neumegen, which mentioned jekyll-include-cache, which caches the files you tell it to with the first instance and then serves the cached versions up for subsequent requests. For includes that don’t change based on the page content, you can replace {% include example.html %} with {% include_cached example.html %}. When I did this with my sidebar, nav bar, and footer, it cut my average first build time to 28 seconds, with subsequent regeneration times around 19 seconds. Awesome! (Neumegen’s post, which mentioned jekyll-include-cache contains a lot of other helpful advice for Jekyll build optimization. Check it out!)

    My next step was to look at other includes to see if I could shave more time off. Some files had a mix of static and dynamic assets, so I split out all of the static assets into more include_cached includes. This cut another 5-6 seconds off of my build time. Boom.

    Now that my layouts and my includes were as optimized as I could get them without major rewrites, I turned to the next major time hog: search/feed.json. 4 seconds for a single file! This file loops through everything on the site and dumps it into a single file so that I can crawl it with Javascript to power search on my site.

    I used Mat Hayward’s search project with a few tweaks. As I dug deeper on the specific functions in the feed.json generator, I noticed that everything was being converted from Markdown to HTML first, then HTML stripped out, then turned into JSON. I wondered if skipping the markdown conversion step would lead to inaccurate search, so I tried it. Not only did my search function the same, but it dropped feed.json’s build time down to around a sixth of a second.

    My build time now looks like this:

    Filename                                                | Count |    Bytes |  Time --------------------------------------------------------+-------+----------+------ _layouts/default.html                                   |   853 | 9564.71K | 2.922 _includes/head.html                                     |   853 | 1571.79K | 2.623 _includes/opengraph.html                                |   853 |  870.67K | 2.171 sitemap.xml                                             |     1 |  203.34K | 1.177 _layouts/post.html                                      |   755 | 5195.80K | 0.509 search/feed.json                                        |     1 | 1394.65K | 0.176 _posts/2016-07-04-posts-heatmap-calendar.md             |     1 |   16.78K | 0.091 about.md                                                |     1 |   18.02K | 0.076 isotope.html                                            |     1 |  389.52K | 0.050 _layouts/book.html                                      |    34 |  198.47K | 0.030 _includes/header.html                                   |     1 |    1.43K | 0.021 til.md                                                  |     1 |   58.76K | 0.019 feed.xml                                                |     1 |  139.24K | 0.018 ... with a dozen more tiny blog index pages from paginator  done in 19.594 seconds.

    Regeneration times when running jekyll serve are hovering around 13 seconds now, which is a significant quality of life improvement for me when managing this blog.

    There is probably more work I can do with moving the highlighter to the front end with JS and simplifying the Liquid in head.html and opengraph.html, but I’m stopping here for now.

  • Troubleshooting Problems Installing Craft CMS on Laravel Homestead

    Today I installed Craft CMS in for a new Praxis project. I use Laravel Homestead for my local development environment. It installs like pretty much every other PHP app on Homestead (use this guide by Matt Collins if you aren’t very familiar with Homestead), but I ran into a few annoying errors along the way:

    Mcrypt is required

    If Mcrypt is required shows when you first go to http://yoursite.local/admin to finish the install, it is probably because you are a good citizen and your Homestead box is actually up to date, running PHP 7.2 as the default. Here’s the issue: mcrypt was removed from PHP 7.2. Craft 2 still needs it. There are three solutions:

    • If you need PHP 7.2, you’ll have to install Craft 3. It is still under development as of this writing, so I didn’t take that path. (Update April 2, 2018 – Apparently Craft 3 is launching on April 4, so you won’t have this issue for long!)
    • You can install the mcrypt extension for PHP 7.2.
    • You can use a different PHP version. I took this route. Homestead makes this super simple by allowing multiple PHP versions. In your Homestead.yaml, set the php variable to php: "7.0" under your site in the Sites block. Here is what mine looks like:
    - map: craft-praxis.local      to: /home/vagrant/craft-praxis/public      php: "7.0"

    GROUP BY incompatible with sql_mode=only_full_group_by

    If you see this message, chances are that you are using MySQL 5.7.5+, which changed the way it deals with GROUP BY. See this StackOverflow post for the two solutions: Removing the ONLY_FULL_GROUP_BY option from sql_mode or adding the initSQLs database config settings in craft/config/db.php.