The Project Management Crash Challenge

Byjack

It is time for a crash course in project management!

Objectives:

  1. Understand and be able to apply major project management methodologies (PMP school, waterfall, agile project management)
  2. Review other methodologies that I already know (design thinking, OKRs, SRE, DevOps, UI/UX)
  3. Formulate resources and learning into distinct repositories of knowledge and simple shortcuts and worksheets that I can use as shorthand reminders and ways to kick off processes

Total time: 4 hours

PART ONE: Master project management (2 hrs)

  • Section one: Learn, research, and gather (1 hr)
    • Subsection one: Warm up via listening to videos and gathering resource lists (20 minutes)
    • Subsection two: Create own practice scenarios and find questions in them (20 minutes)
    • Subsection three: Consume and build resource repos off of resource lists and answer my own questions (20 minutes)
  • Section two: Create practice scenarios (30 min)
  • Section three: Question and answer (30 min)

PART TWO: Review other methodologies (1 hr)

  • Section one: write down everything from memory basic searching (20 minutes)
  • Section two: watch videos (20 minutes)
  • Section three: search for resources and worksheets (20 minutes)

PART THREE: Create and organize resources (1 hr)

  • Section one: create a structure for folders and docs (20 minutes)
  • Section two: create resources for project management (20 minutes)
  • Section three: create resources for other methodologies (20 minutes)

Here is a video that I started out with:

Project Life Cycle
Project Management Process

Links to the worksheets

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The Knee Strength Challenge

Byjack

I’ve had knee problems for my half of my life. I wanted to get the motivation to heal the knee. It started with the Knee Mobility Challenge, which by the way wasn’t even my first knee challenge. Then I started to work on my overall fitness and knee motivation with the JiuJitsu challenge.

This is sort of a continuation of that.

My current goals:

  1. Lift up my knee and bend it feeling stable, comfortable and strong
  2. Stand for 5 minutes while feeling comfortable
  3. Lay on either side feeling comfortable and relaxed
  4. Sit on my heels while feeling comfortable and relaxed
  5. Be able to jump feeling stable, comfortable, and strong
  6. Able to kick a roundhouse while feel stable, comfortable and strong
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Valorant 29: My Valorant Fears and Emotions

Byjack

I wanted to do a bit of a post to understand how I am feeling right now about the Valorant challenge. I know I feel incredibly stressed, angry, and depressed because I feel like I wasted all my time on Valorant. So much time trying so hard to be good, but nothing seems to really come of it. Sometimes looking at my VODs I feel like my gameplay is the same as it was before.

I don’t really know what is going on and why it seems like I’m new to the game every time. I don’t know why I’m overthinking everything. Why is everything so hard?

I wish I could see major mistakes in my old gameplay.

I guess watching more VOD reviews will help me understand. But that takes so damn long. Maybe it means that there are still opportunities to play much much better. I feel that I maybe have gotten much better but it doesn’t seem to translate over to comp. Maybe it’s also something about understanding the maps better. I really get the sense that I got to plat last time by playing more comfortably on agents and on maps. I think I understood just how to play each map better. But I want to be a more complete player. I want to play with better movement and peeking.

Something else that I feel that I missed out on was just having more posts about the emotions I was feeling. It makes me sad that all my Valorant posts were about techniques and none of them were about emotions.

Valorant has a lot of nice emotions for me. I met my girlfriend on Valorant, I had a lot of friends on Valorant. These days I play mostly alone, but I still like the world. Cool agents and fun to get on to all these different teams. I love it when I have some really fun crazy game sense timing lurks. I guess that is one way that I got significantly better than before.

I wish I had VODs from when I was in iron. I feel that jump from iron to silver was the large one. The jump from silver to plat is weirdly small.

Ok. So I just spent a good hour or so just watching my VODs from bronze until plat then back to gold. I actually feel my overall movement is better and more consistent. The only difference in plat is that I was calmer and held an angle for longer. I also did more wide jiggles. I know for gold I held a lot more angles, and made sure to hold them wide because they would often wide swing everything.

Looking forward, I would be so happy if I kept calm and held angles for longer when moving around the map, held for the wide swing more often. Then when fighting an angle, I want to be more aggressive, swinging very fast and hard, but stopping at the edge and fighting, not leaving until I try to kill them, maybe just letting go of movement keys or crouch spraying. I would love to see my fundamentals get really really good, to a level I know they can get to.

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Profit in Peace 5: Day One

Byjack

Today is the first day in the profit in peace challenge live sessions.

Questions/thoughts:

  • Asking me to empty my cup
    • Isn’t this a question about time? What if I can’t quit my job or scared of doing it?
  • Hmm he means a few goals – fuzzy targets don’t get hit
  • The three Ps
    • Power – gain skills needed to maximize your natural strengths
    • Purpose – do something you love
    • Profit – products that sells themselves
    • Peace – at the center
  • I wonder if it is just because I’m so isolated but meeting with others becomes more important to me as soon as I get my alone time
  • But I do feel like I have charisma, I just burn out the more I work on things I don’t believe in
  • The lever is your why
  • But what if I don’t want to sell a physical product or do drop shipping
  • Trying to apply to what I want
  • Should I try this out? Or focus on what I want?
  • I’m guessing you somehow figure out what is a popular search, but aren’t there people already doing that?
  • Helium 10
  • At least 20k total searches
  • Rich buy time
  • The way that we see money and treat money comes from our parents
  • I can probably invest 5 to 10 thousand in my business
  • I can invest 10 to 15 thousand if I make 5000 in my coaching business

I actually got really stressed when attending this session.

I got stressed because I have my work and my coaching business and this challenge and I don’t want to do anything half-assed, but that’s what it felt like I was doing because I felt so scattered.

I decided to completely give up working on coaching for this week so I can fully focus on learning about e-commerce, then kind of work on coaching again afterwards.

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My Goal

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Valorant 43: The End and More

Byjack

I decided today that I need to close out the Valorant challenge for a couple of reasons:

Firstly, most importantly, the challenge is over! I think it is important to have specific success/end criteria for every challenge because then it gives a distinct goal to focus on and allows for new challenges to take its place. My original goal for Valorant was to get to Plat in a month. It instead took maybe over a year, but there is no doubt that I completed the challenge. I have been solidly in Plat 1 for months now and just recently solo-queued up to Plat 2. Before there was a reason to keep the challenge going because I kept dropping back down to Gold, but now I think this challenge is well and truly finished.

Secondly, I noticed that I started posting shorter and less thought-out posts about Valorant. Since the challenge is essentially over and my goal has been achieved, it has completely lost focus…which is why it is important for old challenges to end and new challenges to start. Since my posts about Valorant have evolved into less focused thoughts along my journey in Valorant, I can remove the label of “challenge” and continue making posts of observations and thoughts in my overall Valorant journey. I will always challenge myself in Valorant and it will continue to be a long-term goal to learn from the game and grow as a player and as a person. I don’t need a challenge to denote that ambition because this entire blog is that ambitious. Challenges are meant to be smaller focused time and goal bound tools and structures.

Finally, I have new challenges I want to focus on. I have my art and creative challenge coming up, my jiujitsu challenge, and my sleep challenge. All of those challenges require time and effort and the less distractions and pressure I have, the easier it will be to complete those challenges. I will almost certainly start a new Valorant challenge in the future and I need to set a precedent for that now by closing out old and dead/completed challenges like cobwebs in the mental attic.

P.S. For old times sake, here are my latest strategies in Valorant that got me to Plat 2.

  1. Have a purpose/gameplan every round
  2. Look for multikills, not just killing and running – this gives you awareness even if you end up getting one kill and dipping
  3. Focus on what mindset works for you

To expand on number 3, the main mindsets I like to use:

  1. Flicking mindset (good for if you are feeling lots of energy and quite relaxed). Keep your mouse hand loose and imagine flicking on the enemies. Visualize centering all of the enemies on your screen.
  2. Cart of rails mindset (good for very careful and deliberate clean peeks). Imagine you are sitting in a cart on rails and you want to do a driveby shooting. Your railway car can move left and right but not up or down, and will stop the second your crosshair covers the head of an enemy. Anticipate to see them opposite the direction you peek (moving to the right, anticipate on the left).
  3. Adjust crosshair mindest (good if your micro adjustments are off). After seeing the enemy, focus on the space between your crosshair and their head and use intuitive movement to close that gap, whether it is strafing or moving the mouse.

So it is goodbye for now for the Valorant challenge, but we will probably be back at some point to compile data about this whole challenge and do a couple of retrospectives.

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New Coaching Instagram Page

Byjack

I had a really rough day today. I woke up at 4:30 AM in order to get to the airport and fly to Houston. Coming back I hit so much traffic, my uber took almost 2 hours and I was late for my flight by 2 minutes. Luckily, there was no one in line for security, I blazed through, ran to the gate and somehow they hadn’t departed yet.

While I was in the car for 2 hours seeing the time tick down and knowing that I was probably going to miss my flight, probably get on the next one, be stuck in the airport for another two hours, and get home at around 10 PM, I tried to make the best of my bad situation. I thought about my Instagram page for coaching, specifically posts and videos.

I had some ideas for the posts, having a dark gray background with a simple serif font. Also, I was thinking about doing some digital painting for my posts.

The videos were a little bit harder.

I stopped making the reminder videos because I felt so stuck and frustrated with them and I wanted to use connection theory to come up with some solutions.

I think there are a bunch of steps in the video-making process: shooting, editing, and final polish. Each has its own challenges and solutions that came to me.

Shooting

This is hard because I felt a lot of anxiety and overthinking about saying the right thing, and coming off as clear and interesting. Using connection theory, I felt that what I needed is to focus less on the words that I am saying and focus more on evoking feelings through my delivery (my voice and my expressions). They say when someone is talking, verbal queues (literally what they are saying) is only 10% of communication and non-verbals (your tone of voice, inflection, facial expressions) account for 90%. I want to really focus next time not on what I say, but how I say it. Also, I want to try spending something feeling into the reminder and shooting broll that evokes it in a non-verbal way. In general, I want to focus on non-verbals more.

Editing

This is hard because there is a lot of overwhelming decisions that I face at this stage. I am conflicted with staying true to what I originally shot vs any new visions on how to convey my thoughts. I feel often that I avoid emotions or lose touch of emotions just looking at the transcript without hearing the delivery and when I hear the delivery I am conflicted on what to cut out or change. I often feel the original work is no longer recognizable afterwards. I feeling into connection theory, I felt that fear dominated my ability to think, feel, and be creative and I’m thinking about using the law of contradictory intentions by “trying” to be unclear, trying to make no sense.

Final Polish

I didn’t think about this too much because it isn’t really a challenge except for maybe logistically (takes a long time). i was thinking about using the syllabus method, or batch a bunch of videos for the weekend to finalize and publish.

A quick silly example of what this might look like:

  1. Reminder: Today’s reminder is to eat chocolate
  2. Shooting: Focus on how to deliver the words. “Chocolate…mmmm. We want to crunch it!” Shoot broll of breaking chocolate. Of inhaling the chocolate smell.
  3. Editing: Try to make it a bad video.
  4. Editing: Try to find a song that doesn’t fit.
  5. Polish: Add it to a queue with instructions on what needs to be done to finish it off.
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Valorant 5: Trying to Do Movement Based Aiming

Byjack

I’m back from two weeks of traveling and I finally tried it. Movement-based aiming.

It was quite a challenge let me tell you!

Game 1-3: Competitive Games on My Smurf (Comps)

Comp 1: Horrible, terrible no good very bad game. Practiced clutching since the Cypher was completely being annoying, toxic, and throwing (trying to sabotage our team). Was fuming by the end.

Comp 2: Much better team, still missing everything and being horrible.

Comp 3: Finally got a nice team and was able to focus on movement-based aiming.

Comp 4: Bad aiming. Focused on Sova utility. Hit someone with the ult using pure gamesense. 

Main Takeaways

  • I need to follow my previous concept of feeling out the unknown parts of aiming in a controlled setting (deathmatch or shooting range)
  • I’m much worse than before break, probably Bronze 1-2 level.
Game 1-3: Deathmatch Practice (DM)

DM 1: After practicing in the range, I realize that moving only the movement keys to aim is too hard. I need to do a little micro-adjusting with my mouse. I feel like I need to be looser about my mouse movement, when I intuitively move it in the opposite of my movement, I get some nasty headshots. Mostly I get destroyed.

DM 2: Still getting destroyed. I start to understand that movement-based aiming is basically what the Miyagi Do method is teaching.

DM 3: I realized that I need to make sure it’s not just about the movement and feeling that out. Aiming is about TIMING. I spend the entire deathmatch feeling out timing and it starts to be more clear. I am successfully about to “feel out” the aiming on a deep intuitive level like art or dance. 

Main Takeaways

  • I need to constantly move. Movement is something I will also need to practice getting a feeling for.
  • The movement of the crosshair should be with movement, smooth and intuitive.
  • You need to feel the mouse-hand connection, your posture, and your sensitivity. Shift to what feels good, shift to what feels clear and controlled.
  • Timing is absolutely key. Dying is not a problem. Waiting for the right moment is much more important. If you are getting killed first, that’s to be expected for good timing. Your timing will naturally tighten and your time to kill will go down without feeling rushed, out of control, or unclear.

I’m soooo happy!!!

I’m starting to “feel out” aiming just like I feel out drawings, dance and sales processes.

Here are the main takeways:

  • The main goal of practice sound is able to “Feel Out” and play with the mouse to crosshair connection, how to smoothly track, strafe your crosshair while moving, and shooting moving things. Play around with it, feel it out.
  • The Miyagi Do method is the main method you use to practice. However, you don’t just feel out the movement. You also feel out the timing. This is key.
  • I tend to rush and even if I get a kill, it doesn’t feel natural, in control, and comfortable. Dying is always preferable to bad timing. Since timing will get tighter, spamming will make sure you never improve.
  • The next things I need to feel out are:
    • Gun spray control
    •  Gamesense
      • watching the minimap
      • understanding timing
      • guessing what they will do next
      • Isolating 1v1s, only peeking as much as needed
      • Switching between primary and sidearms
    • Movement
      • How to jiggle and peek safety
      • How to get on top of things
      • When to pull out your knife
      • Agent movement abilities
    • Ability usage
      • Lineups
      • Timing and combos

I’m extremely confident that this method will NOT ONLY make you a monster after warming up, but every warmup will make you internally better at aiming (to the point that you will need to warm up less and less to have insane aim).