My Blog

Hello everyone. My name is Emile and I’m a procrastinator. I’ve always put off important tasks until I felt motivated or to fulfil my need for instant gratification. Luckily for me, over the past couple of years, I’ve started to break out of my natural cycle. However, sometimes my old ways do rear their ugly head. Last month it happened again…

It’s 2020 and the world is a little crazy right now. You might look at your old website and think it’s time for an update. Alternatively, maybe you’ve never had one and think it’s time to build one. But where do you start? There are a myriad of tools available for building websites. You’ve heard of WordPress, it powers around 30% of the web, but you’ve also heard criticism of it. Is it the best tool for you? Let’s dive in and see how it stacks up in 2020.

JavaScript frameworks. If you don’t use them you’ve likely heard of them. The most popular of the lot are React, Angular and Vue. There are, of course, many more to choose from. Every year, The State of JavaScript surveys Javascript developers. The result of this survey reveals the current landscape of the JavaScript world. And, every year, I can’t help but feel a little sadness when seeing one of my favourite little frameworks sitting far down the list. Today I’d like to talk about Mithril.js.

This isn’t the post I thought I’d be publishing today, but I think it’s the one that I should. Today is day four of South Africa’s mandatory 21-day lockdown. When I created my goals for 2020 three months ago, the world looked vastly different than it does now.

I’m always on the lookout for tools that can help me be more productive. Last year, I discovered and decided to try out Todoist, a to-do list app that caught my eye.

I started incorporating Todoist in my daily routine and soon started seeing results. I’ve always found it interesting how much of an impact it makes to write down my tasks. I wanted to find out more about why that is, so I did some research. This phenomenon appears to have been the subject of several studies of late. Hint: It’s neuroscience!

Only a month ago I was a confident front-end team lead working on JavaScript web applications for the insurance industry. I had resigned from that position and was looking forward to a new challenge at a large live TV streaming service working as a software engineer. Little did I know that impostor syndrome was about to rear its ugly head.

If you’re anything like me, you might need some external help being more organized and productive. A couple of years ago I posted a blog post about how using Any.do, a to-do list app, changed my life. I’m still an advocate for Any.do, but I’ve recently added a new tool to my toolkit: Notion. It’s a doozy, so I thought I’d like to share how I’ve been using it.

I love Twitter. I think it’s a great platform to keep well-informed. It’s also a window into the lives of people you care about, be they influential figures or just your peers. Conversely, in this day and age, it can be exhausting to maintain both your digital identity and personal life.

So it’s been a while since you launched your website and you’re starting to get bored of it. Maybe your competitors just launched a new site and you feel that yours now pales in comparison. Could it be time for a redesign?

It’s 2018! With a new year often comes New Year’s resolutions. Usually, I’m not really one for New Year’s resolutions because it’s almost a given that they will get abandoned long before the end of the year. However, this time it might just be different. The other day I stumbled upon a Reddit comment by user ryans01 that stuck with me. He has a system called “No More Zero Days” and it’s super intriguing.

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