Tags: time

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Adjusting to less focused time

| kaizen, learning, parenting

It feels like I've had much less focused time over the past two months. Weaning, sickness, and A-‘s bigger emotions all needed more patience and energy. I've been prioritizing sleep and household maintenance over things like staying up to consult or write. On the plus side, we've gotten back into the rhythm of preparing meals for the week, and cleaning the house is a little easier now.

How can I adapt if this is my new normal?

I've been setting more firm boundaries (myself, bedtime routines, etc.), and that's been working reasonably well. I've also adjusted my plans and made sure not to commit to more consulting than I could do.

I'm not keen on making videos a regular part of her day, since we don't want to add another cause for conflict. I considered creating space by having a babysitter come over for 3-4 hours. A- is still not keen on the idea, though, and I can see how we both benefit from the time we spend with each other.

So the main thing to do, I think, is to rejig my plans in order to make the most of the constraints. What do I want to learn even without lots of focused sit-down time? How do I want to grow?

  • Equanimity: This lets me turn A-‘s tantrums into learning opportunities. I can practise appreciating her and this life, especially when we're in the thick of things. Taking care of our basic needs gives me the space to be patient and kind when A- needs me to be, and it's good practice in anticipating and heading off challenges. I tend to be firmer than W- is, so I can work on noticing when a little kindness or flexibility might help a lot when A- and I are on our own.
  • Household maintenance: I want to take on more chores, help A- get involved, and become more effective. This is also a good opportunity to practise noticing things. I can learn things from W- and from the Internet.
  • Thinking, learning, and improving in short bursts: I want to get better at using little pockets of time. Drawing and dictating might be good techniques to explore further.
  • Mindfulness and being present: I want to get better at being there for A- instead of letting myself be distracted. I want to get better at enjoying now. I also want to balance that with thinking about and doing my own things. I can start with a few magic moments a day, and then expand from there.
  • Playfulness and creativity: I like the way W- interacts with A-. It might be interesting to practise playfulness and creativity, especially since A- can be my play partner and guide. I can pick up ideas at the drop-in centres, and sometimes reading helps.

These things are less obviously rewarding than, say, figuring out a clever solution for a client problem or coming up with a neat Emacs hack and blogging about it. But they're worthwhile things to learn anyway.

How can I make my learning more intentional? It might be interesting to make myself a list of things to focus on or try out, and then try one at time while keeping an eye out for other things that are relevant to the situation. For example, I could have a day of involving A-‘s toys in tasks, then see how that resonates with A-.

How can I make my learning more visible? I think journal entries will help a little. Sometimes A- insists that I stay close while she's sleeping, so that might be a good time to write. I can draw thoughts while waiting for A-, too, which is a good way to model writing and drawing. Paper seems to work a little better than drawing on my phone, although maybe that's a matter of practice. I don't have a good workflow for dealing with notes yet, but I can archive pictures for now and deal with them as mostly transitory thinking aids.

I'll probably have lots of focused time later on. Crunch time isn't forever. Even if I may need to start over, I'm not too worried. I think I'll be able to get the hang of things again.

In the meantime, we're mostly set up for playing and doing chores at home. Once we recover from this cold and cough, I think our daily rhythm will involve drop-in centres as well as home time. I've got things to learn and ways to grow. I can do this, even though it's a bit different from what I'm used to.

Life changes. It's good to adapt.

Checking the balance of my time

| parenting, work

I like working. It tickles my brain, and I enjoy helping people through code. Sometimes I get stuck on stuff, but I can generally solve problems and make stuff easier. It's also good for long-term stuff.

I also like spending time with A- and learning from her. I'd pick A- over consulting because tasks generally keep and kiddos don't. I like snuggling with A-, and I like playing with her.

If I work late at night, I can generally do 1 to 2 hours of work between interruptions, so there's a bit of task switching. I can usually pick my stopping point for the night if I stay up a little later. My brain buzzes a bit afterwards, so it's hard to sleep. That sometimes affects my time with A- the next day.

If I get a babysitter and work in the afternoon, I can talk to people and focus better. I can generally do 2 hours of focused work, and sometimes more if A- is having fun. She strongly prefers playing with me, though.

If I wake up early, A- often insists on snuggling in bed. When she wakes up, I end up stopping work abruptly, so it's good to take notes along the way.

If I'm careful about the tasks I commit to, I give people a chance to develop their own skills while being able to squeeze in the occasional low effort, high reward thing. I can also get better at making my prototypes easier to turn over with comments and notes.

2-4 hours is a nice chunk of focused time that I can use to make decent progress. How can I arrange my life so that I can do that regularly? Monday night or Tuesday night might be a good time to stay up late working. Monday night is particularly good, since I can take A- to the drop-in centre on Tuesday for social interaction.

It's also good to use some focused time for personal projects: journaling, Emacs News, kaizen. As A- becomes more independent, I might start modeling 15 minutes of independent reading and taking notes.

So maybe a rhythm like this:

  • S: W-
  • Su: Emacs News
  • M: Consulting
  • T: Free choice
  • W: Sleep
  • Th: Kaizen
  • F: Journal, review

On the flipside, more sleep makes everything even better. When I'm well-rested, it's easy to be playful and creative. So I won't push myself too hard, I'll keep commitments light and manageable, and I'll code with an eye to turning things over to other people who can run with stuff.

It might be good to experiment with babysitting monthly, to monitor her readiness for it.

I like learning the things that life with A- can teach me, even though they're harder and less externally validated than coding is. The important thing is to be where I am.

Eventually A- will be in school, or independent enough to want to go play by herself or with other people, or okay with playing with sitters or in daycare. That time will come quickly enough. No need to rush it.

On scattered moments and video games

Posted: - Modified: | life

In anticipation of more fuzzy-brain time-confetti, I've been thinking about what I can do with short, scattered moments. The considerations are:

  • They should be activities that I can pick up and put down at a moment's notice: minimal switching costs and easy availability
  • They should be useful or enjoyable, and ideally both
  • Ideally, they should build up over time

Here's a list of things I often find myself doing:

  • Reading: nonfiction, fiction, random Internet browsing. Dusted off my Kindle and loaded it up with a few tech manuals and some fanfiction. Great for walking around, since I can use the page buttons even with gloves on.
  • Tidying up or preparing: there's always something that needs to be done
  • Checking out the Emacs community to see if I can answer a quick question or learn from other people's conversations
  • Drawing an index card or two
  • Playing casual games

I think games are worth thinking about a little more, even though I'm tempted to focus on the more useful activities. There are a lot of people who spend a lot of time thinking about how to make gaming more engaging. It's a big industry. I wonder if I can turn it to my own purposes.

2016-02-01c Game endings -- index card #gaming

2016-02-01c Game endings – index card #gaming.png

I tend to like games with stories that have funny moments, like RPGs or LEGO games. Since games like that tend to require space and development effort, I play them on the PSP or the PS3. I've learned I'm not a completionist when it comes to achievements or levels – I like passing a level, but I'm not driven to reach three out of three stars. I can enjoy open-ended sandbox simulations. Games that go until failure tend to be a little depressing after a while – the abstract achievement of lasting a certain time or reaching a certain level doesn't tickle my brain the same way other things do.

2016-01-14d Thinking about games I liked -- index card #play #gaming #leisure

2016-01-14d Thinking about games I liked – index card #play #gaming #leisure.png

Reflecting on the specific games I've liked, I notice that I usually explore games that W-‘s also playing as a way of spending time together or sharing experiences. This is how I ended up getting into Borderlands 2 and Persona 4 Golden, and why I'm playing Final Fantasy IX now. On my own, I find that I'm a little partial to time- and resource-management games. I figure that among the popular games of those genres, a game is probably as good as any other. So I'm playing through Rising Star Chef on the tablet, and just for kicks (and Takei's narration, although there's far too little of that), Star Trek: Trexels on my phone.

It seems like most of the popular games have switched to a freemium model, with in-app purchases for the impatient. I find myself liking the built-in timers and rate limits, actually. They're good for reminding me to surface from the game and look around. There's a little bit of pride, too, in the thought: “Aha, I resist your feeble attempts to convince me to spend money.” But that's only part of the picture, of course. I pay in time and attention, and often in exposure to advertisements. So if I'm going to do this, I want to make sure that I get what I want out of it.

Here are the pay-offs I think I'm getting from these games, and some alternatives if I want to play with those pay-offs.

2016-01-28c Playing with games -- index card #games

2016-01-28c Playing with games – index card #games.png

Games give me a sense of learning and a sense of progress, although they're of arbitrary things. Games also deliberately build on the rush of intermittent rewards.

2016-02-01b Playing with my brain's failure modes -- index card #gaming

2016-02-01b Playing with my brain's failure modes – index card #gaming.png

The most interesting benefit for me, though, is developing an awareness of how I think in different situations, while keeping things low-risk. Sometimes I catch myself getting flustered and messing up orders in the cooking game, or letting a party member get knocked out in FF9 because I was too distracted to pay attention to the health stats. (Trexels seems more like a virtual pet than anything else; it feels like it's just a matter of time.) I like the way games make me think a few steps ahead, take risks, recover from mistakes, and deal with (or even celebrate) the inevitable failures.

So maybe a little more gaming, with built-in limits thanks to freemium timers and the pull of other things, mixed in with all these other ways to use scattered moments. Hmm…

The imperfect fungibility of time: thinking about how to use money to accelerate learning

Posted: - Modified: | learning

Any time I want to, I could spend more time consulting. This would make my clients happy. It would help me create much more value, and they would get more value from me than from other ways they could spend their budget. I would improve my skills along the way, especially with people's requests and feedback. And to top it all off, I would earn more money that I could add to my savings, exchange for other people's time or talents, or use to improve our quality of life.

How hard is it to resist the temptation to work on other people's things? It's like trying to focus on cooking lentils when there's a pan of fudge brownies right there, just waiting to for a bite. It's like wandering through the woods in hope of coming across something interesting when you know you can go back to the road and the road will take you to an enormous library. It's like trying to build something out of sand when there's a nifty LEGO Technic kit you can build instead. It's probably like Odysseus sailing past Sirens, if the Sirens sang, "We need you! You can help us! Plus you can totally kit out your ship and your crew with the treasures we'll give you and the experience you'll gain!"

Maybe I can use this temptation's strength against it.

Maybe I can treat client work (with its attendant rewards and recognition) as a carrot that I can have if I make good progress on my personal projects. If I hit the ground running in the morning, then I can work on client stuff in the afternoon. A two-hour span is probably a good-sized chunk of time for programming or reporting. It's not as efficient as a four-hour chunk, but it'll force me to keep good notes, and I know I can get a fair bit done in that time anyway.

The other part of this is making sure that I don't give myself too-low targets so that I can get to client work. It'll be tempting to pick a small task, do it, and say, "There, I'm done. Moving on!" But I have to sit with uncertainty and figure things out. I expect that learning to work on my own things will mean encountering and dealing with inner Resistance. I expect that my anxious side will whisper its self-doubt. So I lash myself to the mast and sail past the Sirens, heading towards (if I'm lucky!) years of wandering.

Part of this is the realization that even after my experiments with delegation, I'm still not good at converting money back into time, learning, ability, or enjoyment. Time is not really fungible, or at least I haven't figured out how to convert it efficiently. I can convert time to money through work, but I find it difficult to convert money back to time (through delegation) or use it to accelerate learning.

Extra money tends to go into projects, tools or cooking experiments. Gardening is one of my luxuries: a few bags of dirt, some seeds and starters, and an excuse to be outside regularly. Paying someone to do the first draft of a transcript gets around my impatience with listening to my own voice. Aside from these regular decisions, I tend to think carefully about what I spend on. Often a low-cost way of doing something also helps me learn a lot – sometimes much more than throwing money at the problem would.

But there are things that money can buy, and it's good for me to learn how to make better decisions about that. For example, a big savings goal might be "buying" more of W-'s time, saving up in case he wants to experiment with a more self-directed life as well. House maintenance projects need tools, materials, and sometimes skilled help. Cooking benefits from experimentation, better ingredients, and maybe even instruction.

What about accelerating my learning so that I can share even more useful stuff? Working with other people can help me:

  • take advantage of external perspectives (great for editing)
  • organize my learning path into a more effective sequence
  • learn about adjacent possibilities and low-hanging fruit
  • bridge gaps
  • improve through feedback
  • create scaffolds/structures and feed motivation
  • set up and observe deliberate practice
  • direct my awareness to what's important

In order to make the most of this, I need to get better at:

  • identifying what I want to learn
  • identifying who I can learn from
  • approaching them and setting up a relationship
  • experimenting
  • following up

How have I invested money into learning, and what have the results been like?

Tools? Yup, totally worth it, even for the tools I didn't end up using much of (ex: ArtRage). Do more of this. How can I get better at:

  • keeping an eye out for potentially useful tools:
    • Emacs packages
    • AutoHotkey scripts/ideas
    • Windows/Linux tools related to writing, drawing, coding
  • evaluating whether a tool can fit my workflow
  • supporting people who make good tools
    • expressing appreciation
    • contributing code
    • writing about tools
    • sending money

Books? Some books have been very useful. On the other hand, the library has tons of books, so I have an infinite backlog of free resources. Buying and sketchnoting new books (or going to author events) is good for connecting with authors and readers about the book du jour, but on the other hand, I also get a lot of value from focusing on classics that I want to remember.

Conferences? Mostly interesting for meeting people and bumping into them online through the years. Best if I go as a speaker (makes conversations much easier and reduces costs) and/or as a sketchnoter (long-term value creation). It would be even awesomer if I could combine this with in-person intensive learning, like a hackathon or a good workshop…

Courses? Meh. Not really impressed by the online courses I've taken so far, but then again, I don't think I'm approaching them with the right mindset either.

Things I will carve out opportunity-fund space for so that I can try more of them:

Pairing/coaching/tutoring? Tempting, especially in terms of Emacs, Node/Javascript, Rails, or Japanese. For example, some goals might be:

  • Learn how to improve Emacs Lisp performance and reliability: profiling, code patterns, tests, etc.
  • Define and adopt better Emacs habits
    • Writing
    • Organization
    • Planning
    • Programming
  • Write more elegant and testable Javascript
  • Set up best-practices Javascript/CSS/HTML/Rails environment in Emacs
  • Learn how to take advantage of new features in WordPress
  • Write more other-directed posts
  • Get better at defining what I want to learn and reaching out to people

Actually, in general, how does one accelerate learning?

  • General learning techniques: spaced repetition, skill breakdowns, deliberate practice…
  • Structure and motivation: personal trainers, courses
  • Instruction and perspective: expert, peer, or external
  • Higher-quality resources: original research, well-written/organized resources, richer media, good level of detail, experience/authority
  • Better tools: things are often much easier and more fun
  • Experimentation: learning from experience, possibly coming up with new observations
  • Feedback, analysis: experience, thoroughness
  • Immersion: languages, retreats
  • Outsourcing: research, summaries, scale, skills, effort
  • Relationships: serendipity, connection, conversation, mentoring, sponsorship
  • Community: premium courses or membership sites often offer this as a benefit
  • Freedom: safety net that permits experimentation, time to focus on it instead of worrying about bills, etc.

Hmm. I have some experience in investing in better tools, higher-quality resources, experimentation, feedback/analysis, delegation, and freedom. I'd like to get better at that and at investing in relationships and outsourcing. Come to think of it, that might be more useful than focusing on learning from coaching/instruction, at least for now.

Let me imagine what using money to accelerate learning would be like:

  • Relationships
    • Get to know individuals faster and deeper
      • Free: Build org-contacts profiles of people who are part of my tribe (people who comment/link/interact); think about them on a regular basis
      • Free: Proactively reach out and explore shared interests/curiosities
      • $: Figure out digital equivalent of treating people to lunch or coffee: conversation + maybe investing time into creating a good resource for them and other people + sending cash, donating to charity, or (best) cultivating reciprocal learning
      • $: Sign up for a CRM that understands Gmail, Twitter, and maybe even Disqus
    • Identify things to learn about and reach out to people who are good role models for those skills
      • Free: Be specific about things I want to learn
      • Free: Find people who know how to do those things (maybe delegate research)
      • $: Possibly buy their resources, apply their advice
      • $: Reach out with results and questions, maybe an offer to donate to their favourite charity
    • Help the community (like Emacs evil plans; rising tide lifts all boats)
      • $: Invest time and money into creating good resources
      • Be approachable
      • $: Bring the community together. Invest in platforms/organization. For example, I can use whatever I would have spent on airfare to create a decent virtual conference experience, or figure out the etiquette of having an assistant set up and manage Emacs Hangouts/Chats.
  • Outsourcing
    • Identify things that I want to do, regardless of skills
    • $: Experiment with outsourcing parts that I don't know how to do yet (or even the ones I can do but want external perspectives on)
    • Use the results to determine what I actually want and what to learn more about; iterate as needed

Huh, that's interesting. When I start thinking about investing in learning, I tend to fixate on finding a coach because I feel a big gap around directly asking people for help. But I can invest in other ways that might be easier or more effective to start with. Hmm… Thoughts?

View or add comments (Disqus), or e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com

Intentionally interrupting momentum and limiting flow

Posted: - Modified: | productivity

You know how when you get going on something, you want to keep going? It’s a great feeling. You’re in the flow, you’re in the zone. Time passes unnoticed. You’re getting stuff done.

I don’t trust that feeling. At least not all the way.

Here’s what got me thinking about this: I had just finished sketchnoting a book. It was fun. I felt accomplished. I wanted to do another sketchnote. In fact, I had already returned the previous book, picked another book from the shelf, and settled in for more drawing.

Then I stopped and asked myself, Is this really what I should be doing next? I was basking in the glow of people’s appreciation on Twitter and I already had all my tools set up for doing the next book, so it made sense to do another sketchnote. But was that really the best use of that moment?

More of the same, or something else?

I still stay up too late programming sometimes. I still spend hours reading. I still write my way past lunch, snapping out of the trance, suddenly starving, late in the afternoon. But I’m getting better at paying attention when part of me pipes up with weird questions.

I dug deeper and found these sub-questions that help me evaluate whether to continue or whether to switch, and what to do next:

Sure, sometimes I’ll lose myself coding or writing or drawing. But sometimes it’s good to interrupt my momentum and ask: What’s important to do, even if it’s not currently as shiny or as fun as what I’m doing?

Do you do this too? What have you learned? What questions do you ask yourself to help you decide what to do next?

Related posts:

View or add comments (Disqus), or e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com

The 5-year experiment: A conversation with my anxious side, and how sharing time might be better than giving money

Posted: - Modified: | delegation, experiment

(If you want, you can skip past the reflection on anxiety and safety and jump straight to the part on how you can help. =) )

Having resolved to learn how to work on my own things, I'm experimenting with reducing my consulting to one day a week (from last year's routine of two days a week). I spend most of the week reading, drawing, writing, experimenting, and coding.

2015-01-09 What do I do on my non-consulting days -- index card

It's not a big change in terms of hours. I already have plenty of time for personal projects. But I feel the shift in the balance. I can hear that inner self-doubt saying, "Is this real work? Is it worthwhile? Is it sustainable? Are you undermining your safety by goofing off?"

2015-01-07 Real Work -- index card

It's okay. I expected this resistance, this anxiety. It's just one of those mental barriers I have to break. Fortunately, all those Stoic philosophers are there to remind me that it's just a negative impression, not reality, and the truth is that I have nothing to fear.

I'm getting better at telling that anxious part of my mind: "Look. Even though I offer all those resources for free, people willingly pay for it. And other people write wonderful comments and send me e-mail telling me that I've inspired them to learn more and that they want to help, so that counts too. Yeah, there's a chance I might need to go back to Regular Work if the stock market crashes or a catastrophe happens, but in the meantime, just give this a chance. And really, that scenario isn't the end of the world. Other people do okay. I can too. Besides, that's why we have safety nets, right?"

2015-01-06 Planning my safety nets -- index card

2015-01-06 Safe, a little better, comfortable -- index card

And then my anxious side goes, "Okay, you've probably got the basics covered. But what if your expenses grow, or W- gets tired of living frugally and wants to upgrade lifestyles a little bit? Is this really enough?"

2015-01-06 Is this enough for me -- index card

And then I say, "We'll probably have some time to adjust our plans for that, and I can always go back to doing Real Work that satisfies you. Besides, if we want to upgrade our life experiences, learning the skills to make stuff for ourselves often works out better than buying things. Like cooking!"

(It's true! It's even called the IKEA effect.)

Then my anxious side goes, "Fine. Maybe you have enough space to experiment right now. You want to learn things and help people. But look at your blog! It's so self-centred. You talk about your questions and reflections, and you rarely give people tips they can directly apply to their lives."

Then I say, "I'll get better at writing for other people. In the meantime, this seems to be working okay so far. People translate my reflections into stuff that they can use."

Here's how I think my blog helps other people at the moment. Maybe you come across my blog because of a search. You find something that saves you a little time. You browse around a little and learn about things you didn't even think about searching for. Maybe you come back once in a while for more of those ideas. You bump into other topics you're curious about, and you explore. You might subscribe, even though you know I post practically every day. You skim the headlines for things that interest you, and you dive into stuff you like. Sometimes you might even feel moved to comment, e-mail, invest time, or even send some money.

2015-01-04 What kind of difference do I want to make, and for whom - index card

How people can help

My anxious side grumbles, "Okay. I'm not sure your blog counts as Real Work, but I'll grant that people seem to find some value in it. I'd feel better if you were more serious about building a business around it – if you could cover more of your expenses with this instead of consulting income or dividends."

To which I say, "You know, I'm not sure any amount of money would get you to the point of not worrying. Besides, it's good that you worry, because that helps keep us safe. This stream will grow as I figure out how to make things that are truly valuable to people. I bet you I can pull it off while still keeping the free/pay-what-you-want aspect, because that's important to me. Given that you tend to squirrel away additional money to build up safety instead of getting better at investing it to build up capabilities, what we really should be thinking about is if we can make better exchanges of time instead of money. That will probably make a bigger difference anyway."

My anxious side is sufficiently boggled by that idea and can't come up with a good rejoinder. This is promising. Let me dig into it further, then.

One of the concepts I picked up from Your Money or Your Life (Dominguez and Robin, 1999) is that you can think of money in terms of the time it took you to earn it, a sobering thought when you apply it to your expenses.

I can apply that idea to other people, too; if other people pay money for something I made, it represents the chunk of their life that they spent earning it (and the opportunity cost of anything else they could've bought or invested in, including saving up for their own freedom).

I'm frugal (bordering on being a cheapskate), having gotten very good at making the most of inexpensive resources. Because of the typical mind fallacy, I tend to think that other people should be frugal as well so that they can save up for their own freedom. I suspect that people might get marginally more value from saving that money than I would get from them giving it to me, since their stress reduction or freedom expansion will likely outweigh my slightly increased feeling of safety. On the other hand, people do get value from feeling generous and from patronizing something that they would like to see flourish, so I can agree with that.

If we translate it back to time, though, I'm more comfortable with the exchange.

I already have enough time for the priorities in my life, while many people feel that they don't have enough time for the priorities in theirs. Adding more money to my life doesn't easily translate into additional or more effective time (aside from transcripts and tools, which I already budget for), while translating that money back into time might make more of a difference in other people's lives. So a direct swap doesn't make sense.

However, if we can exchange time in an apples-and-oranges sort of way, that might make sense. That is, if someone gives me 15 minutes of their time that translates to much more than 15 minutes of my time or might even be something I could not do on my own, that would be fantastic. This could be something that takes advantage of someone's:

Technically, delegation is supposed to help me translate money into time that is qualitatively different from my time, but my anxious side has not been very good at evaluating, trusting, or making the most of learning from people who know different things than I do.

Figuring out a way to effectively receive other people's gifts of time might be what I need to break through this barrier.

2015-01-04 Thinking in terms of an exchange of time - index card

In fact, receiving time might be more effective than receiving money. Not only could that get around my difficulty with finding and paying other people for the qualitatively different time that I want, but if we structure it right, people will gain from the time that they give. If someone asks me a good question that prompts me to learn, reflect on, or share something, we both gain. If they invest more time into experimenting with the ideas, we gain even more. I can't actually buy that on any of the freelancing or outsourcing marketplaces. There's no way for me to convert money into that kind of experience.

So, how can people can give me 15 minutes of time in a way that helps them and helps me? Let me think about different things I'm learning about:

2015-01-09 Time is greater than money -- index card

2015-01-09 What am I learning more about, and how can people help -- index card

It makes sense to organize this by interest instead of by action.

So: Paying for free/pay-what-you-want-resources is great at helping me tell my anxious side, "Look, people find this valuable," and that's much appreciated. But giving me time works too. If we can figure out how to do this well, that might be able to help me grow more (at least until I sort out a way to talk my anxious side into letting me invest more in capabilities). Shifting the balance towards time is probably going to make my anxious side more anxious, but I might be able to tell it to give me a year or two to experiment, which is coincidentally the rest of this 5-year span.

Wild success might look like:

I could use your help with this. =) Shall we figure it out together?

View or add comments (Disqus), or e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com

Quantified Awesome: Added sparklines and percentages

Posted: - Modified: | quantified

As I was answering the standard question of “Who are you and what do you do?”, I thought it might be interesting to come up with the percentages for what I actually do based on my time records. After all, I have the data. In the past, I used to export my records to a spreadsheet and do some easy number-crunching. Why bother, though, if I can program the system to do this for me?`

I ended up spending 3.5 hours adding percentages and sparklines to Quantified Awesome, updating my RSpec tests along the way. (100% coverage, yay!) Here's what the result looks like:

2014-06-11 13_34_46-quantified awesome

The sparklines let me easily see trends and exceptions, while percentages can be easily multiplied by 168 hours to get weekly estimates or 24 hours to get daily ones. For example, sleep took up 35.8% of my time from 2012-02-17 to 2014-06-11, or an average of 8.6 hours a day. Activities directly related to earning money took up 10.9% of my time, or roughly 18.3 hours a week. The sprints and spikes are easier to see with sparklines than with tabular data, and they were easy to implement with JQuery Sparklines.

So now I can be more accurate when answering the question: “What do you do?” It doesn't make sense to include all the minutiae. People don't really answer that question with “Sleep,” even though that takes up much of people's time. However, I can pick a threshold (1%?) and look at the activities above that. That is, for the ~28 months of this 5-year experiment so far, I:

Data! Mwahahaha…

View or add comments (Disqus), or e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com