Monthly review: February 2015

Posted: Mar 8, 2015 - Modified: May 29, 2019| monthly, review

Last month, I wrote that in February, I was looking forward to:

Preparing for some projects: Done!
Hosting another Emacs Hangout: Done!
Learning more about Helm (in Emacs): Customized!

What a month for cooking, drawing, writing, sewing, and tweaking Emacs. Somehow I managed to make more progress on personal projects and do lots of consulting.

2015-03-08a Monthly review - February 2015 -- index card #monthly

Time

Category	Last month (%)	This month (%)	Avg h per week	Delta
Business – Earn	4.1	7.8	13	3.7
Unpaid work	8.5	9.9	17	1.4
Discretionary – Productive	11.9	12.6	21	0.7
Discretionary – Social	0.5	1.2	2	0.7
Discretionary – Family	4.4	5.1	9	0.7
Sleep	35.3	35.3	59	0.0
Personal	15.1	14.7	25	-0.4
Discretionary – Play	3.8	2.8	5	-1.0
Business – Connect	5.4	2.8	5	-2.6
Business – Build	11.1	7.8	13	-3.3

As an experiment, I tried treating consulting as a "dessert" task to encourage me to work on my personal projects. I also stayed late at the office when I happened to have evening get-togethers scheduled downtown. I made decent progress on my other projects, I got more consulting in, and my clients were happy for the help. Still, my personal projects and interests are starting to be more motivating for me, so I think I might be able to rely on their intrinsic motivation soon. =)

This month, I spent some time thinking about clothes, shopping, sewing, and how I can make this experience better. It was a little stressful trying to find clothes for a family event (I ended up going in my office clothes), so I've resolved to try:

shopping more frequently
giving myself permission to spend more money
investing in learning how to sew

So far, so good. I've found a simple pattern for tops and am working on filling my wardrobe with them. Some people like variety. I think I get a kick out of consistency.

I've been cooking a lot too, yay!

I expect next month to focus even more on personal projects. I'd like to:

finish a few more tops in this season's colours
bake a few pies for Pi Day
work on a few personal projects

Blog posts

Sketches