March 2018 Review

Not a whole lot noteworthy happening in March, but a pretty good month overall.

Productivity

Small drop in productivity this month, but I think last month just had a nice boost after I got back from my vacation so I’m not looking too much into it.

• Productivity pulse of 75 (-2)
• Met All Productive Time goal 14/22 days
• Average 5h 20m (-9m) productive time per day

RescueTime Top 5 Categories:

1. Software Development (38%)
2. Communication & Scheduling (26%)
3. Social Networking (9%)
4. Utilities (7%)
5. Business (7%)

Correlations:

Bit of a flip flop on the timing of my productivity - Wednesday is still my most distracted day, but instead of being most productive on Thursdays, I was most productive on Tuesdays - odd. As my office has a keg, I tend to celebrate Fridays with a couple beers at work, which easily adds a lot of calories so I’m not too surprised by that correlation surfacing. Monday is still an email-heavy day.

• I’m more productive on Tuesdays (22%) and log more distracting time on Wednesdays (20%)
• I consume more calories on Fridays (21%)
• I receive more emails on Mondays (37%)

Health

Big drop in steps, back towards a more typical level. Happy to see I got a bit more sleep, and super happy that I had the self control to save most of my tax return and not spend much of my income this month. I’ve finally replenished my savings to where they were before I moved to NYC!

• Average of 7,217 steps / day (-26%)
• Average of 2,095 calories / day (+1.6%)
• Average of 7h 11minutes of sleep / night (+0.9%)
• Average weight of 139.9lbs (-1.2%)
• Average body fat percentage of 11.2% (-4.3%)
• I spent 77.1% of my income (yay!)

Correlations:

Slight weakening of the great day / sleep correlation. Likely due to getting more sleep in general. Slight increase in correlation of less sleep and coffee - I’d like to start tracking how many coffees I have, but at the moment Exist doesn’t provide too clean a way of doing this (but I’ve heard it’s something they’re considering, fingers crossed!).

Tweeting more is possible due to the fact that I tend to tweet when I take breaks at work, but also potentially because I tend to tweet complaints about things and I could be crabbier when I’m tired.

• I tweet more when I spend less time asleep (29%)
• I track “coffee” more when I spend less time asleep (38%)
• I have more great days when I spend more time sleep (20%)
• I have a better day when I eat more (12%)

March’s Focus

1. Publish my new website

I did not get around to doing this (yet again), which I am slightly disappointed about.

2. Schedule time to watch Layout Land

I did put the time on my calendar, and this did help remind me to watch it. I did, however, not manage it every day. If I arrived even 10 minutes later to work than usual, this tended to fall off. Overall I managed to watch it about half the time I had scheduled. I’ve removed it from my calendar for April, but I would like to continue watching the videos as they are extremely informative.

3. Increase automatic savings transfers to 10% of my income

I did this! I made the adjustments after some of them took place, however, so I didn’t actually budget the full month with the assumption that 10% was going directly to savings. I received my tax return, however, most of which I put directly into savings, so I managed to save well over 10% of my income this month, but I’m considering that an anomaly for now. I will not yet be increasing the automatic deposits again so I can go through a full month with the increases I made mid-March.

April’s Focus

1. Have fun on my birthday

I turn 25 this year which is a big milestone, I think. I don’t have any big plans by any means but I hope I have a good time.

2. Draft the actual content for my new website

I’ve been saying I’m going to publish it since the beginning of the year, and while my first iteration of the new design is built, it still has fake content. Maybe just committing to drafting the actual content will get me a step closer to actually publishing it.

3. Replace my iPad

Noted in my February review was that on my trip to San Francisco my group’s rental van was broken into and my iPad was stolen. I’m hoping I can fit it in my budget (with the help of some of my family as a birthday present!), this month to buy a new iPad. Apple also helpfully released a new iPad a few weeks ago, so the timing feels right.

April is a month of small, achievable goals. Sometimes, all you need is a small victory for your birthday!