March 2020 Review

Well… we all know what happened in March, but here’s some highlights about me.

The Highlights

• I started working from home on Thursday, March 12th. My company closed the office on Monday, March 16th.
• I’ve been playing a lot of video games… Okay, that’s typical, but *even more* video games. Like Animal Crossing, which was released for Switch this month!
• I started tagging days I’m forced to stay home due to COVID-19 in Exist. By April’s review we’ll see if there are any correlations to learn from there.
• I don’t know what else to say about March.

Productivity

So, working from home brought some major shifts here. The big drop in productivity pulse reflects how more easily derailed I am from each task, while the average productive time increasing tells me I’m spending more time on my computer overall. I’m curious if this trend will continue, or start to reverse as working from home becomes more familiar.

• Productivity pulse of 70 (-7)
• Met All Productive Time goal 15/22 days
• Average 5h 41m (+41m) productive time per day

RescueTime Top 5 Categories:

1. Software Development (34%)
2. Communication & Scheduling (30%)
3. Business (12%)
4. Utilities (7%)
5. Social Networking (4%)

Health

Surprising no one, working form home and being highly discouraged to go outside at all has led to a massive drop in steps per day. Losing my commute has, so far, led to a little extra sleep so that’s nice. Not having free coffee at my disposal like I do at the office has me drinking a little less of it, and since I can’t go anywhere to spend money I’m spending less of it.

• Average of 4,376 steps / day (-49.8%)
• Average of 2,204 calories / day (-7.9%)
• Average of 7 hours 43 minutes of sleep / night (+2.7%)
• Average weight of 135.3 lbs (-0.7%)
• Average body fat percentage of 9.1% (+2.2%)
• Average of 212mg of caffeine / day (-9.8%)
• I spent 79.6% of my income¹

Interesting Correlations

Once again publishing this one too late for correlations to pertain to now (though, given the state of, well, everything right now I’m not feeling too bad about it).

Goal Updates

1. Europe Trip

After seeing how the COVID-19 situation unfolded through March, and shows no signs of slowing down, I decided to cancel my plans to travel to Europe this year. Even if this somehow clears up in time for me to still go in September or October as planned, I don’t believe it will do so far enough in advance for me to reasonably plan around it. Europe will just have to wait for 2021.

2. Healthy Habits

Yoga classes: 0

Runs: 0

Average daily fiber: 24.4g / 24g (+29.8%)

I have tried yoga classes at home before in the past and simply couldn’t motivate myself to do it, so for the time being those are dropping off. The races I had signed up for so far this year have all been cancelled, so I’m not currently training for anything. I live in a neighborhood that’s being hit particularly hard by this outbreak, so any venturing outside is only for absolutely essential things like groceries. Since starting my quarantine on the 12th, I went outside just twice during the entire month of March. I have, however, started eating more oatmeal and apples, both very good sources of fiber so that goal has been easier. I have to rethink what “healthy habits” means during a global pandemic. Didn’t see that one coming at all.

3. Read 20 Books

I made decent progress on a novel but didn’t finish it so I’m not yet writing it down. Despite having nowhere to go, being motivated to read at the end of the day has been a struggle so I’m not making much progress here either.

4. Non-work code projects

No progress - again, it’s proven challenging enough to get through a full work day at the moment. My non-work time is currently better spent on less mentally taxing activities.

¹Monthly spending is calculated as expenses, divided by income, minus 4%. The 4% reflects my 401k savings, which never arrives as income in Mint. This is to help me better estimate what my overall savings rate is.