May 2018 Review

Took me a while to get around to this this month, so it’s a bit brief, but here we go:

Productivity

Productivity is mostly flat, though a bit less consistent. I met my productive time goal less often, but when I did meet it, I killed it, pushing my average productive time per day up by just a couple minutes.

• Productivity pulse of 74 (+0)
• Met All Productive Time goal 13/22 days
• Average 5h 11m (+2m) productive time per day

RescueTime Top 5 Categories:

1. Software Development (37%)
2. Communication & Scheduling (28%)
3. Social Networking (10%)
4. Business (9%)
5. Utilities (5%)

Correlations:

Tuesday was once again my most productive day. Seems like I’ve leveled out a bit too, since Friday is now my most distracted day over Wednesday. Works for me!

• I’m more productive on Tuesdays (23%) and log more distracting time on Fridays (14%)
• I consume more calories on Fridays (38%)
• I receive more emails on Mondays (33%)

Health

Big drop in average sleep this month, and it felt like it.

• Average of 8,445 steps / day (+0.4%)
• Average of 2,137 calories / day (-2.2%)
• Average of 6h 48minutes of sleep / night (-4.4%)
• Average weight of 139.3lbs (-0.5%)
• Average body fat percentage of 11.4% (+0%)
• I spent 90.9% of my income

Correlations:

Two things clearly correlate to having a better day: getting sleep, and eating more. Makes sense. And, looks like my Friday distraction of choice is Twitter.

• I tweet more on Fridays (21%) and track “coffee” more on Thursdays (23%)
• I track “coffee” more when I spend less time asleep (33%)
• I have more great days when I spend more time sleep (17%)
• I have a better day when I eat more (19%)

May’s Focus

1. Increase automatic savings transfers to 12.5% of my income

Making this switch was pretty painless. It looks weird seeing that I spent 90% of my income, but savings transfers are 12.5%, except these numbers come from Mint, which tracks my retirement savings transfers as “expenses” so the portion I’m saving for retirement is technically money “spent” rather than saved. Bit odd, but increasing the automatic transfers a little didn’t have a huge impact on my overall budget, which was nice.

2. Try a physical planner

I used my planner a little bit after getting it in the second half of the month. I’m not sure I checked in enough to really get a feel for it - probably because it’s lived in my work bag. I need to get in the habit of checking it, so that’s on my list to tackle for June.

3. Write my new site content (for real)

Still didn’t do this, despite the big note on my computer to do it. I’m going to drop it from the focus goals for this month, because this obviously isn’t helping, but it’s been in the back of my mind since January. It’ll happen some day, but I’ll stop harping on about it.

June’s Focus

Now that so much of the month has passed it’s tough to figure out something new to focus on so I’m picking just two things for the month.

1. Find a way to pay down my debt faster

I’ve been thinking about switching payment plans on my federal student loans, rather than put more money into savings even faster. After a quick investigation, it looks like I can switch to a payment plan that will just over double my monthly minimum, but pay off the loans by 2028 instead of 2041 and save me over $17,000 in interest. So, uh, time to figure out how to adjust the budget.

2. Complete the exercises in my planner

One of the benefits of Passion Planner I ordered is that it contains prompts to help guide you to meet your goals. I have not yet sat down to complete the exercises, so in the interest of making better use of the planner I want to actually follow its prompts to hopefully set me up to better use it starting in July. This will be good, because July - December is 6 months so that gives me an even half-year to start taking it more seriously.