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I logged my activities at 15-minute intervals for the whole year

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Re: I logged my activities at 15-minute intervals for the whole year

#71

Post by hobofan »

Draiken wrote: post #56
dnautics wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the article? "I work less than I thought I did and that's ok"

I did. But it also mentions procrastination as a -4 point and sleep as a 0. And my sentiment is also from reading some of the comments here. So many people obsessed with productivity. Some have a clear reason to do so, but I fear many do it because of outside pressures, or never even thought about it.

I don't think there is necessarily anything wrong with that scoring.

Sleeping is basically neutral (maybe it should give 0.5 points instead or something small that doesn't dilute the rest of the scoring system).

I'd also score procrastination negatively even if you are not obsessed with productivity. Procrastination can easily cause negative feelings (and for me is probably one of the biggest sources for them) and can be viewed as a separate thing as dedicated downtime.

Re: I logged my activities at 15-minute intervals for the whole year

#72

Post by dnautics »

m000 wrote: post #61
dnautics wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the article? "I work less than I thought I did and that's ok"

This sentence is exactly the problem. Everything is focused around work and productivity. So much, that you have to pat yourself on the back when find out your work throughput was less than what you thought it was. Why do we read about "I work less than I thought I did and that's ok" and not e.g. "I spent more time with my family than I thought I did, and that's great"?

same article says "I spent more time reading than I thought I did, and it's great"

Re: I logged my activities at 15-minute intervals for the whole year

#73

Post by javajosh »

Draiken wrote: post #49

I am always baffled how sad this extreme focus into productivity makes me. If you discovered you were going to die in a year, would you continue to spend all your time being "productive"? I figure almost everyone would shift all their focus on doing things that "really matter". Sadly I believe the world managed to make us feel guilty when we're not doing something that makes someone else rich (majority of jobs). I'm…

I can be pessimistic, too, but I had a different reaction. The OP's post is about measuring a life according to behaviors (activities) and with that data the OP is thinking out loud about how he wants to change things. This is an artifact that describes an analytical mind observing and addressing the daily animal/mind hybrid that actually lives in and experiences the world.

I tend to agree that "productivity" is an unhealthy obsession linked to vain status chasing, and (among many circles) a vaguely sinister implication. It is too often used as a euphamistic criticism by employers who inevitably want more out of the workers. Produce or die is the default law of the capitalist jungle, so the "productivity number" is the number that a system would use to fire you.

But the OP's situation is quite different. There is no misalignment between "the boss" (his current analytical mind) and "the worker" (the daily mind/body cyborg beast). The boss really wants the best for the worker; the worker really wants to do his best for the boss. (And to me it seems like the boss has his priorities straight, and is doing right by his worker with this analysis and recommendations).

Re: I logged my activities at 15-minute intervals for the whole year

#75

Post by poulsbohemian »

Y’know, do whatever works for you, but this kind of relentless focus on time management feels like it runs exactly the opposite of what I want in my life. Meaning, when I was younger I could focus on problems for long chunks of time. As I’ve gotten older and had to deal with work stress, kid stress, life stress, dozens of devices all pinging me with notifications, people demanding my attention constantly... the truth is I can barely make it 15 minutes without someone or something interrupting me. I had this jerk client for a brief while - he was on monthly retainer, but wanted this kind of minute-by-minute granularity of tracking my time. It was the kind of thing that finally put me over the edge against this kind of relentless optimization because all it was doing was wasting my time tracking time rather than actually doing the bloody work. So hey, if tracking your life in 15 minute increments gives you what you need, great, but I personally am working on how to build long increments of time with greater focus.

Re: I logged my activities at 15-minute intervals for the whole year

#76

Post by polote »

barrucadu wrote: post #69
polote wrote: post #42

Whoaa, amazing, I've been doing the same during the last 5 years, but I use an easier setup, I use an app, so I just have to click on buttons at the end of each activity. > Stay tuned to learn how do different activities influence my mood I only started doing that this year, and I'm pissed off I didn't start doing it earlier, as that's where you can start doing correlation on your life and your activities. If some pe…

How consistent do you manage to be with your mood tracking? During the summer of 2019 I was thinking about doing that, but never got started. Then autumn of 2019 rolled around and my mood shot up dramatically, I didn't realise just how dramatically the heat was affecting my mood. So if I had started when I had the idea, that would have been the neutral point, and I'd have had ~6 months of good days after that.

I have two mood tracking points per day, one when waking up when when going to sleep. So if it is part of your routine it is very easy to do. Then you must well define your scale if your want to be consistent over time

Re: I logged my activities at 15-minute intervals for the whole year

#77

Post by laumars »

maxerickson wrote: post #22
jedberg wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny you mention that. Because of the pandemic, a lot of people had to drop their in home help. Only the richest of the rich, who had in-home help that lives with them, were able to keep using in-home help.

Also people who decided not to worry about the consequences of having someone coming in and out of their home. Seems to be lots of them really.

In the U.K. the government guidelines have been that they’re still allowed to work. And given the kind of contracts many of them are on, if they don’t come in they don’t get paid. So it really puts added pressure on everyone to work.

Re: I logged my activities at 15-minute intervals for the whole year

#78

Post by remirk »

appletrotter wrote: post #68
ketanmaheshwari wrote: post #38

Thank you for the post. I did something similar -- I logged the activities on the world's largest supercomputer (that I have access to) every hour throughout the year 2020. I logged information such as: -- Who is logged in (the output of w command) -- What processes are running and the overall system load (top and ps aux) -- What is the state of memory and disk -- What is the state of job scheduler I have the data no…

Not quite the world's largest supercomputer, huh?

'The world' is relative. My world is different than yours.

Re: I logged my activities at 15-minute intervals for the whole year

#79

Post by polote »

Draiken wrote: post #49

I am always baffled how sad this extreme focus into productivity makes me. If you discovered you were going to die in a year, would you continue to spend all your time being "productive"? I figure almost everyone would shift all their focus on doing things that "really matter". Sadly I believe the world managed to make us feel guilty when we're not doing something that makes someone else rich (majority of jobs). I'm…

Well, the answer is easy. We are all different.

We all have one only life, some people prefer to spend it watching football, some being productive, some helping others, and some ...

Of course you will also find people who are not happy at the life they have, and trying to live the life of others. But you will also find people being happy doing things that make other people sad.

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