Sunday, February 17, 2013

Update: My 100 day challenge

Yes, that is what I have decided to call my experiment from a month ago. I've kept up with it, and in the first few days I realized there were several major problems with the spreadsheet. First of all, my binary system did not track how much time I put into each topic. I then changed the system, so that less than 15 minutes of time equated to 1 point, greater than 15 minutes but less than 45 minutes equaled 2 points, and finally, greater than 45 minutes was equal to 3 points.
Granted, less than fifteen minutes seems practically pointless, but I wanted to reward myself for the act of remembering to do something, not for doing a substantial amount of something. I did also want to be able to distinguish between the two (doing something for five minutes versus fifty,) so I wasn't tempted to just do something for five minutes, because I'd gotten a point for it. The maximum number of points I can possibly obtain in a day (considering that I need to eat, sleep, go to class, etc) is about 36. So far, the highest I've gotten is a 20.

This system seems to be working for me. I'm remembering to use it every day, and it's helping me remember what I've been doing or not doing pretty accurately. Speaking of which, I exercise much less than I thought I did, and do a lot more work (in general) than I thought I did.

This data will serve as my general set point when I start experimenting with pomodoro and other productivity techniques, to see if I perform better when using them.

Oh, and why call it 100 day challenge? Because I committed on keeping up with this spreadsheet for at least 100 days.