time – A Geeky Gulati

Time Inventory: 1 week in February

After listening to https://www.relay.fm/cortex/44, I decided to do another round of time-tracking. I had done this twice before —

https://geekygulati.com/2012/06/28/where-did-my-time-go/

https://geekygulati.com/2014/06/04/time-use-may-2014/

This time, I used a new tool, https://www.toggl.com/app/timer. More on that below.

Results

My time is evenly spent working, and sleeping, and “everything else”.
Everything else – “entertainment” (youtube, twitter) took the most time.

This is a direct reaction to the political climate right now – this was me staying glued to my versions of news sources, to get a feel for “what’s going on out there”. Not necessarily healthy.

Then Family, and being around other people
Then Admin, which is chores and self-care thing.

Not too bad. The “Entertainment” is too large, but otherwise, this feels solid.

The way that I tracked it this time, if I was driving to work, that was “work” time, but tagged with driving. So, I could narrow down to just the “driving” tag and see where all I was driving on the behalf of:

As expected, most of the driving was to work. My 30 minute commute is represented accurately.
Lots of driving for “social” reasons – to have breakfast or lunch with friends.
Recovery and Teaching are next – also good.
Nevertheless, 9.5 hours in a car during the week. Of those 9.5 hours, 3 hours were logged as “listening to a podcast”.

I don’t always want to listen to a podcast when I’m driving. Sometimes, I prefer silence.

I also spent 11 hours and 13 minutes engaged in “eating”:

Thanks to notes, I can see what I was eating, and who I was eating with.
I spent around 2 hours eating by myself (at my desk, or drive through).
The rest of the time was split between friends, coworker-friends, and my family.

Toggl

I did NOT like it. For the purposes of doing 24 hour coverage, it was NOT easier to use than Eternity (an iPhone App). However, it was definitely better at reporting.

Specific reasons of dislike:

Starting a timer on the phone, then stopping it on a computer – timer kept going on the phone, throwing things off.
Very hard to adjust things AFTER the fact. In Eternity, it has “locked” times so adjusting end of one thing adjusts the start of the other, etc. With a calendar display where i could just slide times around, rather than having to enter every digit. twice.
Gap detection only possible using the website client. And then, when I detect a 6 hour gap from 4 days ago… it took way too many clicks to try to get time entered.

I would say Toggl is more directed at business-type things – not personal enthusiast things. And that’s fine.

Changes to consider for the Future

I need to get my Youtube / Twitter / News intake, more under control.

We might be doing another experiment – getting rid of internet at our house – and I might be downloading “what do I want to watch” to my iPad while at work, and further delaying what I watch.
I think I overkilled with watching Colbert + Noah + the other guy. I think I’ll rank Trevor Noah at the top for me, I don’t need to see all 3 folks’ interpretations of what happened that day.

I have to get exercise back in there somehow. I don’t yet know how. Probably less being social? Combine it with family? Here kid, let me strap you in to my chest and run on a treadmill.
I didn’t do much (any) cooking this week. Previous weeks, I had 6 hours of cooking in there – at least. However, that’s also quality family time for me.
I also need more personal, not-scheduled, do-whatever type time. Places where my creative side can come out. Like writing this blog post.

Good news – I have a week of vacation next week. Help me juggle and resize things and try to come up with a plan.

Time Use May 2014

One of those sanity moments where I look at “what am I doing”, and are my priorities in line. (TL;DR: they are not)

My wife and kid went out of town for a week, so I had the opportunity to schedule myself any way I choose. I have a comparison of “with wife and kid” and “bacheloring it”:

Wife And Kid (Monday-Sunday)

Bacheloring (Tuesday-Saturday)

Ob ser v at io n u s

(observation + obvious; black=both; purple=1; blue=2)

My work hours were more scattered when the wife and kid were away
Work spills over to the weekend if I can’t get all my hours in during the week. And that is what happens when sleep intrudes into work; which is what happens when entertainment intrudes into sleep.
I had more “white space” – time that I’m not doing anything in particular, just being – when the family was away.
I spend a significant amount of time in pink (hanging with wife) – I like this.
I spend a significant amount of time in green (entertainment, hobbies) – I like this.
I do stay up too late doing hobby stuff and watching netflix (entertainment) – at the expense of squeezing sleep.
I spent more time eating when the family was away:

Mostly, I was cooking up (measuring) batches of soylent and grilling

Not So Obvious

The timeline is not zoomed in enough to see some of the small stuff:

I walked the dogs every day while the family was gone. But it only took 15 minutes.
I didn’t get to the gym while they were away. That’s because my gym time and dog feeding and peeing time conflicted.
I spent a lot more time doing errands – cleaning stuff, fixing stuff – while the family was gone.
I did not nap at work while the family was gone.

Soylent: Not So Good News

I bought a week’s supply of PeopleChow 3.01 from Doug, with the intent of living on it while the family was away. I did two trials, with my glucometer:

Trial #1: 1/3 the batch; 100g carb:

before: 89 mm/l
30 minutes after: 138
60 minutes after: 168
120 minutes after: 158

Trial #2: 1/6 the batch, 50g carb:

before: 93
30 minutes after: 158

The goal? My goal? is to be under 120 after 2 hours after a meal. I couldn’t do it – too many carbs.

I tried altering the formula to use less corn flour; the result was unpalatable (puke worthy). I gave up on it.

But what this did was, I started measuring my blood sugar again.

Me: Not So Good News

I’m a lot less able to withstand a carb load than I used to be able to. Or so it seems. Today was 40g of carb in some Indian Lentils:

Before: 110
2 hours after, even with a walk: 158

And, I can feel it. I feel puffy, flabby, out of energy, tired.

The Twin Cycle Hypothesis of Etiology of Type 2 Diabetes

I did some reading to see what’s new these days in diabetes stuff. I came across this article, with this pretty cool picture (I could not find a public link, so this is a screenshot):

In a nutshell, it gives me an answer to “what the heck is going on” – and a glimmer that it gives me is, “loose enough weight, the cycle becomes less worse.” It focuses on some T2 Diabetics who got gastric bypass surgery and radically altered their body fat content and wham! some of the diabetic cycle vanished.

In the past, I had gotten down to 165, which for me is a BMI of about 22. I felt a lot better then, I was running, working out, having a blast. But I did not cease to be diabetic.

Then I saw this line here:

For me a BMI of 19 would be 130 lbs. That’s 50 lbs less than I am right now. 30 lbs less than what I had aspired to get down to at my best. I have to get down there, AND STAY DOWN THERE, because I’m pretty sure that the last bits of fat to get used up are going to be the ones which are the most troublesome. Or, I could continue to be reasonably happy yet declining.

Maybe I didn’t drop enough weight that time?

How Hard should I strive? After all, I could say I’m an old man. I’m past my prime. I’m beyond the life expectancy that humans had in the middle ages…

Bottom Line: I have a Choice to make

My former sponsor’s favorite word – Choices. Ah, the bliss of not knowing you have a choice.

I could make a choice to get healthy again.

Which would mean, I need to put exercise back in my schedule. And logging food.

Which would mean, something has to go.

What Goes?

It won’t be sleep.
It won’t be work – at least, not yet. I’m not independently wealthy yet.
It won’t be [all of] hanging with the wife.
It won’t be Recovery work.
It would have to be entertainment and hobby. There isn’t anything else to let go of.

I’ve been overdoing it. My brain gets so tired, I just want to numb out with mindless TV watching.. or, my brain gets so obsessed, I have to solve this problem now! (3d printing, blender, and shapeways – I’m looking at you).

So, sometime soon, expect that all my 3D printing stuff will come to a stop. Or, it will be relegated to one experiment per weekend (or some other healthy amount). A check at the posting queue for this blog – actually, the queue is empty right now. When I post this post, there are no others in the queue after it.

I guess I’ll write one more post for “Shelving the Hobby” – making a list of the irons I have in the fire, so that I can let them go temporarily. Or not, I can list them here:

I have a solution for Agisoft to Blender to Shapeways which involves decimation down to 500, subsurf, and edge creasing. I have a color print ordered of that.
I have a solution for printing initials cubes without supports; I have to slice it, but basically I print it at a 45 degree angle so that all letters are facing “up” (kinda). I have not actually done this yet. I have ordered a small (20cm) cube from Shapeways to see how well their printers do the job.
I might be doing some silver jewelry via Shapeways involving people’s initials.

Done. Shelved, will post pictures when they arrive.

I think I have a date with a gym tomorrow morning. And if my work hours suffer, well, that’s what Sunday afternoons are for.

Where did my time go?

This week i’ve felt hurried.. it felt like life kept getting in the way, preventing me from working the work hours I should to be working.

I can’t argue with a feeling, so I took an inventory, and mapped it out. With some help from my wife, and a history of text messages, I could mostly put together what was going on. (Harvest, the time keeping app for work, helps)

Inventory Result

The Blue is work. Most of it was Working-At-the-Office (WAO), though some was Working-At-Home.. (WAH).. either in the Basement, or Outside. (Outside = it was a beautiful day)

The Yellow (yellow) is hanging with my spouselet .. which also happens to be very good for me, I enjoy that time immensely. We’ve been watching Season 6 of Doctor Who.

The Orange is hanging out with people – my spouse’s family on Monday, and with a buddy for breakfast on Wednesday. Note: Monday and Tuesday lunches should have been in Orange as well, I’m trying to make it a point to hang with the guys at work.

The Other Warm Color is “stuff I had to do”. Some of it is house hold related stuff – some of it is being of service to other people.

And lastly – there’s Purple, the stuff I do for me. Which includes writing this blog post, and my little jog around the block, and puttering around on whatever I want to do.

Analysis

Monday was bleah. I had a family thing to go to, didn’t get my hours in.

Tuesday, I tried to catch up. It was fairly training. Wife and I recovered it well though.

Wednesday was shot – My son needed some assistance with homework, so there was some time lost to transit. The good news there is, I could work from home – I multitasked – I had the dogs out, and the cat out, as I worked from my laptop. It feels good to crittersit the critters and spend a little time with them.

What’s the problem? What’s missing? What needs to change?

I find myself lagging behind in my work hours and spending Friday, the day when I get 4 hours to work on anything I want (including this blog) — I spend it on catching up the hours I didn’t get done earlier in the week.

What causes this lag? Its usually “household” things. Sometimes its “people” things. Both of those are important, and they’re not going to budge.

The good news is, the days that I don’t have “life” going on, I can easily stay at work to get caught up. Or even work from home to get caught up. (I find that I can only work from home when I’m alone there – otherwise, my family drags me into their lives). If I stay extra at work, I can usually put a workout in there as well.

Other Optimizations

I might try sleeping in till 7am, and not tossing and turning for an hour.

As mentioned earlier, I would like to add more exercise. I’m not sure where – the current idea is, on days that “life” isn’t going on, work late, and add in a jog there.

Random thoughts: The YMCA is on my way to/from work, but the time needed after a workout to take a shower is a detriment; yet my chances this week of doing something on the way home .. there was only Tuesday. I did jog on Tuesday. So.. mission successful? Operating as designed? Maybe the Late Night Jog is the best way to go, i used to jog at about 10pm or so, when I first started jogging. After dinner, even, help with absorbing all those calories (diabetes related).

The Big Picture

I’m not seeing a lot of wasted time in there.. hours spent in front of a TV, flipping channels.

I am operating at 90% capacity, easily – with the remaining 10% necessary for buffer, sanity. The occasional breaks – in white, with question marks – are signs of sanity, not places to cram more stuff in.

As a very wise person once told me – as my life progresses, I am going to find more and more good stuff that doesn’t fit.

What If I Were Retired

If I were retired, how would the ingredients change?

I suspect there would be a lot more puttering, and helping, and hanging with people going on. And probably a lot less “creating” things (my current work).