Accountability Report December 2014

It would have been nice to post a yearly report for the whole of 2014, but because I started logging my time and working on habits in August, I don't have enough data to report on 2014 as a whole. To learn more about this habit forming of mine, please take a look at my previous posts. The idea is that I am shaping my life by developing habits that I consider essential for good living.

In December I was focusing on the habit of taking care of my money matters: spending, savings, investments, insurances, mortgage, etc. So each day I would spend at least ten minutes to work on these. Even though I skipped 2 days of the habit, I am happy with the results: I've put some 21 hours of effort into this with good results! I am planning to continue this habit in the months to come.

In January I'll be focusing on meditation and relationships, with a smaller side habit of mindful flossing in the morning after brushing my teeth.

My stats for December are as follows:

Wake-up time (average): 06:42 a.m., more than 1 hour later than in November :( I can rationalize by saying that I always sleep longer in the winter and maybe I just need more sleep during these dark months, but it would be nice if I could still get up early and use the productive morning hours to the fullest.

Sleeping time (average): 08:50 hours a day, 1.5 hours longer than in November.

Diary: 11:00 hours, again less than in the previous months

Meditation: 11:20 hours, just 20 min less than in November!

Work (net time): 129 hours, not bad considering 40 holiday hours and a professional exam study I did, including the exam itself. And yes I can now proudly call myself (for the second time now) Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer in Web Applications:)

Family: 29:00 hours, which much less than in November!

Study (including French language, Programming, Entrepreneurship, Windows Azure, etc): 82:25 hours, which is 20 hours up from November

Transportation (mostly bike commute to work): 15:25 hours, which is significantly less than the 23:50 hours in September, mostly because of the many holidays and working at home.

Social media: 08:30 hours, not too bad, one hour up from November.

Reading (excl. reading on holiday): 13:05, more than twice as much as in November!

Friends: 52:10, again more than twice as much as in November! We had many friends visiting, and we went visiting friends ourselves.

House (working on and around the house): 10:20 hours, a bit more than in November.

Community service (volunteering at school, with the neighborhood watch, and some work for the Russian Children's Theater website): 19:50 hours. again more twice as much as in November!

Sport: 15:01 hours (1/3 less than the 22 hours in November), including:

• Biking: 133 km, 06:32 hours vs 212 km, 09:42 hours in November
• Running: 50 km, 05:45 hours vs 84.93 km in 09:51 in November
• Running with Anne Sophie: 7,04 km in 01:16 hours vs 8.42 km in 01:37 hours in November
• Circuit training: 1:30 hours vs 5:50 hours in November!
• Soccer: 0 hours

Again a very good month!

Accountability Report November 2014

As you probably already know from my previous posts on this subject, I am working daily on developing a number of habits to help me live a productive and meaningful life I so much want. It's time to account for the month November, in which I focused on the habits of meditation and mindful relationships. The latter consisted in spending at least 10 minutes a day with my wife Luda to talk and listen to each other about the things that are important to us. Surprisingly, this did not turn out so easy, especially because of our busy schedule and Anne Sophie demanding attention.

Out of the 30 days in November, we only did this on 17 occasions for a total of some 7 hours. Perhaps somewhat disappointing, but we are determined to work on this!

According to my records, I just did a few mindful productivity sessions in October, so there is nothing to boast about. On the other hand, I spent a lot of time with my family, rested well and got a lot of inspiration from travelling, which is great!

In December I am working on general habit skills, focusing on the habit of spending a few minutes a day to check on my finances (like savings, investments, mortgage, insurances, etc).

My stats for November are as follows:

Wake-up time (average): 05:38 a.m., not too bad for a dark month like November!

Sleeping time (average): 07:12 hours a day, comparable to September.

Diary: 12:40 hours, again less than in October and September

Meditation: 11:40 hours, way better than 3:30 hours in October, and somewhat better than the 10:50 hours in September! My secret is that I started using Headspace for my meditations, and it works out fine for me!

Work (net time): 147:05 hours, pretty much in line with my 40 hours work week plus some overhead.

Family: 60:25 hours, which is good!

Study (including French language, Programming, Erich Fromm, etc): 60:00 hours

Transportation (mostly bike commute to work): 23:50, comparable to the 24:53 hours in September.

Social media: 07:20 hours, not too bad!

Reading (excl. reading on holiday): 05:25, somewhat disappointing :)

Friends: 18:55, less than in October, but much more than in September! This includes writing to friends, talking to them on the phone or via skype, meeting them in person, doing something for them.

House (working on and around the house): 09:55 hours

Community service (volunteering at school and with the neighborhood watch): 09:10 hours. more than twice as much as in October!

Sport: 22:10 hours (up from from 17:30 in October), including:

• Biking: 212 km, 09:42 hours vs 182km in 08:15 hours in October!
• Running: 84.93 km in 09:51 vs 31.2 km, 03:25 hours in October!
• Running with Anne Sophie: 8.42 km in 01:37 hours
• Circuit training: 5:50 hours vs 02:00 hours in October!
• Soccer: 0 hours

All in all a very good month!

Accountability Report October 2014

As I wrote in my previous post, for a couple of months now I've been working daily on developing a number of habits to help me live a productive and meaningful life I so much want. In October, in addition to early rising, meditation and diary writing, which have become an indispensable part of my daily routine, I tried to focus on the habit of mindful productivity, which consists in spending 10 minutes each day writing down my 3 Most Important Tasks for the day and focusing on my true intention regarding these tasks.

Well, the habit didn't work out as I wanted. I skipped a few days, and then we were on holiday in Provence, Southern France, which was a wonderful experience, but completely disrupted my habits :)

According to my records, I just did a few mindful productivity sessions in October, so there is nothing to boast about. On the other hand, I spent a lot of time with my family, rested well and got a lot of inspiration from travelling, which is great!

In November I'll keep working on mindful productivity and will add a new habit: mindful relationships (with Luda)!

Here are my stats for October:

Wake-up time (average): 06:30 a.m., way up from 05:24 in September

Sleeping time (average): 08:17 hours a day, again way up from 07:11 hours in September, which means I was sleeping a whole hour longer on an average day in October compared to September!

Diary: 13:45 hours, down from 16:25 hours in September

Meditation: 3:30 hours, way below the 10:50 hours in September :( In October, I did almost no body scan meditations that tend to be a lot longer than my sitting meditations. My October average is thus 7 minutes a day.

Work (net time): 106:40 hours, down from 156:15 in September. This is because of my holiday and a 3-day sick leave.

Family: 150:40 hours, which is a lot more than the 65:50 hours in September. Most of my time on holiday I logged as Family Time

Transportation (excluding driving to, in and from France): 13:45 hours, way less than the 24:53 hours in September.

Social media: 06:35, much less than 21:08 in September.

Reading (excl. reading on holiday): 07:55, down from 14:35 in September.

Friends: 24:55 as compared to 12:55 in September! This includes writing to friends, talking to them on the phone or via skype, meeting them in person, doing something for them.

House (working on and around the house): 28:00 hours

Community service (volunteering at school and with the neighborhood watch): 04:15 hours

Sport: 17:30 hours (down from 25:47 in September), including:

• Biking: 182 km, 08:15 hours
• Running: 31.2 km, 03:25 hours
• Circuit training: 02:00
• Soccer: 01:30

Accountability Report September 2014

As of August, I have embarked on developing habits. My motivation is to live the life I want and love. In this I follow a plan developed by Leo Babauta in his blog Zen Habits and in his Sea Change program.

I've been following Leo's blog for many years and I finally decided to really start working systematically on my habits. In August, I started with a beginner's program, whereby each day I would just write down one Most Important Task for the day. This worked out quite nicely.

In September I was working on 3 habits simultaneously: early rising, meditation and diary writing. This also went quite fine. As a form of accountability, I was reporting my progress daily in my accountability group (all Russian speakers!) and on Facebook.

It’s time to make up a detailed summary. I can do this now, because my diary habit consisted of, among other things, logging how much time I was spending on various activities. So here we go:

Wake-up time (average): 05:24 hours
So on the average I was waking up between 5 and 5:30, which is good. For the next month, I’ll try to get the average below 5:15

Diary: 16:25 hours
On average this amounts to a bit more than 30 minutes per day. It looks like I spent one whole day (waking hours) on logging my activities and writing diary entries.

Meditation: 10:50
So, I meditated 20 minutes per day on average. My meditations consist of longer body scans (some 30 min) and shorter sitting meditations (5 to 20 minutes)

Some other stats:

Work (net time): 156:15
Family: 65:50
Sport: 25:47
- Biking: 281 km, 14 hours
- Running: 41 km, 5 hours
- Circuit training: 02:30
- Soccer: 7 hours
Transportation: 24:53
Social media: 21:08
Reading: 14:35
Friends: 12:55

It would be interesting to compare October’s results to those of September!