Thirty minutes at a time

One of the things I wonder about at the end of the day is just where my day went. I mean, I'm usually aware of every moment of the day, but at the end, I look back with confusion at how short the day was and, sometimes worse, how little I managed to accomplish.

Lately, I've been keeping track of what I eat, when I eat, my exercise: how long and what kind, my car mileage, what I spend including what kind of payment and where I spent the money, and, well, yeah, when I defecate or urinate (such big words for poop and pee!). That last one is embarrassing, but it has revealed interesting information, so I keep doing it.

In an effort to make that "I can't believe Kitt is tracking all of that information" process harder, er, more useful, I decided today to start tracking what I was doing every 30 minutes. I've wanted to do this for a while as a way to gain awareness of my day and mindfulness over my actions. I saw a website where a guy did this, every hour on the hour, and recorded it online. I found that thought fascinating and wanted to try it, but struggled over how to trigger the reminder to stop, record and reflect. That last point is important: looking backward doesn't do any good if you don't use that view to help you moving forward. So, along with recording what I was doing, I wanted to also take a moment to reflect on what I would do in the upcoming 30 minutes, and was it the best thing for me to be doing with that time.

After day one, I have to say, the results have been enlightening, if not inspiring.

08:00 out of bed 
08:30 trying to clear Firefox tabs 
09:00 archving and clearing Firefox tabs 
09:30 reading "drupal modern theming" presentation, thinking about my projects
10:00 getting dressed
10:30 driving to t-mobile store
11:00 waiting in the t-mobile store for bill corrections
11:30 driving to warren's
12:00 leaving post office
12:30 eating lunch
13:00 talking to house contractor
13:30 driving to keith and katie's
14:00
14:30 remembered alarm, checking email
15:00 working on openphoto twitter login, distracted by twitter
15:30 openphoto login, worried about task list fragmentation
16:00 reading IRC, openphoto twitter WSOD issues
16:30 closing computer, chatting with Alex about his day
17:00 finished washing dishes
17:30 making dinner
18:00 sitting on couch, eating dinner
18:30 watching house, IMing Snook
19:00 "watching" house, working on openphoto, still trying to solve problem "the right way"
19:30 ordering a book from Amazon
20:00 couch, giving up on solving openphoto issue "right way"
20:30 couch, putzing
21:00 couch, openphoto, Snook, twitter, yeah
21:30 happy openphoto twitter login done
22:00 prep for bed
22:30 writing emails
23:00 asleep

Number one lesson learned?

I sit too much.

What else did I learn?

I spent far too much time trying to solve the OpenPhoto twitter login issue "the right way." I wanted to solve the bug, rather than just find a fix that would work for me. Part of me was frustrated by the Drupal module's owner saying, "well, this is another modules problem, so I'm just going to close this bug report," and not actually fixing the problem. I hopped on my high horse to FIX. THAT. BUG. DAMMIT.

After a while, i realized I didn't really have the correct set up to track down the problem, and you know what? (wow, am I embarrassed to admit this) commenting out the offending code solved the problem. Even when I triggered the use case where the offending code would trigger, it didn't cause problems, so I'm not 100% my solution isn't correct. It does feel wrong.

Yesterday was also odd in that it was an errand day. I was okay with t-mobile taking more than an hour of my time, which is odd for me, to be okay with waiting. Signs of maturity? How about increased mindfullness and peace with myself? Regardless, waiting isn't as much of a problem for me as it was before.

Not sure how long I'll keep the 30 minute reminders going. My alarm is the Despicable Me Whaaaaaat? that, well, as Kris says, is too cute to ignore. It is delightfully amusing.

So cute that I might need to switch to 15 minute increments.

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