Self Destructive Measurement

March 31, 2010 under Uncategorized

Call it quantum, if you like.

Back when I measured my week’s worth of time, I kept a little notebook in my pocket. Coil notebooks are handy – if you have a short little pencil stub it fits nicely within the coil .

Having pencil and paper everywhere is a good thing.

I doubt I filled more than a doublesided sheet per day. It wasn’t a lot of writing. But it was a fair amount of typing up. About an hour of my day was hijacked by measurement overhead.

This is self destructive, intrusive, measurement; measuring my day in some way altered it. The measurements were corrupted by the act of measuring.

So my time measurements were flawed; this highlights a bigger problem.

Time is a relatively poor approximation of what I really wanted to measure that week.

A far better indicator would have been thought. I would love to have a breakdown of my thought-space for a week. My physical activity is some indicator of where my life is spent, but where my mind wanders is a far more truthful reflection of where I am at a given moment.

The problem, is that if measuring physical activity is marginally self-destructive, attempting to measure thought is far, far worse.

Even measuring my physical activities encroached severely on my thinking; I can’t imagine what trying to track my thinking would do.

Chances are, I can’t do it. Chances are, that’s a good thing, because it smacks a trifle obsessive to me.

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Is time friendly?

March 29, 2010 under Uncategorized

Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. — Ephesians 5:15-16 (NIV)

May the Almighty and merciful Lord grant unto you pardon and remission of all your sins, time for amendment of life, and the grace and comfort of the Holy Spirit. — Order of Compline

I’ve always had a neutral view of time; I’ve never thought it either malicious or compassionate.  I remember reading that passage in Ephesians and being taken aback. I was shocked; I had never heard someone call the days evil.

Time is of course, measured only by events – by those things which we put inside it. A unit of time is the motion of a planet; inside a watch, it is an oscillation of a quartz crystal.

A good day is a day that we stock with good activities; an evil day must then be one stocked with evil things.

A while back, I obsessively logged my time for a week straight, tracking my activities at 15 minute intervals. I wanted some sense of where my time was spent; I wanted some sense of where my life was being spent. Was it good or evil?

In Compline (nightly prayers), the prayer is for more time; and the particular nature of this time is that it is filled with amendment of life.

If Ephesians is warning us that the world is filling its days such that they are evil, Compline is reminding us that it is *our* role to fill them with something of a different nature entirely.

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Sunday log is done and dusted

February 8, 2010 under Uncategorized

And visible here.

Confession time – it’s really bad. The afternoon suffered greatly from my Saturday syndrome. When I’m mucking about I’m not as task oriented and I don’t keep as detailed track in my notebook. Then when I look over my time log it’s sketchy. The blocks of time are, I think, pretty accurate, but they weren’t all written down.

The one thing that time logging doesn’t measure well is quality. There’s a lot of work going on in the Sunday log, but it’s not all high quality work. The fact is,  I ran films continuously in the background. This is handy for films with a lot of dead time – you can tune in just for the good bits, and then get back to work when the film slows down.

But it does decrease the quality of the work experience.

If it wasn’t 3:30 in the morning I’d give some analysis.

I guess the immediate lesson is that tracking time doesn’t automatically help me manage it.

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Saturday Log is Up

February 7, 2010 under Uncategorized

All week I was somewhat worried about my Saturday. Would I have the strength of character to do what I usually do – to waste the copious amounts of time I usually waste?

As it turns out, I needn’t have worried.

My day was pretty much the usual Saturday, with some intervention of work. I was also really bad at logging today, because I got distracted by long periods of spending time on the internet. So while the times are pretty accurate, the specificity is lacking.

For example,  I know my mother called while I was working, but I can’t for the life of me remember when.

Good comments on Friday’s post, by the way. Y’all done good, folks!

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Friday log is up

February 6, 2010 under personalinthepubliceye

Nothing too special about it.

A. Lurkar rightly raised the issue that I haven’t yet protected my schedule from being indexed by the search engines and other web-crawlers. It’s possible that my week of Feb 01-07 will live on the internet forever.

I’m just not sure what kind of trouble this could cause me. There’s nothing particularly incriminating going on this week. I’m really struggling to figure out how someone could use this schedule to hurt me.

The people who could hurt me most, of course, are the people near to me – who know me. They’re the ones who have additional information which could give the schedule meaning.

For example, if Shaun knew I told Brad that I offered to help Brad with some programming stuff, he could tip Brad off that my Friday night was really being spent watching 80s television and playing Dragon Age.

There might be a possibility for someone to use this schedule to hurt me, but they’d better do it quick. The problem is, my schedule is dynamic. This week’s schedule is not a reliable indicator for future schedules – things change. If someone really wants to make my life miserable, they better do it quick.

The threat of data living on forever isn’t terrifying in this case, because if my schedule is findable in five years, it will be, well… It will be a trifle out of date.

Possibly the greatest real risk is that someone will find my schedule and judge me by it. What does it say about me? Does it say good things or bad things?

Perhaps I should put a little blurb up at the top which reminds everyone the diligence and strength of character required to log obsessively for a week. And then see if I can make the front page of reddit.

I dunno.

What do you think? If you click on the little “comment” link, you can let me know what your thoughts are.

Cheers.

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Thursday put to bed

February 5, 2010 under personalinthepubliceye

The log is up.

Not much to see on a Thursday, I’m afraid – Work – Clean – Cook – Bible Study – Blogging – Bed.

The response to this little jaunt has been positive from all manner of folks. And my Mom hasn’t nagged me yet although she’s been on poor Shaun’s case.

Maybe come end of the week I’ll have some breakdowns and analysis. There are more lessons to learn, but not in my current state of tired.

Cheers.

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Business as Usual

February 4, 2010 under personalinthepubliceye

Wednesday log is up.

Don’t forget to pay Shaun a visit!

Poor time-tracking during work hours today. I didn’t dedicate as much thought-space to logging as on Monday or Tuesday. I think it showed. In reality, I spent more time websurfing than might meet the casual eye, perhaps because I managed to break up my surfing into fractured little pieces  – 1, 2, 5 minutes long;  unworthy of explicit remark, but nonetheless significant when counted together.

I think I must be subconciously devious that way.

In particular, the way I’ve built my logging table means that I can’t have more than one categorization for slots, which is a shame, because some slots should be a mix of “work” and “internet”.

My day was also more fractured with more interruptions today, and I think that played a role. It also involved some technical stuff which didn’t go smoothly. When that happens I tend to get frustrated and want to surf.

Also I got to work later, which meant I didn’t have my usual ramp up time, so my surfing bled into a little later in the day.

Virtuous?

Today the buzz I felt on Monday has died down a little bit, but on Monday I felt tremendous pressure to be virtuous.

But what happens when I feel pressure to be virtuous? Does that mean I become more virtuous?

Or do I just change my behaviour?

I don’t want to diss behaviour modification, because I think it’s extremely important. But if I think that Scott the person is somehow magically different on this Monday because he’s scribbling notes in a little book and because he’s more task oriented, I’m sadly mistaken. I’m the same guy.

What does this experiment have to do with virtue as a state of being, with virtue as a state of soul?

The truth is, I’m not a different person this week, even though I may be behaving a little differently. (But not much, I still take naps in the evening and play video games. These are things that my pride would have me discard in an instant.)

But this does poke my pride. It does agitate some things that maybe I’m a little too attached to.

I’m quite self-concious about my web surfing, for example. It’s the thing I’m most interested in tracking. Am I some out of touch loser because my thought world is centered around the internet?

Virtue won’t come from my pencil and notebook, but my pencil and notebook might reveal some areas where peace and virtue need to make an appearance in my life.

Enough analysis. See you tomorrow, folks.

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Tuesday Log is up

February 3, 2010 under personalinthepubliceye

As you can see, I didn’t manage my time well enough to talk too much.

Shaun’s day is here.

A pretty average Tuesday. The lesson of the day is that an engrossing, story based game is very difficult to pull away from. I started playing Dragon Age with the intent to play for just half an hour, but doing so was very… unsatisfying.

Mind you, when I finally put the controller down after an hour and forty five minutes, it was still unsatisfying. Huh.

Not so much time on the internet today – time on the internet was mostly spent writing this blog post and updating the log.

However, there is some daily browsing that I find difficult to give up entirely. If I don’t find time to do it outside of work, it kind of sneaks its way inside work, in little bits and pieces that aren’t big enough to derail an entire chunk. But it still happens.

I find that the actual time spent on recording what I’m doing is very small (except for writing it up, of course). I only fill two sides of a pocket notebook sheet with writing.

But the mental burden is significant. I’m constantly thinking about logging, although perhaps less today than yesterday. I find myself annoyed with tasks that are not 5 or 15 minutes in duration. I find myself especially annoyed with tasks that are 15 minutes in duration but that extend on both sides of a quarter hour mark. Grr…

One thing I’m finding is that I’m always doing *something*. Even in my dead time, I’ll always find something that keeps me trivially occupied – I never spend any time doing absolutely nothing. The closest I got today was when I was eating supper.

I expect Wed – Thurs to be routine as I generally don’t have too much discretionary time. But we’ll see.

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Obsession

February 2, 2010 under personalinthepubliceye

The log for my first day of detailed timekeeping is up.

Approximate time on the internet: 2 hours 15 minutes.

Says Janet,

“ooh now this is a dangerous idea… I should try it!”

Is it responsible for a person with my controlling and obsessive tendancies to log everything he does at a high level of granularity?

I’m checking my watch so often I’ve developed tennis elbow.

But it’s great!

Wow, is it ever great! I don’t think I’ve ever had such a productive day!

Here’s what I didn’t realize:

If you’re auditing your time in 15 minute intervals, it’s tough to waste big blocks of time.

You can’t surf for 15 minutes. If you do, you’re going to have to admit you wasted the block. You’re going to have to put down that all you did was surf the net.

You can’t read dime store novels on the can for an hour. Well, you can, but you’ll have to say you did.

It’s impossible to lose track of time.

Now… Fair disclosure: Part of the deal I made with Shaun was that we wouldn’t cheat. We agreed we’d live just as we normally live. We wouldn’t change our patterns or activities just because we knew there were eyeballs on us.

I don’t think I’ve been cheating, but I will admit to suffering an enormous amount of pressure to do things that are respectable. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this much incentive to be virtuous.

There’s a little discussion that goes on in my head.

“You’re cheating, Scott. Usually you wouldn’t be working this hard.”

“Look, every day I intend to do the stuff that I’m doing today. I just don’t get around to it.”

“You’re cheating – you’re not surfing the net enough.”

“I’m just following through on my plan – the only difference is that I’m better at it today. Alright?”

“Yes but your hours are dishonestly skewed in the direction of virtue.”

“What – so I should deliberately procrastinate just because I usually do?”

“You know you want to. You know you should.”

I think I’ll have to follow up on this point, because there’s meat in it. I’m undergoing severe accountability shock.

But that doesn’t mean I did the dishes tonight.

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Where your treasure is….

February 1, 2010 under personalinthepubliceye

A while back, I mused about treasures.

Treasures are, by definition, those things that we treasure. But what is the act of treasuring? How do we express, how do we manifest the act of treasuring?

Does it mean we get a warm fuzzy feeling inside when we think of our treasure? Does it mean we are willing to spend money for something? Does it mean we think about it all the time?

I’m drawn to the idea that building  up heavenly treasures means a real, immediate and practical restructuring of my treasurings. It make sense; it feels right. How can I build up heavenly treasures without treasuring them first?

Isn’t this what it means to reap what we sow? That the treasures we wind up accruing are the things that we actually bother to seek out and treasure?

Moving into the real world

Shaun Adamson recently ran a nice post on time. He broke down where he spent his time, but was curious because his rough estimates were about 40 hours short. We got to chatting about it, and I realized I had a chance to do something I’ve always wanted to do.

So I challenged him.

“Write a log of everything you do during your week,” I said, ” broken down into 15 minute slots.” If you post a log, I’ll post a log.”

I’ve always wanted to make a detailed log of where I spend my time, but I’ve never before had the risk of public shame to motivate me.

So here goes. My pencil and notepad are at the ready. This week, I’ll post a highly granular list of all my activities. Each day I’ll post a synopsis of the day.

There might be surprises.

There might be revelations.

Where does the time go?

What does it say about my habits?

What does it say about my treasurings?

Will my own watching of my every move push me beyond the realms of neurosis into the world of bad, bad craziness?

I’ll try not to lie – I’ll try not to modify my behaviour – I’ll try to do things just as I usually would.

And if you really didn’t want to know the specifics of my life at this level of detail… well… don’t look.

Here’s the log.

Also keep an eye on Shaun’s blog, dear reader. He’s doing this alongside me, so if you ever wanted to snoop, you’ll never get a better chance.

Alea jacta est.

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