Eigenmumbles

I’ve been using my new Lua to-do system for a week and a day now, and I’ve been reasonably consistent about turning on timers when I’m doing something on task (and leaving them off when I’m taking breaks). That works out to almost exactly 60 hours of work time data, and it’s been interesting to see how that time breaks down. The records so far lead me to the following conclusions:

1. About half my time in the past week has gone toward coding (for a package that should really be released by September 1). A typical task takes 15-45 minutes to complete. There are some outliers, but most of the cases where I work for more than about 90 minutes on a coding task reflect mistakes that I had to undo.

2. In the past two weeks, I’ve spent about two hours on class preparation. I’m sure that number will go up as I start assigning homework, since those take time to write and to grade; but that feels like a good level of time committment given the preparatory work already done earlier in the year.

3. I lose IQ points immediately after faculty meetings, and am better off waiting for a little while to do anything very technical.

4. About an hour a day has gone into some form of focused technical writing. This does not including things like writing emails, project ads, or lecture preparation. It also does not include the related thinking time, much of which happens in the shower, while falling asleep, or at other times when I am nominally doing something not work-related. Given that I’m trying to push out this code, I feel okay about that; but I could do better.

It will be interesting to see how this evolves over the course of the semester.