teamgreenpc

[just-a-mod]

i'm tired

[za3k]

Life-logging in 2019

I’ve been keeping a time log since somewhere around 2011. A time log is a journal with a complete record of everything I do. I’ve become very consistent about it, so this seemed like a good time to write up my current habits for anyone interested.

This is going to be a mixture of information about life-logging, how I organize things, and my current schedule, because they’re not really separate things.

There’s an interesting story about how I systematically broke everyone one of my habits, and it took me 17 years to get in a daily routine after that, but that’s a story for another time.

If you’re curious, I’d guess it takes me 2 hours a week spread out to do my life-logging, 1 hour to type it up, and 1-2 hours to do my weekly review. In my mind the original life-logging doesn’t cost me anything because it’s so automatic, it’s zero-energy, and it has some psychic benefits. By psychic benefits I’m talking about the same kind of thing you get from GTD–you’re not constantly thinking about or trying to remember things that are already written down in a trusted system. Typing it up and review are not free.

Time log (2011-)

I keep a written (pen and paper) time log which I normally just call my “log book”. Each entry has the current time and what I’m doing. I typically record an entry either when I start an activity, finish one, or notice I’ve switched activities. I’m on volume 9.

Today’s page starts like this (italics are censorship or words added for clarity):

Date: 2019-12-17, Tue 12:02pm Woke up on my own slightly before alarm. Dream about […]. (7h12m sleep)[100ml yellow rockstar recovery. (33mg caffein, 400mg taurine–from front material)]Morning data log (see below)Brushed teeth12:55pmCancelled torrent verification–I already know this will failResponded to gnu coreutils ‘date’ threadhealth stuff2:02pmTrying qutebrowser. Feels very productive.2:04pm[Coke Zero Vanilla, 1 can]

I’m not fastidious about what the time represents. The questions I most often ask are “when did this happen roughly” and “do I have any big portions of my day I’m not time-logging”. I’m less concerned with exactly how long I spent doing each particular activity.

There are some things I try to consistently write down every single time, including:

Exactly when I woke up, especially if I don’t use the computer first thing (see “Sleep Log” below)

Any dream if I remember it

Any food or drink I consume, with enough information that I could generate nutritional facts if I wanted. I omit food amounts if it’s a pain to measure. 1 package of ramen: yes, 125g chicken curry: no. I put food and drinks in hard brackets: []

Watching a movie, TV show, youtube, or reading a book. I used to underline these, now I’m trying putting them between underscores: _. I’m switching to write these in a computer-understandable way but it’s a work in progress.

Anything health-related, including symptoms, drugs I took, and bathroom visits. Drugs are a type of food [], the rest is freeform.

Travel from point A to B

Phone calls. I don’t always manage this one. While you’re picking up the phone is a really garbage time to try and write something.

Any time I change timezones

Any time I work on a project for more than a couple minutes

“Where did that time go”: one of the goals here is to have no huge gaps. If I spent time browsing the web or researching, some vague notes on what about. If I talk to someone in person, noting who and possibly what topics we talked about (talking in person often feels like minutes in my head but hours on the clock).

Here are things I don’t write down:

Information that I’ve put elsewhere. See below for specifics on what else I have! This one isn’t hard and fast, but I’m a believer in things being in “exactly one place” as much as possible–I do make some exceptions since I’m working with paper

General-purpose notetaking, thoughts about what’s going on, TODO lists, etc. This is just a boring ol’ record of time. I do sometimes jot down TO-DOs when out of the house since this is the only paper I carry on me, but at the rate of 1-3 a week. I also may write down where I’m at in a really long-running computer project, just to make sure I can find it later.

Anything a human shouldn’t have to write or read. For example, I could write down the youtube URL or the UPC code of everything I buy… but nobody has time for that, and I’d only write it down wrong.

At the front of the book I have a table with guides to abbreviations, ingredients in things I have often (ex. caffein amounts or recipes). In the back is my bookkeeping section (see below).

I am currently using the Leuchtturm1917 gridded notebook, with date labels at the top of the page. I’ve been experimenting with felt micron pens–I’m looking for something that can write easily, but won’t smear when I close the book. I’ve used Moleskins in the past–I stopped using them because 2 of 5 split at the spine for me. Leuctturm seems a bit better but more expensive–time will tell.

One a week, I type up my time log up to the last page. I’m working on my backlog slowly. This lets me search more easily. I have plans to someday cross-reference better in a computer system (for example, include nutritional info, link to youtube videos, etc).

Bookkeeping (2019-)

Fun fact: b-oo-kk-ee-ping is the only word in the English language with three consecutive double letters. Bookkeeping is keeping a record of what you earn and spend, or what you buy and sell.

For the most part, I pay for everything using a credit or debit card, which I’ve been doing since 16 so that I have a financial record for my own benefit. Most banks offer an easy export. I get paper copies, then once I download the PDFs from my bank, throw out the originals (I’ve checked one or two match the PDFs by hand). I use mint.com for the purpose of having a CSV export from my bak statements. I used to put this export online (currently broken, check back soon).

Starting a few months ago, I started keeping a weekly record by hand. Every time I spend money, I’ll put a $ symbol in my time log,

2:21am Amazon $

and add a bookkeeping entry (real thing is prettier).

2019-12-15, Sun [ ] Amazon -29.21 -236.07 Choline citrate, 500g

The entry includes:

The date (2019-12-15)

Where I spent the money (Amazon)

How much money (29.21)

How much total I’ve spent this week (236.07)

What I bought (Choline citrate, 500g). If it was more than one thing, how much each item cost. I’ll try and write price-per-pound if I’m buying bulk food or meat. If I’m buying more than one of something, I’ll write how many I bought and how much each is. I’d like to consistently write down how much of something I got (ex. 16oz of cheese) but I don’t at all yet.

If it’s something that needs to be delivered, I’ll write a checkbox. Then when it arrives, I’ll check the box and write down the date it arrived to the right. This way I can easily scan and see if something never got delivered.

Since I use the same book for my time log and my bookkeeping, bookkeeping goes from right to left, two pages per week. At the end of the book, I keep

a running record of any debts I owe

any undelivered packages from the previous log book

During my weekly review process, I copy this information to my (digital) weekly review and add it up by category to check against my budget. I used to check it against my bank statements, but it takes forever and it’s easier to just be really good about writing down everything to start with. Checking totals and category totals is pretty time consuming the way I do it, I’ll probably automate it soon.

Budget

My current categories are:

taxes, bills, rent: Predictable expenses, no need to check these on a regular basis. I separate out medical bills in my summary, which are not regular.

travel, hard drives, moving: Big but one-off expenses. Currently I don’t have a way to budget these.

charity: I aim for 10% of my income after taxes (a tithe)

other: The main budget category, I try to keep this at $1000/month ($240/week). I actually break it down into categories like “food”, “groceries”, and “luxuries” so I know what happened, as well as pulling out any single big expenses.

Weekly Schedule (2019-)

My current schedule is weekly:

Monday: Do meal planning for the week, and grocery shopping for the week if needed.

Tuesday: Cook food for the week.

Thursday: Batch day. Do all the small chores (<1 hour) on one day. I aim for around 2-4 hours of chores, but I’m fine skipping a batch day if I don’t really have anything. I almost always clean my room and do laundry at minimum. I also have a running list of small tasks: call the doctor, clean the fridge, fix SSL certs.

Friday: Review day. I’ll do a weekly review, and a monthly one if it’s the last weekly review of the month. Then I’ll type up the timelog up to that point in time. For my weekly review, which I do on my computer, I write down

How much sleep I got on average

What I did each day of the week (summary of that day’s time log). Typically once I cut out really boring things (brush your teeth), food, movies, etc there’s not all that much left.

Accomplishments. Anything I got done this week. Also, any big milestones reached (finished X) even if the last step wasn’t that impressive.

Reflection/things learned: Did anything major happen? Did I learn any new facts? This is my time to look at the big picture and thing about how my life is going lately and where I’d like it to go. Also, if anything especially good/bad happened, I try to think about why and how to make things go well next time.

Finances. I copy down my expenses for the week and total them by category.

Saturday: Nothing planned.

Sunday: Nothing planned.

I haven’t done batch cooking in a while, but I’m also trying to run out my food supplies because I’m about to move, so we’ll see if it sticks around.

Daily Log (2019-)

Every morning, I record:

The date and time I’m recording

How much sleep I got (but not when I went to sleep or woke up)

What day it is in my schedule

The temperature of the room

My body temperature (am I running a fever?)

How much exercise I got yesterday, in minutes (and what type)

My weight

I don’t think it matters that much how you do these measurements, but it’s important to be consistent (for example, weight with clothes on/off?)

If I have a specific habit I’m trying to pick up (say, brushing my teeth twice a day or meditating) I might record that for a while too each day. I used to record a mission for the day, but I dropped the habit.

Automatic Logs

I put all my computer logs in a single combined format, and sync them to a single location, starting in 2019. The format is basically <date> [<log name>:<computer name>] <Log entry>. I don’t have a great process to view logs yet.

Sleep Log (2019-) / Keystoke Activity Log (2013-)

I log which hours I was asleep. I live alone and tend to fall asleep first thing after closing my laptop in bed, or at least with a video playing in the background, which makes this relatively easy. I keep a computer log of whether I’m using my keyboard (I almost never do anything with just the mouse) for each minute using a custom-built keylogger (it records activity but not passwords).

Then I run it through a custom script (included in link) which says which broad periods I was active. The biggest inactive period in a day is when I was asleep.

~ $ sleep? Report period: 2019-12-17 00:00:00 – 2019-12-17 16:21:06 (16:21:06s) Inactive: 2019-12-17 04:50:18 – 2019-12-17 12:02:58 ( 7:12:40s)

I was asleep from 4:50am to 12:02pm. I make sure to write down when I wake up into my time log in case I don’t use the computer first thing. This has been much better at guessing when I fell asleep than anything else I’ve tried.

If you don’t fall asleep at a computer, I have some ideas around using a motion sensor (cheap webcams can see in the dark)

Chromium History Log (2013-)

I use Chromium as my only web browser. I export the history and bookmarks every time I do a backup, and put it all in a standard log format (basically time + URL). Currently I only record each history entry once.

For futureproofing, I archive every webpage I go to on an irregular basis (about once a year). Archiving pages doesn’t work super well but it’s better than nothing.

Video/TV Log (2019-)

I watch my movies using noice, either directly on my television, or streamed from my media server to my laptop. When I start watching something, it automatically gets logged (including what the movie is, the path, how long it is etc). Same for when I stop, so I know if I quit early.

Youtube is included in my chromium history (see above). Sadly I’m not sure I can get ‘how much of this video did I watch’ from my format–only that I visited the video.

For futureproofing, I automatically archive every youtube video I watch.

Bash History (2011-)

This one is pretty simple. My Linux shell history (everything I run from the command line, which is basically everything I do outside a browser) is saved, forever. This one goes back to 2011 for my laptops.

Scanning (2014-)

I scan all documents I write, mail I get, etc. and generally throw out the originals. I organize everything by hand, and keep everything as image files.

I use a flat folder structure, which is to say I have a “scans” folder and then a bunch of folders in it like “taxes – 2019”. No nesting. This was my main takeaway from GTD for Hackers and I use flat folders for most digital organization.

I use the Doxie Go feed-through scanner (doesn’t need a computer, writes directly to SD which I love). I recently got a Canon Lide 400 flatbed scanner (works on linux) which I use to scan bound books like my time log.

Who else does this stuff?

As far as I know I came up with this stuff independently. I’ve read plenty of time-management resources (which tend to be good) and experimental journaling resources (which tend to be… scarce?).

Lion Kimbro: “Make a complete map of every thought you think”. General journaling. Inteview.

Fenn Lipowitz (my roommate): Time log, with an emphasis on being completely machine-readable. Being machine-readable means click for pretty graphs. I took inspiration from how machine-parsable this was recently, but I want to keep my freehand sections too.

Bryan Bishop (acquaintance): meetlog, a system for recording conversations and topics of conversation. Overall I didn’t find this useful because I don’t know hundreds of people. The format is so-so, largely because the author can type very fast, including real-time transcripts. I got the inspiration to write topics of conversation while talking from this. I do something similar if I spend a long time thinking or researching, too.

Bullet Journaling: I dunno, if you’re super lost and don’t know how to write a journal/TODO list, some guy figured it out for you! It’s just the basics that you’d figure out on your own, but it may save time. The site is better than the book. I independently invented most of their notation for TODO lists, I don’t find it too useful for a journal. Other peoples’ bullet journal pages are also useful, not just the original author’s.

Life-logging in 2019 was originally published on Optimal Prime

[63824peace]

Thursday, 13th of october 2005

China successfully launched its second manned spacecraft. Shenzhou-6 blasted off riding a Long March 2F rocket booster. The spacecraft entered orbit within ten minutes. This launch cements China's place as the third nation in spaceflight history able to launch its own citizens out of Earth's atmosphere. Like its predecessors Russia and the United States, China made history by performing the launch without assistance.

My boyhood dream was to fly into outer space, and the dream remains within me. I would trade everything to go into outer space... my job and even my life.

I heard that Shenzhou-6's pilots are astronauts in their early forties. God, I envy them.

Japan has given up the pursuit of a national space program capable of independently launching a Japanese vessel into space. My generation laments the situation. We dreamed about outer space. I definitely want my country to persevere. I want Japanese children to inherit my generation's dream of space travel.

I read in the newspaper that Horiemon (CEO of Livedoor Co., Ltd.) recently began investing in the space industry. Perhaps now we should pin our hopes on the efforts of private companies.

I had my endoscopic examination scheduled today, so I slept in a little. I would feel so much better physically if I could get up like this every day. It seems bad to leave the house after the children though.

Here's how things generally work: the head of the family leaves home in the morning. His family sees him off to work. Then the children leave home to go to either school or work. At night, the father returns last.

"The breadwinner leaves home first." There is a subtle luxury in leaving home before all others and returning last of all. The family head can feel a sense of dignity through these routines. We live in the wrong times for these habits though, since both parents work in more and more families.

I usually get up around 6am because I have a managerial job. I arrive in my office for the morning meeting at 7am. If no morning meeting is scheduled, then I at least arrive by 9am. Kojima Productions head creative staff normally arrives in the office at 10:30am, which means they probably leave their homes between 9am and 10am. If this is so . . . are they seeing their children off to school? I have a hard time imagining that.

I left home for the exam. Of course, I didn't see any students or businessmen on their ways to the train station. I didn't even see anyone walking their dog. I didn't hear a single bark.

"Okay, I get it," I realized. "So this is how it is."

Morning had already passed. I felt guilty for some reason. I walked through the fully awakened city like a student who had overslept. The weather is really nice, by the way. Since my endoscopic procedure has been scheduled for such a sunny day, surely it means that my insides are as sharp, crisp, and clean as a fine autumn day.

Right? I really hope so...

I had to take 1800ml of Magukoloolu-P when I arrived at the hospital. (It was the same medicine that I had to take last night.) I drank two 500ml bottles of a sports drink after that.

Drink, excrete, wait fifteen minutes... drink, excrete, wait fifteen minutes... I repeated the process for two full hours in order to clean my insides. It was the most painful part of the exam. I kept up the masochism until the nurse signaled for me to stop.

The annual procedure cleans out my esophagus, stomach, duodenum, small intestine, and large intestine. The whole affair seems surreal when it is finished. I can drink clear water, and it emerges as an equally clear fluid after running from my top to my bottom. It makes me remember that the human body connects directly from the mouth to the anus.

Life forms originally used the same orifice for consumption and excretion. The mouth and the anus were one. When our great evolutionary ancestors were living in pre-sentience, they only had their intestines to handle food and waste. The complex differentiation that resulted in a separate mouth and anus had not occurred. Maybe this is why human beings have gastrointestinal trouble when we suffer too much stress.

I started reading Eiichi Ikegami's book Shangri La since I had plenty of time to wait. It's interesting. I had started reading the book before, but I quit midway.

The purification procedure concluded and the afternoon examination finally began. Even though I undergo this procedure as an annual checkup, I still feel nervous right before it begins.

I hadn't seen my doctor in six months. He refreshed me as always. He is a warm and welcoming man. The look on his face alone relieves me. I feel eased by a relationship with my doctor based on mutual trust.

The examination concluded by evening. Nothing is wrong inside my body ; I seem to be a pretty healthy man. My doctor and I agreed that we should have dinner together sometime, although I don't know when we'll be able to. He's quite busy.

We can now see inside our own hidden organs thanks to technological developments. I am like another creature inside. Today I met the secret self inside. It's a weird thought, but internal organs carry their own idiosyncratic expressions. Despite what you'd expect, they are even good looking. They looked so nice that I asked my doctor for a copy of the pictures of my innards.

I will be charged with sexual harassment if I hang these pictures around my work booth. I think I'll just keep them inside my desk drawer.

I went into the office at 5pm. It's about time for the first flood of evening's homebound rush hour. I press through those who hurry home. I move toward the Hills. I feel a strange embarrassment as I walk against the crowd's current.

I think as I walk. Nothing remains inside my body. I have nothing to digest. I don't even have the need to digest. My emptied body has an unstrained, natural repose.

I relish the emptiness. I want this feeling to endure a while longer. Perhaps an insight exists that is exclusive to people who forsake digestion: a vision only for the emptied ones. I decided not to eat until nightfall.

What is this lightness inside my body... inside my heart and mind? The laxative must have flushed out all my clotted stress.

I took care of the day's mail at the office. I dealt with the documents that needed my signature. My schedule had filled to the brim while I wasn't looking.

I am supposed to write project plans for both MGS4 and a new PSP project. Once again, I find myself unable to make a single schedule; I don't think I can write them.

My field training outfit has been delivered. We are supposed to be on different teams, so each team's camouflage pattern differs. We have a variety of camo patterns, such as Woodland and Desert. For some reason my team got black camouflage.

I doubt it will help us during daylight. Can't you do something about this Toyopy?

After twenty-four hours, I finally put food in my stomach ; I went to the restaurant ROTI for supper with Kenichiro and Ryan. It was a bit chilly, but we decided to eat on the terrace anyway.

I ordered the Roti Burger, with mushrooms of course. I held back on drinking wine, due to having just had a physical exam.

I took care of miscellaneous mundane tasks at the office, a monotonous affair of ticking checkboxes. Creativity is impossible today.

I stood in front of a four-passenger seat as I rode the train home. This was in the portion of the train connecting the cars. I listened to Depeche Mode's new album on my iPod. Across from where I stood sat two women in their thirties, a middle aged grandpa, and a young girl dressed as though she were older than her age.

I glanced down at them. My eyes paused when I saw three white cords attached individually to both women and the older man. (The young girl didn't have one.) My mind wandered a bit. "All three of them have white cords. Is this a new fashion?"

Then I noticed that I had a white cord myself.

The reality was simpler than I had imagined. The three older passengers in front of me were listening to their iPods. As I gradually realized this, the woman on the left took out her iPod.

The other woman remarked: "Oh! It's just like my iPod-Mini! It's even the same blue color!"

While I thought about this, the old grandpa took out his iPod. "W-What?!" I thought. "This old man has an iPod-Mini too?!"

I was taken aback. I own the same device as this grandpa?! I admit that I'm something of a grandpa myself, but it's still depressing to know that I have the same thing as this guy whose hair is so thinned that it looks like a barcode when combed to the side.

Few things are as awkward or irritating as having a model identical to others. Still, we should be listening to different music even though we have the same type of device. I wonder if we could invent an iPod that changes color according to the music it is playing, kind of like a chameleon changes color according to its environment.

I pushed my iPod deeper into my pocket so that no one would notice the similarities. The train arrived at the station. Passengers who needed to switch trains exited. The woman who hadn't shown her iPod put hers into her bag.

"Thank God," I sighed. "She has an iPod Shuffle."

Maybe I ought to trade my iPod-Mini for the newly released iPod-Nano. It's less of an I-Pod and more of a We-Pod now that everyone owns one.

I swam at the gym just before midnight. I need to have physical stamina for next week's field training.

Well... technically that's true. I had another reason for swimming tonight though. I wanted to know how my internal purification had affected me.

I only had an undigested burger in my body. I suspected that I had lost a lot of weight…  no, I was sure of it. I slowly mounted the scales.

"What?! I only lost half a kilogram!"

Is that all I get for my pain and discomfort?

According to Sean Penn's character Paul Rivers, we all lose 21 grams of weight when we die. A person's soul therefore weighs 21 grams. So… what's the total weight of a person's stress?

I drank a chu-hai after I returned home, even though it's normally forbidden for someone in my position. Then I went to bed.