People often ask me how much time I spend blogging. I've been keeping track of this for the past year and now I can finally say with some degree of preciseness. Here's the monthly breakdown:
January: 7 hours, 12 posts
February: 7.5 hours, 19 posts
March: 8.25 hours, 16 posts
April: 10.75 hours, 17 posts
May: 7.5 hours, 13 posts
June: 9.5 hours, 15 posts
July: 1.5 hours, 4 posts
August: 2.5 hours, 3 posts
September: 9.75 hours, 13 posts
October: 12 hours, 20 posts
November: 10.25 hours, 13 posts
December: 9 hours, 12 posts
Overall: 95.5 hours, 157 posts
Time Spent Per Week: 1.83 hours, 3.01 posts
Click here for the raw data. Click here for all of my posts in 2009.
I write down how much time I spent blogging the previous day when I wake up in the morning. The numbers are almost all in half hour blocks because being more detailed than that would be infeasible.
These numbers are only for time spent specifically researching and writing posts on this blog. They do not account for the time I spent reading articles that I eventually ended up blogging about, which I almost certainly would have done anyways. They are estimates and certainly not exactly correct. But I do strive not to be systematically biased either towards too much or too little time and round appropriately.
Bottom Line: When I say that it does not take long to upkeep a reasonably decent blog, I mean it!
Showing posts with label Self-Experimentation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Self-Experimentation. Show all posts
Monday, January 4, 2010
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Sleep and RSS Feed Data, Past Month
I'm still collecting data from my every day life and I'm tinkering with what I should be doing with it. In the meantime, here are a couple of graphs, one that I collected (my sleep) and one that Google automatically put together for me (RSS reader activity over the past month):
As you can see I had an explosion of activity yesterday. In general I will admit that these numbers are skewed because I subscribe to some feeds on del.icio.us that I plow through and mostly just read the headlines of. 
There's more variance here than I would like, but I suppose that is a function of being a college student more than anything. Aside from that one wild day toward the end of December, I never sleep more than 10 hours and I rarely sleep less than 6. I get a mean of 7.924 and a standard deviation of 1.06 hours of sleep per night.
As you can see I had an explosion of activity yesterday. In general I will admit that these numbers are skewed because I subscribe to some feeds on del.icio.us that I plow through and mostly just read the headlines of. 
There's more variance here than I would like, but I suppose that is a function of being a college student more than anything. Aside from that one wild day toward the end of December, I never sleep more than 10 hours and I rarely sleep less than 6. I get a mean of 7.924 and a standard deviation of 1.06 hours of sleep per night.
Friday, September 12, 2008
Selfish Self-Experimentation
There are two ways to go about self-experimenting. One is a quest of self-improvement, testing various methods and tools to gauge how much they will help you. The other kind is on the surface more altruistic: using your own body as an incubator to see how others will react to similar treatments.
An example of the first kind is measuring your weight gains with and without Creatine to see whether or not it is worth the long-term risks. An example of the second kind is volunteering to swallow various chemicals to measure what they will do to the average human. Hopefully the effects in rats are congruent to the effects in humans! It's no surprise that there are lots more of the selfish kind than the altruistic kind.
If self-experimentation is ever to achieve a broad scale, it will be because someone convinces a large mass of people that it is in their own best interest. There is a large corpus of data in the workout logs of bodybuilding.com, but it is inserted so haphazardly. Even a small amount of control in that data and it's value would increase exponentially. But how do you convince people to record their workouts methodologically?
An example of the first kind is measuring your weight gains with and without Creatine to see whether or not it is worth the long-term risks. An example of the second kind is volunteering to swallow various chemicals to measure what they will do to the average human. Hopefully the effects in rats are congruent to the effects in humans! It's no surprise that there are lots more of the selfish kind than the altruistic kind.
If self-experimentation is ever to achieve a broad scale, it will be because someone convinces a large mass of people that it is in their own best interest. There is a large corpus of data in the workout logs of bodybuilding.com, but it is inserted so haphazardly. Even a small amount of control in that data and it's value would increase exponentially. But how do you convince people to record their workouts methodologically?
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Tracking results leads to success
Chris Wanstrath delivers a fascinating keynote address on why you should make the time in your life for some sort of side project. He specifically addresses computer programmers, but the advice could apply to anyone.
And how does he recommend that you motivate yourself to work on the side project? By tracking your results:
"Every time you work on your side project, mark a big X through that day on a calendar. Eventually you'll have a nice line of Xs. Missing an X will be torture -- it'll mess up your beautiful streak. The goal is to maintain the streak, even if you don't think you have any ideas for the day. The best way to overcome writer's block is to write, after all."
This probably isn't the first time you've heard this advice, and it probably won't be the last. But I want to stress that it's worked for me, too. I now loathe to mark down that I procrastinated the previous day, and I love to mark down that I spent the time in particularly productive ways, like working on a long-term project.
If you're thinking of tracking your results (on anything!), I recommend Google Documents, so that you can do it anywhere and don't need to worry about losing a piece of paper. We'll see if it works for Jer and his 25 book challenge.
And how does he recommend that you motivate yourself to work on the side project? By tracking your results:
"Every time you work on your side project, mark a big X through that day on a calendar. Eventually you'll have a nice line of Xs. Missing an X will be torture -- it'll mess up your beautiful streak. The goal is to maintain the streak, even if you don't think you have any ideas for the day. The best way to overcome writer's block is to write, after all."
This probably isn't the first time you've heard this advice, and it probably won't be the last. But I want to stress that it's worked for me, too. I now loathe to mark down that I procrastinated the previous day, and I love to mark down that I spent the time in particularly productive ways, like working on a long-term project.
If you're thinking of tracking your results (on anything!), I recommend Google Documents, so that you can do it anywhere and don't need to worry about losing a piece of paper. We'll see if it works for Jer and his 25 book challenge.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Self-Experimentation, Ideas
I've been interested in self-experimentation recently, inspired mainly by Seth Roberts (who kept track of his sleep), Ramit Sethi (who tracks his spending), and Ben Franklin. I've told some of my friends, and they told me that I was a nerd, and I told them to tell me something over which I don't already cry myself to sleep every night.
But now I want to add something else. Since I plan to live forever or die trying, I've thought that maybe I could track some facets monthly as well as daily. So I'd have a day every month that I list some crucial measurements. So far I've got weight, tentatively mile time, and how long I can hold my breath for. Anything else? My goals are: easy to measure, take 0-10 minutes, and interesting. I tried subjective happiness, but I gave myself 5/5 three weeks in a row and decided it was silly.
It's my life, but you can be a part of it.
But now I want to add something else. Since I plan to live forever or die trying, I've thought that maybe I could track some facets monthly as well as daily. So I'd have a day every month that I list some crucial measurements. So far I've got weight, tentatively mile time, and how long I can hold my breath for. Anything else? My goals are: easy to measure, take 0-10 minutes, and interesting. I tried subjective happiness, but I gave myself 5/5 three weeks in a row and decided it was silly.
It's my life, but you can be a part of it.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Introspection supported via laboratory results
Fruit bias on p.57 of Tim Harford's The Logic of Life:
"The experiments offered some subjects a snack: fruit or chocolate. Seven out of the ten subjects asked for chocolate. But when the experimenters offered other subjects a different choice, the answer was different too: 'I'll bring you a snack next week. What would you like then, fruit or chocolate?' Three-quarters of the subjects chose fruit."
This doesn't mean that my thoughts are any more likely to be "true" in the future, unfortunately.
"The experiments offered some subjects a snack: fruit or chocolate. Seven out of the ten subjects asked for chocolate. But when the experimenters offered other subjects a different choice, the answer was different too: 'I'll bring you a snack next week. What would you like then, fruit or chocolate?' Three-quarters of the subjects chose fruit."
This doesn't mean that my thoughts are any more likely to be "true" in the future, unfortunately.
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