Tommis Almanack Monthly report August 2017

This is my first monthly report about my progress with using latticework of mental models in my life. I basically started monitoring with more precision in january this year. There is no way of doing real conclusion about how things are really working. I have some goals for arranging my life and I am still pretty far away from optimal life. All the monthly reports are basically divided into two parts, mental and physical efforts and results.

Mental efforts and results in August 2017

Most of my mental efforts go to using a laptop, watching TV and reading real books. The latter things is separate, because I also use my laptop for reading Kindle-books. For monitorin laptop usage, I have RescueTime program which shows how much time I use for using OpenOffice, reading Kindle books and flying through different websites, emails, etc. I do not measure my time watching TV, at least not yet. But I am timing how much I read physical non-fiction books. Here are some results of using laptop and reading physical books from August:

• Time I used my laptop/day on average: 275 minutes/day
• The efficiency on average with laptop 50% (about137min) provided by RescueTime
• Using OpenOffice/day 57 min/day on average
• Using Kindle 42 min/day on average
• Refereeing portals on 11min/day on average
• Online newspapers 16min/day on average
• keskustelu.kauppalehti.fi (Finnish financial news portal) 19 min/day on average
• skysports.com 13 min/day on average
• Facebook 15 min/day on average
• Rest: about 100 min/day on average
• Reading physical books about 90 min/day on average

We can see that mental efforts TV excluded take a lot of my time, basically now it is about 6 hours/day. We cannot really see this, but August was a pretty average month to me. At least, mentally speaking. I can see some room for improvement. I shouldn´t use my laptop more during my days. Hopefully I can use it less in the coming months. A proper goal would be about four hours/day. And the efficiency should be better. Normal efficiency should be around 60% on average. There is two ways to improve: less crappy action and more efficient action like reading Kindle books more and using OpenOffice more. I can read non-fiction books about 3h/day and that is pretty much the limit for me right now.

Physical efforts

My division for physical efforts are sleeping, eating, drinking, walking and exercising. I slept pretty well for the whole month of August. I have no data to prove it. I have too much weight. I measured it in 31^th of August and it was 106kg. I am aiming weigh under 100kg in the end of this year. 90Kg would be better, but it takes longer. My nutrition is not good enough. I eat too much crap. August was a bad month. I ate crap in ten days. The definition for crap is too much fat and sugar, or some foods with white flour. I am aiming to eat crap once a week. I like it and I don´t think it is too much. I drank alcohol once, but way too much. I am trying to have a whole alcohol free year, which started after my birthday celebrations. It is a challenge. I have sometimes been without alcohol for two or three months.

Exercising can be divided into two things: refereeing and walking. Refereeing should be my preferred way, but I am trying to have a short walk every day, if I have only one game. If I have more in one day, I may not go for a walk. August was a bad month, because I hurt my thigh and my exercise was mostly walking. On average I was on the move for 57 minutes per day. Which is not good enough. Especially, when exercise was mostly walking. September looks better and probably will be better. I am aiming to exercise from 80-90 minutes per day at some point.

Daily schedule/habits

I have tried to automate my days, but I haven´t completely succeeded yet. I have a simple daily schedule with some variation. This schedule works from monday to friday for most of the days. Sometime I may have refereeing in the morning or afternoon and then my schedule will be very different, but otherwise it is simple.

I wake up normally between 8am and 10am. Sometimes even before 8am. Normally I have no alarm and I sleep as much as I can. After waking up, I drink my morning coffee. This normally takes about half an hour. Then I start reading a normal non-fiction book. Which takes about 45-60 minutes before I start having breakfast. After breakfast, I continue reading until I have read 90-120 minutes. I have at least one short break if I read more than 90 minutes. Depending on the time I have awaken, I will read Kindle book or start preparing my lunch. After lunch I may go to buy some groceries, but that does happen maybe once a week. Then I will continue with either reading Kindle or I write until four o´clock. Unfortunately, this is an ideal way, but I do have some distractions during the day and especially after lunch. After 4pm, I may go to buy some groceries, go for a walk or have some refereeing. Otherwise, I will read a crime novel or watch TV before going to bed.

This is how I normally live my life. A lot of things are habits that do not really change. Sometimes there is some variation how everything goers together. Weekends are different and I have more refereeing than from monday to friday. I can do everything more efficiently and hopefully I can manage improving all the time. Monthly reports are for tracking improvement and this report is what it typically looks like.

-TT