December 2017

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

I had no real change in December. All in all, I was less active with my mental and physical efforts in December than in other months this year. It was to be expected. Christmas has always been a time, when I have done nothing. This December was not an exception. It doesn´t mean I should have lived that way.

Mental efforts and results in November

Most of my mental efforts go to using a laptop, watching TV and reading real books. For monitoring 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 November (October)

• Time I used my laptop/day on average: 266 (149) minutes/day
• The efficiency on average with laptop 63% (52%) 135 min (135min)
• Using OpenOffice/day 71 (29) min/day on average
• Using Kindle 41 (41) min/day on average
• Refereeing portals on 7 (7min)/day on average
• Online newspapers 11 min (6min/day) on average
• keskustelu.kauppalehti.fi (Finnish financial news portal) 16 min (9 min/day) on avg
• skysports.com 6min (5 min)/day on average
• Facebook 1min (3 min/day) on average
• Others: about 51 (50 min)/day on average
• Reading physical books about 90min (103 min/day) on average

We can see that mental efforts TV excluded took a lot of my time, basically now it was about 6 hours/day. I used my laptop about 4 and half hours per day. The efficiency was 63%. It was clearly better than my 56% in november. Normal efficiency should be around 60% on average. It seems to me I have improved, but I am not sure if my new laptop has something do with it. I have a different browser in use now. This can explain something. I have to see what happens in January. In December I read non-fiction about 90 minutes/day. I can probably read a little more, but I should be more focused than I am right now after a certain amount of reading. The quality of the non-fiction books I have read could be better.

Physical efforts

My division for physical efforts are sleeping, eating, drinking, walking and exercising. I did not sleep that well in November and it continued in December. I cannot really think any obvious reasons. I have no data to prove it. I have too much weight. I measured it in 31^st of December and it was 102kg, which is the same weight than in the end of November. I am aiming weight under 100kg before summer. It may not happen, but close to it is better than nothing. My nutrition is not good enough. I eat too much crap. In December I ate crap in six days. (6 in November) The definition for crap is too much fat or 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 did not drink any alcohol in November. I am trying to have a whole alcohol free year, which started after my birthday celebrations in the end of august. It is a challenge. I have sometimes been without alcohol for two or three months. I have managed to survive without it, at least for now. I will probably have more difficulties during the pre-christmas parties.

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. December was not a good month. On average, I was on the move for 60 minutes per day. 90 minutes is my long-term goal. Exercise was refereeing for two half the time and walking half the time. I should exercise little more every month timewise. Exercise could be lot harder. I don´t believe in any tricks. Hopefully, I can manage all the changes gradually without major setbacks. I am not perfect and I must to expect bad progress at some point of time.

I have some trouble in motivating myself to write this blog. I hope all the readers have patience.

Have a good month!

-TT