I started this blog close to two weeks ago and it’s time to regroup and assess my performance so I can make adjustments to move forward.
One of the things I failed to fix completely was my sleep. In the first week I had less than 6h a day. In the first few days I had as little as 4hs a day, sometimes in 2h bouts. That CANNOT be good. In the second week it improved a bit, but my flu disrupted my sleep once again. It felt great to finally have a good 8 hours of non-sick sleep last night. I feel recharged.
To help me keep track of my sleep I created a very simple spreadsheet on excel. The joy of the of being a programmer is getting computers to do work for you and even something as simple as an excel table makes me proud, now that I’m in a coding career. Excel can do lots of things that apps do, they just lack the design. But design alone won’t help you stay disciplined in the long run. If you’re driven to keep track of your sleep, budget, coffee intake or whatever, a spreadsheet will go a long way. My next little excel projects will be tables to keep track of my coding hours, budget and coffee intake.
I know there are heaps of spreadsheets available out there but I just like the idea of creating them myself and adjusting them perfectly to my needs. “Scratching my own itch” is a recurrent concept amongs creators. I heard that phrase many times listening to Tim Ferriss podcasts. Sometimes we might think we need an idea coming out of the skies to create a product that will be successful, but by creating something to help ourselves, we are very likely to be helping others who have the same needs.
Buuuut, speaking of coding hours, my average was very close to 2hs a day, which in fact isn’t too bad. With my new spreadsheet I’ll keep closer track of these hours. I’ll have the modest goal of maintaining the same average in the next couple of weeks. And the reason is that I’ll have 10 out of the next 14 days away from home. I’ll be in a dance festival down in the Gold Coast for 3 days, then vacationing/teaching up in Whitsundays for 5 days, then in Sydney to deal with documents in the Brazilian embassy for 2 days. But even if I’m not coding, I’ll try to watch videos and read coding related stuff to stay on track.
I’ve been slowly progressing on my website and I’m really happy about it! The top menu is completed and now I’m working on the footer. I’m in the middle of the process of incorporating a Google Maps API into it. The whole thing is a LOT OF FUN. I love that I can divide the projects into subprojects and focus in one at a time. I’m learning A TON from the experience of creating a website from scratch. Can’t wait to have it finished and show it to my client.