Working from home tends to invite the some temptations. You hit run on a process than runs for 45 seconds, you go to check Instagram, and you look up to realize the process ended 5 minutes ago. I’ve worked on ways to resist that tempation over time, and figured it might be nice to share a few.

A little bit late and hiding from the wintery mix hitting Indiana, I’m here with the final 2024 Year in Data entry.

I logged 1852 through Dec 9th of this year, including time from 3 classes at Georgia Tech and 20 projects in my role at the Tennessee Valley Authority…

In 2023, I had established a bit of a revised relationship with running. I’d decided that it was much healthier mentally to approach it as stress relief and general fitness than to try to win races. Almost all of my metrics reflect that decreased emphasis in my life…

This year, I watched 55 movies, which is more than last year. That’s 114 hours of my life…

As part of my “Year in Data” effort, I visualized and analyzed the 2066 hours of focused time, mostly spent at my computer. This includes 3 classes at Georgia Tech and 21 projects in my role at the Tennessee Valley Authority as well as “intentional overhead” which doesn’t quite fall into other buckets. It includes time spent developing web apps and time teaching classes. It includes time spent watching lectures and taking exams. I’ve spent (wasted?) yet more time this year compiling a fairly comprehensive picture of all this, so the logical question is… why?

I love television, movies, music, and podcasts. I’ve been trying (a little) to get back into reading this year, but it hasn’t quite worked... We’re all familiar with Spotify Wrapped, but I’ve also pulled some screenshots from LetterBoxd and info from GoodReads. If you make it to the end, maybe you’ll find a few recommendations interesting!

One of my favorite podcasters Merlin Mann has for a while been maintaining the Wisdom Project. After hearing about it periodically on Merlin’s podcasts…