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Productivity, data, food, infographic, personal development, time management in Data Viz
Productivity, data, food, infographic, personal development, time management in Data Viz Infographic: Iris' Excellent August 2010 Adventure
Monday, October 11, 2010 at 12:43PM 
I apologize for slacking on the new posts, but I've been busy working on the epic personal data collection project. I logged all kinds of data about myself every single day of August 2010. Using Excel, Tableau Public, and Photoshop, I created my first infographic. As I've mentioned before, I'm design-challenged, so I hope its content makes up for its presentation.
While I don't suggest everyone should log this much information about themselves everyday, it has been extremely useful is learning about what I actually do as opposed to what I think I do. We're living in a world that's more and more data-driven, and I think it can be applied to personal development too. Trying to lose weight? Log what you eat. Not sure where your after work hours go? Log what you do for a couple of weeks and find out.
While many findings were expected, a few things surprised me:
- I can't complain that I don't have a social life because I spend way more time on it than I should
- My energy levels aren't really affected by factors other than sleep, e.g. who I'm with, temperature, etc.
- I don't eat as healthily as I claim I do
- I don't get as much reading done as I think I do
Enjoy, and let me know what you think!
Reader Comments (7)
Sorry but you didn't mention the elephant in the room: The 89 hours a month you're spending on someone that appears to be a clown.
Seems like you need to choose between poonage errr "social activities" and productivity else this whole productivity-plotting lark of yours is rather pointless
I think its very useful but I'm sure it was difficult to.
Surely you learnt something about yourself here
Oh yea it was such a pain to do! But as a data geek, it was still pretty fun and I definitely found gaps between my behavior and what I think I do.
Very pretty infographic! Very interesting.
A couple questions, being a little bit of a data geek myself:
1) How did you measure energy level?
2) Since you spend more time than "ideal" on a lot of activities in the first graph, what other activities would you want those extra hours to go?
3) Sean wants to know: who is the girl with the 9 hours?
4) For the sleep/calories, what does "average calories" mean? Burnt or consumed?
5) How many hours did you spend collecting data?
6) Sean also wants to know: why didn't you spend more time in New Jersey??
Congrats on getting it done.
Thanks!
1) I rated my energy level from 1-10 every time I logged my activity. Very unscientific, but good enough.
2) Any activities I didn't reach the ideal number. Note: I left out a few categories so the graph wouldn't get too big. I guess the main ones are more time for sleeping, cooking, and reading.
3) My friend who was in town for a couple of days. Met her through Jean on Brazil trip.
4) Good question, I should have clarified. "Average calories" = consumed
5) I didn't log how much time I spent collecting data! But it would take me about a minute every 2 hours or so. Maybe 5 mins if I didn't log for quite a few hours.
6) LOL
Very impressive. You should most definitely try this project again. Mr. 89 hours must be a lucky guy
It would be kind of cool to repeat this at some point in the future and compare data! Haha lucky...or tolerant? :)