Catalyst Castle

Back in November, I said that my weekly time log posts would become monthly time log posts, and I haven't posted about my time log project since. Well, I've still been logging how I use my time, and I thought I'd post an update regarding the month of February.

Last month I spent 130 hours on theocratic activities. That includes 94 hours working with the RBC #10 in Oviedo. I'm really happy that my time spent on theocratic activities has moved to first place (after sleep that is).

Next I spent 76.5 hours on secular work. With the holiday season well behind us my work as dropped to part time hours, which I'm fine with for now. I had been hoping to gain full-time employment this year, but I've changed my attitude somewhat and am planning on putting off working full-time in favor of trying to regular pioneer.

I spent 34 hours reading. That isn't entirely accurate. Because a lot of my "work" with the RBC involves waiting around for materials to be delivered, I actually spent quite a few hours reading while I was there. These 34 hours represent time devoted solely to reading.

Creative pastimes, such as working on this blog and my wiki, creative writing, art, game design, and RPG prep, received 47 hours of my time. I'm pretty happy with that. I don't feel like that's an exorbitant amount of time, and I think I've accomplished a fair amount on my various projects.

Entertainment took up another 47 hours. This includes watching movies and shows, playing card games, board games, role-playing games, and sports.

Lastly, I spent 5.5 hours on housework, errands, and shopping.

Overall, I'm very happy with how I spent my time last month. I'm actually very happy with my life in general. Not that everything is going perfectly, but for the first time in a long time I feel like I'm right where I need to be in life, doing what I need to be doing. And that makes the bumps in the road a lot easier to put up with.

Normally I would be making another post about my weekly time log for last week. However, it seems that my activities have pretty much stabilized. Over the last month I've drastically improved my study habits and field service so that theocratic activities are solidly in third place, right under sleep and work, which is right where they need to be. I've adjusted my other activities to accommodate a better spiritual routine, and now I'm just trying to maintain that.

This week I plan to introduce a new activity to my weekly routine. That will be language study. I want to start learning Japanese again. Also, I'll probably be doing more writing now that things are beginning to slow down around here.

Other than that, I don't see my activities changing much, so while I'll still be logging my time, I probably won't be posting updates of those activities on my blog. I might post a summary once a month, like I did here, but not every week.

This is a post to consider my activities over the past month, and identify trends in how I spend my time. My idea was to do this after 4 weeks, but I accidentally let a 5th week slip by.

Here are the top 10 activities I spent the most time on in the last 5 weeks:

1. Sleeping
2. Work
3. Theocratic Activities
4. Reading
5. Movies/Shows
6. RPG Preparation
7. Housework
8. Card/Board Games
9. RPG Play
10. Blog/Wiki

A few observations about those:

I'd like it if I could have RPG Prep time no greater than RPG play time. Doing so requires that I get more efficient and more disciplined about how I prep, and not over-prep. I have a feeling that I'll never get this where I want to though because, honestly, I like fiddling with RPG systems, building character stats, and detailing story ideas.

I was surprised how much time I spent on housework, because it never feels like I spend that much time on it. I guess that's good though. I suppose that it's spread out enough that I don't really feel like it imposes on my life.

It's a shame that writing doesn't even appear in my top 10 activities, because I enjoy it so much. Actually it's been hard to write with family visiting, because more activity in the house makes it harder to concentrate on writing. Not that I'm in a hurry to get rid of them, but hopefully my writing will increase when my family has finished their visit.


Now, the whole purpose of logging my time was so that I could see how I was using it and make adjustments where necessary. So here is a summary of some of the adjustments I've made over the last 5 weeks. The first week my theocratic activities only tied for 3rd place with reading. This past week they were firmly in 3rd place, with reading in 4th. My time spent reading has varied from one week to another, but overall it hasn't decreased much. So, I've actually been able to increase my theocratic activities. Work has been picking up, so I'm spending more time on that than I was 5 weeks ago, and my housekeeping has increased slightly. Other than that, not much has changed, at least not drastically.


So, what now? Over the next few weeks I'd like to continue raising my theocratic activities by maintaining and increasing my spiritual routine, especially in the areas of personal study and field service. Thanks reading my weekly time logs. I encourage everyone to try keeping a similar log. You'll be amazed how it can effect your productivity.

This post is coming a little late because I've been busy. Here's my report for last week. It wasn't as great as the previous week, but it was OK.

The biggest disappointment was that I didn't get out in service at all. Also, I missed 1 day of personal study. My theocratic activities still held third place amongst all of my activities though, right after sleeping and work. Reading was a pretty close fourth, and movies/shows and housework tied for fifth.

While I did miss service last week, I guess I can still be happy that, overall, I didn't let my spiritual activities drop below third place. That means I spent more time on personal study and meeting preparation to make up for it. I'm not entirely sure why I missed service both Thursday and Saturday, but I suppose a big factor might be my sleeping schedule. Sleep has been a bit erratic for me lately.

My brother Brian and his wife Cherie finished their visit last week, however, and my brother David will be leaving tomorrow. While I enjoy their company, I know that their presence disrupted my schedule somewhat. Hopefully things will begin to stabilize more soon.

In the coming weeks I need to refocus on service and personal study in order to keep up my spiritual routine.

This post is coming a little late, but I just haven't had a chance to do any blogging lately, mostly due to visiting family.

Last week was GREAT. Once again, I managed to put my theocratic activities firmly in third place (after sleeping and work), and I met a couple of other goals which included getting out in field service twice and doing some personal study each day.

Here are a few more observations:

Sleep was very irregular last week. I still got a little more than 50 hours of sleep through out the week, but it was like, 6 hours two days in a row, and then 10 hours, and then 5 and a half, etc. I'm not sure what that means, it's just an observation.

Reading was a big activity last week with 13 hours devoted to it. That's quite a bit of time, but since my theocratic activities went so well I'm not too worried about it. I'm finding that a big part of balancing my schedule is just making sure I get spiritual activities done instead of putting them off while I waste time, rather than cutting back on anything in particular.

One sad note about last week is that I got no role playing in all week. Oh well. I still had a lot of fun doing stuff with my family.

Another week is gone, and I've logged my hours once more. Here's my top 5 time spenders:

1. Sleeping
2. Work
3. All Theocratic Activities Combined
   
4. Reading
5. RPG Prep

Work moved back up to second place. My work should continue to increase over the next couple of months and then suddenly drop after the first of the year. That's when I'll be looking for a new job. My theocratic activities moved up to third place, which is right where I want them. Though I would still like to increase my time spent on service and personal study. Reading moved back up into the top five, while RPG Prep slipped from second place to fifth.

Those are the highlights. I had 42.5 hours unaccounted for last week, which is 1 less than the week before. Maybe I'll be able to continue whittling that time down, and thus become more productive.

Overall, I'm not too disappointed with my activities this past week, though I am planning on making a few adjustments to my schedule in order to increase my theocratic activities even more.

A week ago I posted about a project I am undertaking to log how I spend my hours throughout the week and make adjustments to be sure I'm leading a balanced life. The project continues. This past week I logged my time again, and here are some of the highlights of my results.

Here are the rankings for top activities:

1. Sleeping
2. RPG Preparation
3. Work
4. Movies/Shows
5. All Theocratic Activities Combined

Sleeping was still my biggest activity. No surprise there. I didn't work as much last week as the week before, so work slipped down to third place. What's most appalling is that my theocratic activities combined slipped down to fifth place, which is unacceptable.

Time spent on RPG prep shot up from 6 hours to 14 hours. A big reason for this is that I started a new RPG campaign with Gareth. Preparing for a new campaign always takes extra time. In future, however, I would like to spend no more time preparing for RPGs than I do playing them. We'll see how that goes.

Time spent on Movies/Shows rose from 8 hours to 12. I don't see that it's getting out of hand yet, but I do need to keep an eye on it, especially since it beat out theocratic activities.

Reading, on the other hand, dropped from 12 hours to 3. I didn't intentionally cut back on reading, I just fell behind.

Those, of course, are just highlight. I also spent quite a few hours on miscellaneous stuff. I still had 43.5 hours unaccounted for, which is only slightly less than last week. That tells me I could still manage my time better to be more productive.

I think my final observations for last weeks log are these: I need to increase my theocratic activities by spending more time on personal study, field service, and meeting preparation. I also need to be more efficient in my RPG prep, so that I spend less time preparing for games.

I've started a new project to examine how I spend my time and hopefully evaluate how I can use it more productively. I'm also trying to become more balanced in how much time I spend on various activities. I started this project last Monday and tracked my activities through Sunday. Here's some interesting numbers from my log:

I spent 56 hours sleeping. That's an average of 8 hours a day. It's nice to know that I seem to be getting a healthy amount of sleep while not oversleeping.

My second biggest activity beyond sleeping was working. I only spent 16 hours working, so I was kind of surprised that it ranked second. Apparently my activities are pretty diverse. My work hours should ramp up during October, and then stay pretty high through November and December. After the first of the year I'm going to get a full time job.

My third biggest activity was reading. There is no surprise here. This was mostly informational reading. I spend quite a bit of time online, reading up on game design and the like.

Another big one was movies and shows. I was worried about this. I think I may spend too much time on entertainment, but at only 8 hours throughout the week it might not be too bad.

I spent 6 hours on RPG prep, and 3 hours on RPG play. Actually, I didn't have any prep to do for the RPG I played. I was preparing for an RPG I'd like to run in the future.

The most discouraging thing is that I only spent 12 hours on meeting prep, meeting attendance, and field service combined. My goal is to make my time spent on theocratic activities at least third under sleep and work.

Probably the worst thing is that I had 45 hours unaccounted for on my log. That means I spent those hours peddling around doing relatively nothing. It's funny how we never seem to have enough time in the day, and yet we waste so much of our time.

So that's it for last week. I'm logging my time again this week, and trying to make some adjustments.