Weekly review: week 29, 2023

Metrics

Health

I'm reducing my strength training sessions because I'm starting to work with a personal trainer, and I don't want to extenuate myself while we are still defining the workout plan in active training sessions. It's likely going to be an A/B block of strength training and metabolic training, which will definitely put me out of my comfort zone, but I'm excited to see how it goes.

Also, the hotter it gets in here, the less proper sleep I have. But that's summer in Barcelona!

Key metrics

• Worked out 5 days (same as week before):
  • 2x strength training sessions (⇣50% decrease).
  • 1x indoor stationary bike (6.1 km total, ⇣73% decrease).
  • 3x outdoor runs (27.6km, ⇡224.7% increase).
• Sleep: 4h 59min daily average (⇣10.75% decrease).
• Alcohol: had two drinks this week (⇣33% decrease).

Productivity

Reviewing my goals for last week, I've accomplished 5 out of 7 of these goals. The other two are in good progress, but work only has value when it's shipped. One of the two it's taking longer than expected because of what seems to be a weird bug or edge-case, but it seems like we are getting closer to the root cause.

I've had more (and longer) meetings this week than I was expecting, but all of them were very valuable, and I've still managed to get a good amount of deep work in.

Key metrics

• Total time at the computer: 55 hours, 21 minutes (⇣21 minutes from week before).
• Productivity pulse: 88/100 (⇡4% from week before).
• Productive time: 48h 8min (⇡4h 43min from week before).

Spent most of my time this week video conferencing (29% of my time), followed by coding (16%), and async messaging and communication (10%).

Media

Books

• Continuing Guards! Guards!, by Terry Pratchett (52% done).
• Finished Faith, Hope and Carnage, by Nick Cave and Sean O'Hagan.
• Started Range, by David Epstein (8.5% done).
• Started What I talk about when I talk about running, by Haruki Murakami (15% done).

Series

• The Crowded Room: season 1, episode 9.
• Hijack: season 1, episode 5.
• Foundation: season 2, episode 2.
• The Bear: season 1, episodes 1 and 2.

Questions

What went well this week?

Quite a productive week both in terms of work, personal projects, and health goals. I managed to complete almost all of my goals, as well as getting a good amount of exercise in.

Yesterday I went for a longer run (13.6 km), trying to stay in zone 2 as much as possible, and it's been the longest (and most enjoyable) run I've done in quite a while. I'm definitely not in shape for a half-marathon yet, but I'm not trying to rush it: my glutes are doing better, and I have not experience any other pain or discomfort. Also, listening to audiobooks while running is an amazing experience, especially when the book author is the narrator.

What could be improved?

The only meditation session I managed to squeeze in was a walking (guided) meditation while commuting on Tuesday. I'm going to try to build the daily meditation habit this week, and see how it goes.

I need to better protect my non-meeting time, and plan around my meetings. Having so many goals last week, while having so many meetings, was a bit too much. What helps the most is to have already a locked down schedule (while allowing for flexibility) by the end of the previous week, so I need to do more of that this week to already protect that time.

And yes, I need to improve my sleep hygiene and at least go to bed earlier than I am going right now.

What are the goals for next week?

• Kick off landing page for Project P.
• Explore a better integration of the Help Center docs with the apps.
• Migrate one frontend project to our monorepo.
• Apply visual tweaks to the new Otter website.
• Kick off daily meditation habit: aim for 10 minutes daily.

If you have any feedback, thoughts, or questions, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter.