Personal Board Update: Q4 2020

Personal Board of Advisors Update Q4 2020

July 1st - January 1st (2020-2021)

Overview

Highlights:

• Finished up my PM internship at DataRobot on the ML Ops team (ended August 7th)
• Did a bike trip Boston to NYC with my brother Michael (8+ flat tires all on Mike's bike and all fixed by me)
• Moved Michael into UT Austin for his freshman year (film major)
• Started getting more serious about MeetSunday (Now Intros.ai) and started moving away from our consumer product.
• Started engineering Co-op at 1Password on their 7 person Android Team
• Took a 11 week road trip while working 9am-5pm on 1Password and 7pm-12am on Intros.
• Saturdays were my exploration + content day and Sundays were my driving day. Some weekends both Saturday and Sunday were driving days (Michigan to Utah was 23.5 hrs worth of driving)
• Places hit: NY, Ann Arbor Michigan, Salt Lake City Utah, Portland Oregon, San Francisco CA, San Diego CA, Phoenix Arizona/ Sedona, Albuquerque New Mexico, Austin Texas, New Orleans, Nashville Tennessee, Durham North Carolina, Richmond Virginia, NYC, back home to Boston for Thanksgiving
• Finished up at 1Password (Dec 18th)
• Went full time at Intros (5:00pm on Dec 18th)
• Quietly launched our private beta
• Spent New Years down in Miami (Dec 28th-Jan 3rd)

Personal Metrics

Productivity (Subjective score 1 - 10 measured weekly)

• Q2 Average: 8.2
• Q3 Average: 7.1
• % Change Q2 - Q3: -13.42%
• Q4 Average: 6.5
• % Change Q3 - Q4: -8.46%

Sleep (Measured Daily)

Sleep Score (Score 1-10 - Takes into account: Total sleep, Efficiency, Restfulness, REM, Deep sleep, Timing, and Latency)

• Q2 Average: 6.3
• Q3 Average: 6.1
• % Change Q2 - Q3: -3.2%
• Q4 Average: 6.1
• % Change Q3 - Q4: 0%

Average Bed time

• Q2: 1:03am
• Q3: 12:44am
• Q4: 1:54am (Spent lot of this time on West coast and this is EST)

Average Sleep Length

• Q2: 6hrs 26 min
• Q3: 6hrs 9 min
• Q4: 6hrs 15 min

Average Sleep Efficiency

• Q2: 77%
• Q3: 74%
• Q4: 77%

Sleep impact on productivity

Q3:

• 13.4% productivity
• 3.2% Sleep score

Q4:

• 8.46% Productivity
• +0% Sleep Score (+ 6 minutes sleep length and + 3% efficiency though)

Meditation, Journaling, and Working out impact on Productivity

• +19.0% on Meditation time
• +21% on Journaling time
• -14.2% on time spent working out
• +32.1% on time spent being social

Time Spent...

Meditation:

• Average: Did poor job measuring this but ~1.5 hours a week

Journaling:

• Average Q3: 28.9 minutes/ week
• Average Q4: 34.4 minutes/week
• % Change: +19.0% FUCK YEAH

Working out:

• Average Q3: 2 hrs 21 minutes
• Average Q4: 2 hours 1 minute
• % Change: -14.2% Damn...

Social time:

• Average Q3: 5 hrs 21 minutes
• Average Q4: 7 hrs 5 minutes
• % Change: +32.1%

Time spent on messages (texting):

• Average: 7.6 hrs/week

Time spent on all social media:

• Average: 4hrs/ week

Time spent on dating apps (Hinge):

• Average: 3hrs/week

9 Reflection questions I asked myself each week

Curiosity:

• What have you been curious about?
• In what ways have you acted upon your curiosity?
• What have you learned this week?

Processes:

• What day to day process are you improving?
• What changes have you made to your social system? (Will write up a post on this sometime soon!)
• What are you spending too much time on?

Relationships:

• Who did you appreciate this past week?
• Who were you thoughtful with this past week?
• Who do you need to reach out to this coming week?

Intros Update

• I went full time on Intros

Personal Goals for Q1 2021

• Get Sleep average over 6 hrs 30 minutes/ night
• Get Meditation average over 1 hour / week
• Get Content creation average over 3 hours / week

System changes for Q1 2021

Moving forward, I have a plan to make my measurements far more actionable so I know what I need to double down on and which of my habits are not making a meaningful difference.

• If you're curious about what my day to day schedule looks like, I recently made a "Working with David" document so I can be as transparent as possible with my team.
• Measure focus daily (1-10) + focus reflection: This will help me make productivity more tangible (right now it's a weekly summary and rough estimate)
• Measure daily fulfillment (1-10) + fulfillment reflection
• Daily regret
• Daily grateful moment
• I want to more consistently see the relationships between the following metrics:
  • How focus affects fulfillment
  • How social time effects fulfillment (and what type of "being social" whether it be a lunch in person or a video call with an old friend).
  • How working out affects sleep
  • How meditation affects productivity
  • How being social affects productivity