mikeshea.net
Mike Shea's 2013 Annual Report
by Mike Shea on 1 January 2014
A Year In Review by Looking at Data
The following is an analysis of various sources of data matched up with my four daily life goals: Create, Relax, Love, and Health. The data sources include blogs, Twitter, Loseit, Omnifocus, my own life goal spreadsheets, photos, Steam, Gmail, the Happiness iPhone app, and Amazon. You can also check out my 2012 Personal Year in Review or see the work that heavily influenced this report in Nicholas Felton's annual reports.
Create
- Published 56,824 words in 53 articles on Sly Flourish.
- Published 17,188 words in 16 articles on MikeShea.net.
- Published 13,682 words in Aeon Wave.
- Delivered 7,545 words on freelance projects.
- Sold 2,280 self-published books: 432 for Dungeon Master Tips, 100 for Running Epic Games, and 1,748 for the Lazy Dungeon Master.
- Released Running Epic Tier D&D Games for free under a CC license.
- The adventure I wrote for Wizards of the Coast, Vault of the Dracolich was released on D&D Classics and held the top position on hottest titles for many weeks.
- Tweeted 58,498 words in 3,903 tweets on the Sly Flourish Twitter account
- Tweeted 9,807 words in 690 tweets on the mshea Twitter account
- Ran 57 roleplaying games including D&D Next, 13th Age, Pathfinder, Dungeon World, Numenera, and Fate Core.
Relax
- Played in 18 tabletop roleplaying games including 4th Edition D&D, D&D Next, 13th Age, Pathfinder, Dungeon World, and Fate Core.
- Read 13 books (rated out of 10) including:
- Became a reconverted PC gamer.
- Played 189 hours of games on Steam (hours played, 1-10 rating):
- Skyrim (42 hours, 10)
- Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition (23 hours, 9)
- Saints Row: The Third (18 hours, 10)
- Borderlands 2 (17 hours, 10)
- Assassins Creed III (13 hours, 3)
- XCOM: Enemy Unknown (10 hours, 8)
- Bioshock Infinite (8 hours +20ish hours on ps3, 10)
- FEZ (7 hours, 10)
- Call of Juarez Gunslinger (7 hours, 9)
- Trine 2 (5 hours, 9)
- The Witcher 2 (4 hours, 3)
- LIMBO (4 hours, 9)
- Super Meat Boy (2 hours, 9)
- Favorite game of 2013: Bioshock Infinite
Love
Photos Taken in the World
Photos Taken in Ireland
Health
- Switched from diet soda to water.
- Climbed 73,440 stairs.
- Walked 748 miles with Jebu and Michelle.
- Gained 13 pounds . =(
- Ate an average of 2,469 calories per day .
- Favorite foods (number of times recorded):
- Starbucks Grande Skinny Mocha (233)
- Yogurt, Greek, Pineapple, 2% (223)
- Pudding, Chocolate, No Sugar (182)
- Pork lunch at work (147)
- Pudding (135)
- Hot Cocoa, Homemade, Made w/ Milk (131)
- Ice Cream Mint Choc Chip (124)
- Grapes, Champagne (114)
- Dark Chocolate Yogurt Raisins (106)
- Pudding, Tapioca, Mix (83)
- (No wonder I gained 13 pounds - ugh)
- Survived 1 colonoscopy.
Life Goals Tracked Daily
Over 2013 I made the mistake of switching my goals and systems to track them multiple times. This made it impossible to do a clear comparison across the whole year. If one is going to capture data like this throughout a year, choose one system and stick to it for a whole year.
Life Goals Scored January - March 2013
Life Goals Scored March - April 2013
Life Goals Scored April - Dec 2013
Omnifocus Analysis
Using a single to-do application, like Omnifocus, that tags actions to larger goals and exports to CSV is a great way to match daily actions against overall life goals. It isn't perfect or complete but it offers some potentially interesting views. The more a to-do system like this is used across one's whole life, the better an analysis we can do at the end of the year.
- Total Omnifocus actions in 2013: 1,809
- Total Omnifocus actions for Create, Relax, Love, and Health: 1,313
Actions Completed by Life Goal and Month
Actions completed by Life Goal and Hour of the Day
Actions Completed by Day of the Week and Hour of the Day
Actions by Time of Day and Month
Top Ten Actions By Word
- Record (235)
- Write (147)
- Send (127)
- Review (113)
- Call (110)
- Do (108)
- Read (89)
- check (85)
- talk (83)
- Email (64)
Why Bother?
Performing an analysis like this has a few potential benefits:
- Tying data to goals forces you to decide what is really important in your life.
- Looking at the data tells you whether or not your daily activities actually focus on those things.
- A data analysis like this has the potential to reveal behavior that you might otherwise miss.
Preparing for 2014
Because of the success in analyzing data in Omnifocus, I'm looking for more ways to use Omnifocus to track more activities. For example, rather than digging through calendars, I can track each D&D game I run as its own action. This means that sometimes I'll be writing an action and checking it off at the same time just to add a single datum into the Omnifocus pool.
I also wrote my own Lifetracker web-based mobile app to track the goals I have for 2014. I've made only one slight variation to the 2013 goals by adding "Befriend" back to the list. When I think about what is most important in my life, building and reinforcing the connections I have to my friends is extremely important. The Lifetracker helps me track the following elements:
- Create (1-10)
- Relax (1-10)
- Love (1-10)
- Befriend (1-10)
- Health (1-10)
- Happiness (1-10)
- Tags (think Twitter hash tags for things in my day or on my mind)
- Latitude and Longitude (automatically acquired)
This should give me a good set of data to analyze at the end of 2014.
Goals and Habits for 2014
When I look at my main goals I want to accomplish and habits I want to reinforce over 2014, it comes down to these top ten:
- Work on something creative daily.
- Read 15 minutes of fiction daily.
- Do the dishes daily.
- Relax and listen to Michelle daily.
- Listen to a friend daily.
- Walk 10,000 steps daily.
- Eat less than 2,200 calories daily.
- Call my mom weekly.
- See my in-laws and nieces monthly.
- Run 60 RPGs yearly.
That covers all of my five main goals to Create, Relax, Love, Befriend, and Be Healthy. Other things like playing video games, watching great TV, and other existing habits are still in play, I just don't need to focus on them like I want to focus on these.
We'll see how I do in a year!