Year: 2017

How I invested 8760 hours in 2017

Published by ericaeyoung

Inspired by Kunal Gupta’s How I Invested 2504 Hours post, I decided to perform my own audit for 2017. My goal was to compare how I actually invested my time to the ideal 24 hours I imagined back in 2016. This way, I could decide if I wanted to change my time allocation for 2018 and implement habits to help me do so. Back in 2016, here’s what I outlined for a typical day: Sleep and restorative (sleep and naps) – 7 hrs / 30% Creative and productive (content creation, workshops, culture) – 7 hrs / 30% Eating and social (meals, coffee, drinks) – 5 hrs / 20% Active and physical (exercise, walking, sex) – 3 hrs / 12% Quiet and reflective (meditation, reading, bath) – 2 hrs / 8%  The results. All in, I was able to account for about 80% of my time in 2017. Of that time, a third was scheduled, a third was unscheduled estimates and a third was sleep. While the math is obvious, it was still surprising to internalise that spending …

Primary relationships impact personal network structures

Published by ericaeyoung

In my post “Change over time“, I hypothesised that coupling up and separating with someone would have a significant impact on the structure of an individual’s personal network. After my divorce many years ago, my network structure shifted from one that was compartmentalised to that of a ‘sampler’. Little did I know that I would soon have the opportunity to actually test this theory.Between 2015 and 2016, I tracked how my London social network grew from a small group of pre-existing connections to a reasonably strong support system. In the resulting graph, I emphasised the role that non-local contacts had in helping me expand my community. Now I’ve taken 2016 data and compared it to the present in a new visual:The most dramatic differences between the 2016 and 2017 visualisations are the new node sitting at the centre of the graph and the cluster of new nodes on the far right. That central node is my new partner and the cluster to the right is the portion of his London network that he has introduced to me. His …

Honeycomb hexayurt

Published by ericaeyoung

The first time I went to Burning Man, my experience was made much more comfortable by fellow campers who had prepared temporary shelters and offered me a spare. Insulation from cold, reflection of sun, firm walls, and being able to stand up removed many of the common irritations of camping. When our group began planning for this year’s trip to the Burn, I wanted to give them the same level of comfort. I set out to design a structure that would provide all of those benefits and some privacy, while minimising the amount of construction materials we’d have to buy and transport.The design I arrived at is based on the 6′ hexayurt, one of the many designs by Vinay Gupta. In order to reduce the amount of building materials required, I arranged them in a honeycomb layout. This saved us 4 sheets of 4’x8′ insulating foam and about a roll of filament tape. It could easily be expanded to incorporate more hexayurts, seemingly indefinitely (though it does make sealing much more difficult). Here’s the recipe.Preparation materials: …

Standing the test of time

Published by ericaeyoung

It’s been over 9 months since I adopted 3 ‘networked’ habits to test if I could make them more resilient than stacked habits in the face of change. This is one of the four intentions that I set for myself during my 2016 yearly review. Since then I have: Transitioned from being single to having a partner Moved from East London to North London Managed a new commercial partnership Traveled a total of 8 weeks In the past, any one of those situations would have thrown me off the wagon. Changes to workload, routine and certainly life stage have historically had a big impact on my foundation habits. However, this time I’m thrilled to report that I am still consistently eating healthy (38 AmazonFresh orders placed in 2017), walking (at least 1:30 hour ~4x/week), and meditating (~4x/week). The walking is either to commute, attend meetings or even as a meeting itself).Of course, I’m still linking the new activity to another one that was already deeply embedded. The difference is that I’m not layering other new activities …

Eight weeks of ‘networked’ habits

Published by ericaeyoung

Gotta celebrate the little wins! At the end of last year I completed another year in review and identified 3 areas that I wanted to focus on for 2017. One of areas of focus is intensity, where I’ve asked the question: How can I make my foundation habits more resilient to changes in my life’s intensity and rhythm?Limitations of habit stacking. I’ve had the ongoing issue of stacking habits only to watch them fall like a house of cards in the face of change. When I fall off the wagon, it can take me months to get back on again. The only foundation habit I consistently maintained in 2016 was sleeping 8 hours a night. In Q1 I kept an incredibly aggressive physical training schedule. In Q2 I ate healthy and cooked consistently. Most of Q4 I meditated regularly. There was no stretch of time when I managed to consistently incorporate all 4 into my life together.Enter networked habits. Yeah, I know, if your tool is a hammer everything looks like a nail. However, I do find that my most resilient habits are connected to several …