At last, this final installment takes place between August 22,2014 and October 12, 2014…..
OmniContext Working Productivity
After 3 months of training, I was seeing progressive improvement in my distances, energy levels, and time reductions based on my self-tracking data from Fitbit Flex and Runtastic. Now I was curious about some external changes during my last month of training. I expected that the final "push" before the big race might affect my work – life balance and even perhaps my sleep patterns.
I began monitoring my work productivity through OmniContext Personal Analytics, which allows me to see a variety of factors that determine my daily efficiency in certain tasks; including my mobility, internet usage, and work intensity for each task.
This final viewpoint was intended to gauge my personal work productivity as my physical training intensity increased. It could be argued that as our lives become encompassed with more and more goals, it can be difficult to find the appropriate work-life balance. In this case, I had a particular goal to train myself for an event, however I wanted to maintain my ongoing/ daily goals of working productively and socializing outside of work.
It should be noted that these results are based on my customized routines, working habits, and daily lifestyle. However, even if just serving as an example, it serves as an exceptional snapshot method of seeing how self-tracking is individually customized around your precise needs.
A few examples of my personal productivity analysis:
Self-Assessment after work completed
-My overall mood spanning over the 4 weeks prior to the race showed an increase in motivation, followed by a sharp drop a few days prior to the event. I would imagine that a bit of anxiety played a role in this outcome.
Most frequented work place
-My work place did not change as I find my best working habits are confined within the office and not at home surrounded by possible distractions. This entirely depends on each individual's working habits and environment. Even though my work could essentially be done from any location, my own personal analytics tells me that I a most efficient in the office amongst my peers.
Most frequented social place
-During last few weeks of training, my social outings became less and less frequent and the places visited did not vary too often. My data recorded off of my mobile device easily showed that staying-in at home became a recurring event throughout the work week.
Daily Work Activities
-My personal analytics overview showed me that my daily activities remained fairly balanced between documents, internet use, and communication. I was glad to know that my training outside of work had little to no effect on the organization of my time spent while working.
Distance Travelled
-According to my personal analysis, my overall daily distance travelled declined during the last month once a significant variable was removed from my routine. Due to a series of unfortunate events, I found myself without a car come mid-September. Despite the increase in my commute time from 13 minutes to 39 minutes, my work distance commute dropped from 24 km to 19.6 km due to the bus route. However my overall distance dropped even when considering travel outside of my commute to work.
During the final week of preparation, I decided to halt my exercises and running, and focus only on eating healthy and daily stretches. Even though I now had more time during the day, I found myself less available to socialize and less productive in achieving my daily tasks. Originally I thought because of the extra time in the mornings and evenings that I would be more available to participate in social activities. However my attitude and focus was apparently a bit scattered. Looking back on these findings, I believe it was because of the hype associated with the race, being the most intensive obstacle course in existence. This idea alone made me physically tired. Perhaps when certain tasks (such as preparing for a difficult race) are critical enough, we are unable to focus or work efficiently on other tasks at the same time.
In the end, all of my hard work and motivation paid off as I am still alive after completing the 16 km race with over 30 brutal obstacles. The medal I received at the end was well deserved and the whole experience is another piece of data I can use to better myself for next year's race. At the end of this 6-month endurance training, thanks to self-tracking I am able to know with confidence that I trained progressively well, became more physically fit, while at the same time maintaining a balance in my personal work productivity. All of these factors are important to me as a young professional interested in fitness, data, and all-around work efficiency. In today's society of Big Data, there are so many questions we should be asking about ourselves and finding the answers. Self-tracking is a surefire way to truly get to know ourselves down to the smallest detail, and with this information, optimize our lifestyles to our fullest potential.
Check out OmniContext Personal Analytics to keep your everyday goals aligned and ensure an efficient work-life balance.
