First Grind Report, December 2015 Productivity Results

Grind report, yes! Grinding as in working hard, day in and day out. No excuses, no complaining.

This is a monthly report I’m going to start doing that will keep me accountable for being productive and effective in my work ethic.

What Is a Grind Report?

So you’re wondering, what is this grind report? In my last blog post I mentioned Viper Chill’s article about his productivity work style, and he also uses pomodoros. He is tracking like me, and I want to also jump on the band wagon and start publicly sharing how many I’m doing and what I am focusing on.

Think he just made this up, but the name matches what I would call it and let’s see how it goes!

How I Track My Productivity

So I don’t do the normal 25 minute pomodoro, I actually do 30 minute work sets and then a 5 minute break. Why? Because I use brain.fm and it only have 30 minute music sets and I want to align this system.

I also use a stop watch rather than a mobile app, I just like that I can clip it on my laptop and look at it to push me to maximize the pomodoro.

If I get disturbed by my wife or kids, then I have to reset the pomodoro. This has caused some tension when working at home, as I am really “in the zone” when I’m on this timer set. Trying to convert everyone to this system but at least educate them. Would be amazing if I can get my kids to embrace this, wish I had done pomorodos since I was a toddler!

I put the sets into a daily google document, and then onto a google spreadsheet that tracks the totals. I am learning how to embed these charts on my blog here, and you can see the numbers real time.

December 2015 Grind Report Results

So, after all that explanation, here’s my numbers:

Comments on December’s Results

The end of December I was extremely focused. I think way back to high school I was a workaholic on the holidays. Just get bored at home with businesses closed, so I would be able to lock myself on my computer and work away. This holiday season was able to do that, and did a ton of work sets.

Of course it is a challenge to do too many with the family and my desire to spend time with them. So I would have done more, but I think a lot of time when we’re on our deathbed we don’t regret that we should have spent more time working. My family is still young and I want to maximize my time with them, especially on the holidays.

Next Month’s Targets

So since this is the first grind report, I’m already halfway through the next month, typing this up in mid Jan 2016.

So far it has been a rougher start than I thought. My “excuse” is Miles my son is now able to open doors and storms into the room when I’m working from home. I lock the door but he still bangs on it so hard – then my wife comes and the pomodoro session breaks….have to reset the timer.

Wendy is telling me I should work outside of home, but then I won’t see my kid as much. I like to hop over to see him during my 5 minute pomodoro breaks and also the 10 – 20 minute breaks. Even if I were to go to a cafe down the street, it would be impossible to see him in those short breaks.

So I have to say it will be hard to beat December’s rockstar productivity bursts. It was a good time to have less emails due to most people on holiday, now things are getting busy in the grind.

Maybe when Chinese New Year comes in early Feb I’ll get some time. though by then my 2nd baby will be on this Earth and I may have a lot of new daddy duties.

But I’ll keep grinding and measuring, I like these reports!

How About Your Grind Report?

I’d love to see some other join me on these grind reports. How are you doing your work sets? Exercise your mind and your focus with pomodoro sets. I actually do mine in 30 minute sets to match my brain.fm program I’m using.

Anyway, I’d be more motivated to see friends using this and if I can have some friendly competition going! Let me know in the comments or shoot me a message.