Tuesday, January 13, 2009

24 Hours, A spreadsheet

Happy New Year! It's been my second week back at work and I've learned a new skill.  And it's how to create a pie chart in a spreadsheet. And it's pretty easy.  Here's one instruction on how to do it in a spreadsheet, in OpenOffice Calc to be specific but this should work for those using Microsoft Excel too.


After creating a pie chart for my boss and his data, here's one I did for myself and my 24 hour day on a work day:
 

Exhibit A: The Data


Exhibit B: The Pie Chart


Exhibit C: The Video

This video was my attempt to make it a tutorial but it just sort of fell apart. So, instead, please enjoy the music by Lee Maddeford called "Tom's Lullaby."  For more info about Lee Maddeford and his music please go here.



 Addendum: The Notes

Out of a 24 hour day, I can now see that 50% of my time or 12 hours is spent on work and work related activities (Commuting time + Work time + Lunch time).   

Actually also taking a portion (which I didn't include in this pie chart) is the Waking Up time and the  Getting Ready For Work time. Getting Ready For Work time should really be added to the Work time portion of the chart, another 3 to 4 percent actually.  I'll be sure to adjust this in my next pie chart.

The Commute time are just averages, sometimes, more often times the AM Commute time isn't as consistent as the PM Commute time. For some reason there seems to be more problems and happenings in the morning rush hour (traffic, people jumping in front of trains, too much rain/flood, etc) than the afternoon rush hour and so the percentages for the AM Commute time can go up to 7% and even 8%. Which is fine most of the time, because sometimes I can use this as an excuse if my Sleep time goes a little bit over.

33% is spent on Sleep time or rather that's how much I'd like to spend on sleep.  33% is the ideal but that's not often the case because I find that  Free Time often wants to take a big portion of it.  Free Time at 13% or 3 hours is often not enough time for dropping entrecards or other such activities like blogging or talking on the phone...

Conclusion: There isn't enough time in a day. And I am tired and it's time to go to sleep. See you next time!


5 comments:

Francis Scudellari said...

3 hours is a very long commute. If you're taking a train, I hope there's time for reading/playing on the laptop at least, which slightly expands the "free time" category.

Ms. O. D. said...

@Francis haha! I must admit I do enjoy my train rides especially when I get a seat, sit down and do the crosswords or read a book while listening to the ipod, and with the ipod lately I've been trying to listen to audio books. Naps are also nice too. I guess I can't really include this as part of my Work time :) I often wish for some kind of mobile phone service on the train... I'm not sure why they can't provide it here, I know in other countries service is available. Wireless internet would be nice too...

lvs said...

What half your day goes in work....your boss needs to give you a break.

But wow the quality of the charts you have created here shows that you must be very good at your work. Maybe that is why you are indispensable to your boss and have to work so hard :)

Ms. O. D. said...

@lvs LOL! I mostly just answer phone calls (and we've been getting a lot of junk calls lately) and at the same time play on the internet all day at work. I think they're keeping me because I don't get paid much.

Film-Book dot Com said...

Very cool. Have you tried using statpro for chart generation?

BTW, I came to your site through Twitter.

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