I just finished a great book, “Better” by Atul Gawande, a surgeon, scientist, and writer. A primary message, applicable outside of the world of medicine, is that we should always be counting something, even if it’s just to see if there’s a reason to be counting. I have decided that I’m going to count the hours of sleep I get in a night versus the time of the 50th line of code I write the next day and the amount of truly productive time I spend at work. Why the 50th? It’s easy to get through 1. I could get through 1 just to allow myself to count it. To avoid externalities such as meetings, I will pause my clock whenever I could not for any reason be working on code.

I’m going to give this trial counting run a month and then I’ll examine my results for a direct correlation. I suspect that I’ll find one, and will thus be able to compute the minimum amount of sleep I need to be maximally productive.

Think that sounds hard to track? Guess again - I’m a software developer - the script is already written, and the results shall be tracked in a database.

“truly productive time” - I will gauge this myself to be total time spent “in the zone” doing maximally productive development work. Since I am also compelled to measure my billable time in our time tracking system, I think I will be able to derive some valuable measurements from this experiment whether there is a direct correlation between sleep.

One… one unproductive hour spent reading The Onion and harassing my coworkers! AH HA HA HA HA

Last Saturday night I attended the Artcrank Poster Show in downtown Minneapolis.

The show was at one on one bicycle studio, a place I had never been but wish I had, and will go back. And whatdya know, ran into Mr Tim Bramer! Pretty cool concept - Bike shop/Art Gallery/Coffee House/Local Hang Out for bicycling enthusiasts and activists. They also have a “bike graveyard” in the basement - hundreds and hundreds of old bikes and parts lined and stacked, interesting.

On display was a pretty impressive collection of bike inspired art and design, including this one by one of my design school classmates Adam Turman. He’s got a great style and does a lot of concert posters and album art for an impressive roster of clients. I picked up a couple of Minneapolis-ish prints for my office a couple of weeks ago - (this one and this one), just need to get them framed.

*update - Adam posted pics from the event on his blog

Interesting view of US home pricing data plotted to a 3D rolloercoaster ride. Prices are adjusted to inflation, and mapped from 1890 to the present.

Ride the Rollercoaster>