Monthly Review: June 2015
10 Jul 2015
At the start of each month I do a review in my journal of my goals, habits, and experiments from the past month. In January 2015 I started publishing my monthly reviews on my blog instead of keeping them private. You can see them all in my monthly reviews category.
This month I added a couple of new things:
- Some of the photos I took throughout the past month.
- A list of plays I saw in the past month (I want to see more theatre whenever I can, and remember what I've seen).
- Most played music for the past month (to get a better snapshot of what I was into at the time I wrote each review).
- Average steps per day for the past month (I want to get more regular exercise).
- Screenshot of my phone's homescreen (I take one every Sunday, so I'm using the most recent one).
- Time spent coding (this is going to be hard to increase, but it's really important to me that I focus on it).
WHAT DID I COMPLETE THAT I AM PROUD OF IN JUNE?
- Finally released my first app (Exist for iOS) in the App Store!
- Sorted out my dramas with the tax office. (More relieved than proud of this one.) You can read the story here.
- Made big progress on adding a Today dashboard to my iOS app, so you can see all your Exist data for the day as well as rating your mood. Here are some of my progress shots:
WHAT GOALS DID I ATTEMPT IN JUNE?
- Release my Exist iOS app on the App Store: Yes! Finally got it live. Also released my first update to the app near the end of the month.
- Spend Saturdays coding: I want to keep setting aside Saturdays for coding, but with my increased workload and job search I only did it about half the time this month.
- Increase my freelance workload: Yep! I've had a little extra client work and some part-time work to trial a new full-time role I'm considering.
WHAT 1 HABIT DID I FOCUS ON FOR JUNE? (HOW DID THAT GO?)
Getting up early: I got up early 18 days out of 30 in June. That's 60%, so I'm over halfway there. I've got some external motivation to build this habit now that I'm getting closer to accepting a full-time job, so I'm hoping I'll hit 80% in July.
WHAT EXPERIMENTS DID I TRY?
- None. Busy focusing on finding a full-time job.
MY HOMESCREEN IN JUNE
MOST PLAYED MUSIC IN JUNE
Top artists
- Us The Duo
- Alex & Sierra
- American Authors
AVERAGE STEPS PER DAY IN JUNE
8,106
TIME SPENT CODING
46h 56m
BOOKS READ
- The First Bad Man, Miranda July
- Reaper Man, Terry Pratchett
- Tomorrow, When The War Began, John Marsden (re-read)
- The Inimitable Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse
PLAYS SEEN
- SHIT, Dee & Cornelius, MTC Neon Festival
- The Witches, Dark Mofo
MONEY SPENT
~$3,000
I switched finance tracking apps part-way through June so I can also track my income. As a result, my total spending amount is not quite exact, but close enough.
Biggest chunks: $1293 for rent, $700 for my first tax repayment.
And an update on last month's finances: I spent $433 on two pairs of Outlier pants, one of which was ruined because my tailor took them up too much. The founder of Outlier reached out after I mentioned that and offered to refund the ruined pants. That company is really great at customer service, and have been super helpful every time I've talked to them. Highly recommended for products and service.
Goals for July
I WANT TO COMPLETE:
- Start a new full-time role. I'm about to start a trial with a company I'm really excited to work with. Fingers crossed it's a good fit and I'm onboard full-time by the end of July.
- Finish the dashboard in my Exist app. This is a big goal but if I focus I think I can get it done. I've been surprised by how quickly I'm progressing so far, and some of the hardest parts are already done.
I WANT TO FOCUS ON THIS 1 HABIT:
- Getting up early. Yep, being boring and sticking with this again.
6am has been working well on the days I do get up early, so I'll stick to that. I'd like to spend the rest of July building some daily habits into a routine around work since I'm about to be working full-time. Waking up at 6am will be a good start.