She Does Better

Emilie Burke

September Wish List

// Goals

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Two weeks at home and then two weeks gone this month. I need to be sure to not let the fact that I’m going to be traveling destroy my first two weeks.

Here are some things I’d like to see happen this month:

  • Keep all the appointments that I have scheduled
  • Finish 2.5 books
  • Get to page 290 in Starting Strength
  • Finish talk for Commit + ATO

Cool things that happened in August:

  • Finished 3 books – Heartland, High Output Management, Don’t Stop Just Quit – the total opposite of last month (where all I read was fiction)
  • San Francisco –> Vancouver –> San Francisco –> Denver –> San Francisco –> Home
  • Looked at a lot of rental homes
  • 10 workouts, including hitting my full snatch PR 13x
  • Had an incredible month at work

Picture: Our comforter doesn’t fit in the washer, so I don’t wash it nearly as much as I should. I finally took it to the gigantic machines at the laundromat.

April 2019 Goals

// Goals

Reading Time: 2 minutes

April is here, faster than I had hoped! On to it…

March Goals

  • Read 3 books. I read FIVE books in March- The Female Brain (Dr. Louann Brizendine), Juliet’s School of Possibilities (Laura Vanderkam), Rework (Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson), Into the Water (Paul Hawkins), and When Breath Becomes Air (Paul Kalanathi). I didn’t realize I read those all in March until right now! This puts me 1 book ahead of my target pace for my GoodReads Challenge.
  • Honor stitch night and mastermind. Yes! My ladies are still meeting every Tuesday. I’m slowly chipping away at my Sav Ornament.
  • CrossFit 12 times and Orange Theory 4 times. I did finish both memberships, so we’ll call this one done.
  • Publish one blog post on She Does Data. Nope. Though I have to write one this week!
  • Finish writing my goodreads scraper. 👉 Project Repo. Lol, I did not code on this at all this month.
  • Say NO to three things and write them down. Yes, but I still said YES to far too many things. One step at a time, though.

ICYMI: 2019 Goals & My Word of the Year

My sister visited for St. Patrick’s Day in Savannah

April Goals

  • Read 3 books. I’ll be traveling for 10 days this month which has always helped with my reading. I just need to be sure I pack enough books.
  • Honor stitch night and mastermind. I hope to get some longer stitching bouts in too!
  • Figure out the gym situation. I’m not going to go into a lot of detail now, so let’s just leave this at this.
  • Publish two blog posts on She Does Data.
  • Finish writing my goodreads scraper. 👉 Project Repo. The first milestone here is shipping the extraction piece.

April Habit Tracker

I use an app called HabitShare (free on iOS) to track some of my habits.

This month I’ll be tracking “No Spend” days, Gym days, Read days, and Writing days. What gets measured gets improved.

  • No Spend (anything over $1). As I mentioned above, my goal is to hit 15 no spend days in February.
  • Gym. From a habit perspective, I’d like to see my “Never miss two days in a row” rule be honored and get 16 workouts in this month.
  • Read (at least 1 page). Just doing my thing.
  • Writing for a blog post, email newsletter, or streaking.app (Not emails, tweets, or issues for work.). Just starting to collect data here.

As I mentioned briefly, I’ll be on the road for part of the month. Travel has traditionally either propelled me to new heights or knocked me flat on my butt with no in-between. Let’s hope for the former.

March 2019 Goals

// Goals

Reading Time: 4 minutes

I took a very, very extended weekend, so while this post comes in the middle of the week, it’s just coming at the top of my first weekday for March. Work last week was insane- in a wow, this is hard, but I love my job for these challenges so much way. I’ve been slipping into bad habits around saying yes, and the last two weeks of February I felt myself dipping into true exhaustion. I’m feeling better, but I’m still not feeling creative.

Anyway, let’s dive right into it…

February Goals

  • Read 2 books. Nope. For the first time in… two years? I haven’t read two books in a month. I’ll talk about this a little more when it comes to the habit tracker below, but I think technical books that are slower to read can be de-motivating if they’re also not in my wheelhouse.
  • Honor stitch night, mastermind, and content audit time. I did good about going to my stitch night and staying loyal to my mastermind, but I didn’t work on the content audit at all. I’m going to not have that as a goal for the immediate future and I can reelavuate in a month or so.
  • CrossFit 12 times and Orange Theory 4 times. I CrossFitted 9 times and OTF’ed 2 times for a total of 11 workouts.
  • Publish one blog post on She Does Data. It’s not the post thought it was going to be, but I did write Things I Learned at PyTN 2019.
  • Finish writing my goodreads scraper. I worked on this a little, but not as much as I would have hoped I would have.

February Habit Tracker

No Spend (anything over $1)

I set the goal of 12 no spend days in February and that’s exactly what I did. This is better, for sure. I bought new sneakers and heels that I was needing, as well as a new denim jacket. For the first time in a while, my wardrobe feels like it’s making sense, though I still need better blouses. There were a lot of gifts this month (Valentine’s Day + visitors to Savannah), so not bad.

I had 12 no spend days in February. Let’s see if I can get that to 15 in February.

Gym (at least 20 minutes)

The biggest gap this month was that I totally dropped off the map leading up to conference travel from the eighth to the tenth (I think I took this “I’m going to be gone, so I need to get ahead mindset) and then indulged in all of my weekends.

This wasn’t my best month, for sure, but this month I saw a lot of progress. My trap definition is starting to come back, and OTF this weekend was a pain mostly because I kept popping my armband every time I flexed my bicep. Slowly but surely I’m getting back into a real flow.

Read (at least 1 page)

Looking at this chart makes me very sad because this is probably one of the worst reading months I’ve had in over a year. I don’t mind reading technical things, but this was a hormones-as-technical things book. It being hard made me demotivated to read. The good news is, I already finished the book, so we’re already moving again.

Writing

At a glance, doesn’t it look like my reading and writing are related? I think so, but who knows.

ICYMI: 2019 Goals & My Word of the Year

Pasta-making class from our Valentine’s Day date

March Goals

  • Read 3 books. I need to make up for last month!
  • Honor stitch night and mastermind. I sent my Mr & Mrs ornament in to be finished, but now I have to get my Savannah ornament done in time to be finished before Christmas. The MM group has been growing and we need to double down on it.
  • CrossFit 12 times and Orange Theory 4 times. This is another way of saying workout every other day this month.
  • Publish one blog post on She Does Data. Maybe this will be on the difference between data visualization and data using the OTBurn app as an example, but maybe it’ll be on something else.
  • Finish writing my goodreads scraper. 👉 Project Repo. The first milestone here is shipping the extraction piece.
  • Say NO to three things and write them down. I want to track the things I’m saying NO to.

March Habit Tracker

I use an app called HabitShare (free on iOS) to track some of my habits.

This month I’ll be tracking “No Spend” days, Gym days, Read days, and Writing days. What gets measured gets improved.

  • No Spend (anything over $1). As I mentioned above, my goal is to hit 15 no spend days in February.
  • Gym. From a habit perspective, I’d like to see my “Never miss two days in a row” rule be honored and get 16 workouts in this month.
  • Read (at least 1 page). Just doing my thing.
  • Writing for a blog post, email newsletter, or streaking.app (Not emails, tweets, or issues for work.). Just starting to collect data here.

I have no travel planned for March, which feels really exciting! Do you have goals you’re setting for the month?

February 2019 Goals

// Goals

Reading Time: 4 minutes

How is it already February? Ooookay, January just flew by! Since this is the “Year of No.“, I felt myself actively using that to turn down requests this year. This is very, very good! Let’s see if I can keep it up!

January Goals

  • Read 3 Books. This month I finished three new books: Atomic Habits by James Clear, Red Platoon by Clinton Romesha, and The Warrior’s Silence by Ord Elliot.
  • Stick to three new time blocks (mastermind, stitching, and content auditing). Yes! I was able to honor these time blocks for Weeks 2, 3, and 4. (I had not yet published goals for Week 1.)
  • Workout 20 times. Unfortunately, not. I wrote about this in my newsletter this week and in Planning When to Workout. I did come very, very close; this was, by far, my best month in a very, very long time (maybe a year?).
  • Work on ONE coding side project. When I set this goal, I mentioned I wanted to roll out the thing that would generate a schema.yml for dbt. My team rolled that out earlier this month! Generator here.
  • Crush my LunchFunction Talk at TechSav. Yes! There were almost 30 people there! You can see the whole video below or read more at the Talk Summary. Lunch Function 101:DataOps: DevOps for Data Engineering

January Habit Tracker

No Spend (anything over $1)

Even though I was successful in my No Amazon month, HOLY COW I SPENT ON A LOT OF DAYS THIS MONTH. Of course, this includes things like groceries (20, 26, & 27), gas (3 & 20), things I’m going to be reimbursed by work for (4 & 6), food while traveling (1, 10, & 11), and flowers/chocolate for a sick friend and a grieving friend (3 & 24). I don’t want to do a “No Spend” month because I want to be able to buy these things, but I would like to spend less frequently. I wonder if Copper Cow Coffee I ordered on the 17th, the Etsy purchase I made on the 18th, and the Needlepoint.com order I made on the 29th could have been consolidated into one day, forcing me to wait a little bit longer for the things I want. I am not trying to curb a spending problem; I am trying to curb and instant gratification problem.

I had 9 no spend days in January. Let’s see if I can get that to 12 in February.

Gym (at least 20 minutes)

16 out of my goal of 20 isn’t great, but it isn’t terrible either. Notably, I went to the gym more days than I didn’t, so I’ll take that as my base line from here on out.

I made it to the gym most Mondays. It seems Tuesdays are a weak day for me. They tend to be non-lifting days at my gym. I wonder if those two are related. There were too many times that I broke my “no skipping two days in a row” rule. I need to focus on that.

Read (at least 1 page)

I only missed 7 days this month. Two of those while traveling. Not bad. I’m really please here.

ICYMI: 2019 Goals & My Word of the Year

February Goals

  • Read 2 books. I’m reading my first fiction book in years. I don’t know what my pace is going to be like, so keeping the goal attainable.
  • Honor stitch night, mastermind, and content audit time. Every week that I’m not traveling (Thursday night, Tuesday afternoon, and Friday morning, respectively).
  • CrossFit 12 times and Orange Theory 4 times. I have a work trip this month AND February is a short month, so this seems like a reasonable goal that will still require work.
  • Publish one blog post on She Does Data. This will be on the difference between data visualization and data using the OTBurn app as an example.
  • Finish writing my goodreads scraper. 👉 Project Repo

February Habit Tracker

I use an app called HabitShare (free on iOS) to track some of my habits.

This month I’ll be tracking “No Spend” days, Gym days, Read days, and Writing days. What gets measured gets improved.

  • No Spend (anything over $1). As I mentioned above, my goal is to hit 12 no spend days in February.
  • Gym (at least 20 minutes). From a habit perspective, I’d like to see my “Never miss two days in a row” rule be honored, with the leeway for the trip I’m going on to Nashville.
  • Read (at least 1 page). Just doing my thing.
  • Writing for a blog post, email newsletter, or streaking.app (Not emails, tweets, or issues for work.). Just starting to collect data here.

February is a short month, so I’ll have to focus to get these things done! Do you have goals you’re setting for this short month?

January 2019 Goals

// Goals

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Not evaluating December 2018 goals because I didn’t set any… Just diving right into the new year and my “Year of No.“

You may have seen this on Instagram or Facebook. It’s true!
She Does Better is taking a break from all social media!

January Goals

  • Read 3 Books. I am currently finishing up James Clear’s Atomic Habits. I think I’ll read Nate Silver’s book after that and then it’s up in the air. I’d love to start the year strong with three books, but these are both on the high-page-count side, so we’ll see.
  • Stick to three new time blocks. I’ve blocked off calendar time for my weekly mastermind (hey Rebecca, Christine, and Jessica), stitch night, and content auditing. Just a little bit of time in each block, but that’s how habits are built.
  • Workout 20 times. Knowing how wish-washy I’ve been lately, I plan to actually plan EXACTLY which days I’ll be going to which gyms and doing which workouts.
  • Crush my LunchFunction Talk at TechSav. I’ll be giving a free talk this month at Lunch Function titled “DataOps: DevOps for Data Engineering”. This is a FREE talk and includes lunch. You can sign up on Eventbrite.
  • Work on ONE coding side project. I’ve been working on this thing that lets you generate all the schema.yml files for your dbt project, but it only kinda works. It’s 90% of the way there, though, and I think it’d be good to finish.

January Habit Tracker

I use an app called HabitShare (free on iOS) to track some of my habits. This month I’ll be tracking “No Spend” days, Gym days, and Read days. I’m not doing a “No Spend” month, but they say “What gets measured gets improved”, so I’ll be trying to be more cognizant of the frequency of my spending by tracking it for the second month in a row.

  • No Spend (anything over $1)
  • Gym (at least 20 minutes)
  • Read (at least 1 page)

ICYMI: 2019 Goals & My Word of the Year

Hopefully January will be a quiet month, so that I can focus on all these things I’m trying to get done. I’ll have to put away ornaments, straighten out the office, and finally get to Inbox Zero everywhere at the same time this month, so lots going on for sure!