One can estimate the level of industrialization of an area by measuring pollution levels. How does one estimate a person's activity?
In order to gauge my own activity cycles, I have plotted the number of email messages I originate per hour of day and per day of week. It is hoped that email emission is indicative of overall activity (however, it should be recognized that when I'm on editing binges I don't check mail very often and don't reply to anything but urgent messages).
Hour was taken in local timezone (U.S. Eastern Time). Only archived messages sent between 2001-01-01 and 2001-08-24 were processed. I archive a large fraction of my mail, but many unimportant messages weren't counted, so the actual numbers are higher. However, it is hoped that the numbers shown on the following plots will be representative enough to get an idea of how I work.
Fig 1.: Average number of messages sent by
shalunov@internet2.edu vs. day of week number.
On weekends, my activity is more than twice lower than during the week. Monday and Tuesday make up for that. Corollary: If you send me a message on a weekend, I may not respond to it until Monday or Tuesday. This is probably due to the fact that I often take weekend trips without my computer or connectivity. During the rest of the weekends I mostly work as usual. I definitely am away on less than 50% of weekends. This means that absense explanation doesn't fully cover it. However, a good fraction of mail I send is reactive, and I get much less mail on weekends (other people must travel for leisure more than I do).
Fig 2.: Average number of messages sent by
shalunov@internet2.edu vs. local hour.
Between 10am and 6pm I apparently make up for lost productivity during the period of time between 1am and 9am. Between 6pm and midnight my activity is steady. Between midnight and 4am, I send less and less mail, and 4am to 8am is apparently the time when I don't write much. There were literally zero archived messages between 6am and 7am (I don't have a good explanation for this peculiar phenomenon).