My 2020 Year In Review is ready just 5 days into the new year! As always, what follows is a mix of data that I track as well as personal data that I am able to get my hands on. I thought it was really intersting to see how the pandemic affected my year, and I hope you enjoy taking a look!

Sport Teams

This is the least “personal” of the data I collect in the sense that I have zero control over it, but it’s still very much a part of how I look back on the year. UCLA basketball was riding a hot streak and looked to be headed to March Madness when the sports world sadly shut down. Once sports returned, the Bubble Suns were fun to watch and have a promising future with the addition of Chris Paul. The chart below shows a time series of my teams’ performances over the years, with the verticle lines indicating a .500 record. It’s been a rough stretch recently.

Sporting Events

Not much to look at here. I made it to one game this year - the Caps beat the Kings 4-2 and Ovechkin had a hat trick. Here’s to hoping fans are allowed back in stadiums in 2021!

Social Sports

My alumni basketball team made it all the way through the season (because we lost in the first round) but a league champion was never crowned. The playoff bracket for my volleyball league was released just days before everything was shut down.

Fitbit

Seguing to general fitness, I’ve been tracking my steps with Fitbit since late 2015. My goal is to get 11,000 steps per day but unfortunately I didn’t even average half of that this year. My pre-pandemic life had a lot of automatic steps built in, from my commute to social sports etc, so this is no surprise. It might be hard to get back to normal levels in 2021 given my permanent work-from-home status, but I think I can improve on the 2020 number at least.

I also like monitoring my sleep, even though I know I don’t get enough. The lines going across the charts refer to 8 hours of sleep. I haven’t gotten to that mark while tracking my sleep, but I did see an increase of about 11 minutes from 2019. I had a bit of an erratic start to the year but there’s been a nice increase in sleep minutes the past four months. I’m sure the lack of a commute is a big factor in this.

Transportation

The story of 2019 was my new job and long commute whereas 2020 was the complete opposite. The metro rides for 2020 were all pre-pandemic and almost entirely work commutes. The monthly chart shows the drop-off. The monthly chart also shows a few rideshare and bikeshare rides towards the end of the year, but mostly this is a pretty boring section!

Goodreads

My long commute last year motivated me to read more as a way of passing time on the train. Given a lack of a social life this year, I read even more books than in 2019. The second chart in this section shows a breakdown of the books I read this year by genre (or shelf, as Goodreads calls it). I was heavy into science fiction this year, but I think there’s a decent spread overall. Some of my favorite books from this year are: Educated, Where the Crawdads Sing, Recursion, I Robot, and Homegoing.

Screen Time

I really did aim to decrease my screen time this year, but unfortunately that didn’t happen. To be fair though, some of that screen time includes connecting with people who I haven’t seen much (or at all) this year. The top chart shows that I tend to vary quite a bit in screen time throughout the year. I blame the jump at the end of 2020 on the election cycle and football season. The dotted line indicates three hours of daily screen time - I’m going to try to get my average closer to that number in 2021. The second chart shows the breakdown of my screen time by app. The blue section (Entertainment) includes my sports apps and correlates directly with the return of sports over the summer.

Twitter

My twitter account is a lot quieter in recent years, but I’d be willing to bet I’m on it more than ever (a big chunk of the Social Networking bar in the chart above is Twitter). The daily and monthly charts below are largely an indication of when I had twitter outbursts, such as when I published my Team Colors analysis in May (yes it was on a Wednesday).

Spotify

I have a ton of Spotify data that I’ve been meaning to do a larger analysis of, but for now this will do. My minutes were way up in 2020, largely thanks to the early part of the year. I also listened to over 500 new artists this year, which is the most of any year since I started my account.

Concerts

This was supposed to be the Year of the Concert, but alas. I logged a few shows before things shut down, but had to cancel several others. I’ll be interested to see what the concert landscape is towards the back-end of 2021, as a lot of make-up dates are scheduled for this year.

Shows Watched

What did I do besides read and work this year, you ask? I watched a ton of television. I started some new shows, watched some limited series, and finished some other shows that had piled up. The top chart shows what I finished this year as well as what I am behind/current on. It also shows when I began watching the show, and as you can see I have a good mix of long-running and new shows. It’s interactive, so you can view a sub-section of the chart to enlarge the text. The bottom chart shows a steady build-up of “active” shows over the years as I fell behind on some shows. I fixed that in 2020, and the 2021 landscape looks a little more manageable.

Pandemic Archive

This table displays a list of the books I read and the movies and shows I watched once social distancing went into effect. Back in March I thought it would be fun to track how I spent my time during the (I hoped brief) “flattening the curve” phase. It became a bit tedious, but now I’m really happy to have a record of this crazy year.

Other Stuff I Did This Year

Not everything can be boiled down to charts and graphs though. In addition to the above, I made a greater effort to keep in touch with people this year. I made more phone calls this year than any time I can remember, and I also tested out the waters of online gaming as way to keep in touch with friends and family. I’ll look back fondly on small socially-distanced gatherings with friends (including two weddings!), frisbee and hammock-reading in the park, golf outings, braving outdoor dining on occasion, struggling to finish puzzles, holiday festivities, some fun hikes, and a great camping adventure! I’m truly grateful for everyone that helped me through this year and made it the best pandemic year of my life. Now when can I get that vaccine?