The LIX fluctuated wildly during the course of its year of existence. Some of the contributing factors such as "Impact of world events" had a much stronger impact than was envisaged when the index was calibrated in March 2002. Reflecting on the experience of tediously updating it every week for a year leads its creator to sympathisize with all those who have to fill in forms regularly as part of their work. The list of factors should probably have included one called "Impact of LIX on real life" - reflecting both the effort involved in updating it but also the curious, and sometimes confusing, results it generated.  23 March 2003

Previous Reports

18 March 2003 - LIX Index - your chance to determine its value

7 February 2003 - LIX holds negative territory

A number of factors have been pushing the LIX Index into negative territory in recent weeks. They include 'impact of world events' as well as more personal financial pressures. Created almost a year ago, the LIX differentiated between a number of ways of passing the time including 'oberving', 'flanerie' and 'planning'. The author's search for gainful employment - where the gain is financial - has revealed how whimsical these categories really are. Positive factors include lots of 'making' time, in the run up to an exhibition at the New Art Gallery Walsall. But this kind of making does not make money.

4 January 2003 - Post holiday LIX on a downer

Emotional, cultural, and social factors all scoring highly. Financial and environmental factors pushing the LIX down.

9 December 2002 - LIX smoother ahead of holidays

A number of indicators are down - including London average temperature and hours of sunlight and income, but many other factors are up. The list of things that matter that are not included in the LIX seems to lengthen every week. One of them is the number of weeks in which I have to fill in the weekly data for the LIX.

4 November 2002 - updownupdownupdowndown

updownupdownupdown updownupdownupdownupdownup downupdown downupdowndownupdownup updownupdownupup updownupdownupupdowndown up down updown upupdown upup and that's just the FTSE

21 October 2002 - What goes down must come up

Back into sensible territory again, the LIX remains cautious owing to a number of factors: some interesting innovation work being postponed; Channel 4 deciding not to broadcast in its current form a programme on live art featuring the LIX (including a market report filmed at Bloomberg) in its high-profile The Art Show; occasional spotting of errors in my newly published book Audit; the evenings drawing in; world events; what else? But the trend remains up, up, up. Lots of smiling, laughing, eating well in company and those other things you do when you meet someone amazing. One concern: LIX reports are beginning to sound like any common or garden weblog.

14 October 2002 - The LIX is not really at minus 45,649

I woke up this morning and saw that the LIX was down 584%. This suggests there is a significant flaw in the weightings I created back in April as applied to last week's data. In April I had nine projects on the go, was moving house and no personal life to speak of. Here we are some months later and I have hardly anything on the go but my emotions. It seems that in the design of the index I privileged work-related factors - "how-am-I-managing-to-cope-with-all-this-work-and-all-these-connections". Shared meals with others were rare and valuable. Time for reflection was limited. Flanerie was rare. Now my wandering around is no longer flanerie, it's just pedestrian. Things are different, and instinct, rather than data analysis, tells me the LIX is way up.

2 September 2002 - Post-holiday LIX is smoother, with a twist

After a few weeks of wild fluctuations, the LIX is now back in sensible territory. It's up and up quite a lot but compared to the recent low of -25,000 nothing sounds very dramatic. The recent time off has lead to reflection on the weightings of things that seem important and then a few months later don't - things like having lots of paid days work. For freelancers, unpaid leave needs to be balanced against positive factors such as the increased cocktail consumption and flanerie time which happen during holidays. The next few months will see a deliberate effort to smooth the LIX by regular consumption of appropriate inputs such as martinis with basil and the odd Cosmopolitan.

5 August 2002 - LIX dives to -25,182.21

Am I dead? How do I recover from such a downer? Or maybe it's just the impact of holidays. The LIX will recover soon.

13 July 2002 - LIX all over the place

It's time to reweight the LIX. A few things happening differently here and there has resulted in such *wild* fluctuations that it's barely possible to follow the LIX graph without getting eye-vertigo. Things are good, really, just slightly differently weighted to how they were a few weeks ago.

8 June 2002 - LIX chills, sort of

Thank goodness. It's been a bit of a rollercoaster over the last few weeks with wild swings up and down - although if I were a business, an 8% improvement or mere 1% decline in performance would be good going. It's probably something to do with the football (impacting on productivity and connections and alcohol consumption) and the weather (warm but not too warm). And the cheese souffle I cooked on Sunday night.

29 May 2002 - LIX down a bit and so am I

Every week the LIX pops out a figure. It's becoming a convenient shorthand for describing how things are. Friends now say 'How's the LIX?' instead of 'How are you?' Or rather, they say 'How's the LIX?' as well as 'How are you?' - which nicely reminds me of the difference between a performance index that measures all sorts of things, and the quick survey that 'How are you?' prompts. For many people, 'How are you?' queries only certain domains - generally the physical, the emotional, the psychological, depending on the context shared with the person asking the question. When I'm asked 'How are you?', I stick to these areas. Whereas the premise behind the LIX is the aggregation of changes in these domains with other areas such as connectivity and wealth creation. So in any week I might be feeling bad but the LIX is up. Not this week however. I'm feeling ill and the LIX is down..

23 May 2002 - Good heavens

LIX up 116%. I'm giddy and exhausted.

13 May 2002 - LIX behaves srangely

One week it's down 48%, the following week it's recovering slightly, a week later the LIX is up over 80%. Phew, what a rollercoaster. Irrationally exuberant, moi? it's difficult to predict where the LIX will head next because the conceptual model is a work-in-progress. The underlying factors that are measured each week (see 'LIX data' on the web site) are bundled together in ways that made sense in early April when we had a deadline because of the Channel 4 film transmission. But as the days get longer, and the air is warmer, perhaps it's time to reconsider how the LIX is calculated and reweight the index. One of the assets - emotional buoyancy - is perhaps overvalued.

15 April 2002 - LIX web site launch pushes index higher

The recent spike in the LIX Index results from the lixindex.com site going live with few technical problems and a positive response so far from users. We anticipate that connectedness will continue to rise as the LIX project unfolds, with future plans to present this and other projects at public seminars over the next few months. Emotional buoyancy is however stagnant and, in what is perhaps a contrary response to the release of the LIX, confidence is down. Quality of output remains up and down because of the rush to get the site live and the number of projects on the go.

8 April 2002 - LIX prospects good as weather improves

The LIX barely changed this week as connectivity, good health and well-being dropped owing to a short period of illness. There was a boost to the index from spending time with small children and an increase in the number of meals shared with other people. The possibility of physical intimacy is also impacting on current performance. Prospects remain healthy. The imminent transmission on Channel 4 television of a film about the LIX and the distribution of the site details are likely to increase the artistís profile and connectivity. Moreover as the temperature in London nudges higher each week and the evenings get a little longer, the overall direction of the LIX remains promising.

25 March 2002 - LIX stable but is it calculated right?

This week has seen a lot of activity in several important dimensions - the sort that pop up, give you a slap and challenge your methodology. The impact of world events, for example, is troubling given what is happening in Israel/Palestine, informing a number of LIX assets including hope and emotional buoyancy. How do these events combine with other factors over which an individual has control to produce something that is meaningful? We are beginning to uncover some of the flaws in the LIX conceptual model, as data is added each week and we watch the performance of the LIX. But if we change the model every week or two then identifying a narrative is harder.

18 March 2002 - LIX wavers as projects pile up

This week saw the LIX looking a little wobbly as a number of factors impacted negatively on performance - including a sudden drop in the temperature in London and the inevitable result of having too many projects on the go at once affecting well-being, emotional buoyancy and health. But the other side of having lots of projects had a positive impact - including lots of amusement, several meetings with a good feeling, valuable communications via email, SMS and phone, and yet more new connections.