Okay, so I know the title sounds a bit out there, right? Like, a serious tech guy looking at horoscopes for money advice? Hear me out, though. It’s less about believing the stars and more about finding a weird pattern in my workflow and trying to see if I could game it, maybe even just for a laugh, and document the whole mess.
The Starting Line: A Strange Habit
My work life is pretty structured. I handle a lot of freelance consulting, mainly deployment automation and some backend stuff. I noticed a really bizarre trend: my highest-earning weeks often coincided with weeks where my Virgo money horoscope, as written by this one specific online portal I sometimes checked for entertainment, was vaguely optimistic. I’m talking about maybe three out of four times it actually tracked. It was probably confirmation bias, but it got me thinking. Could I use this as an external trigger to either push harder or pull back?
I decided to run a little, completely unscientific experiment for a couple of months. I would track my actual weekly revenue against what this specific horoscope predicted for “money or career” for Virgos that week.
Phase 1: Setting up the Tracking Rig
I didn’t want to rely on memory. I already use a standard Kanban board for tasks, but for this experiment, I built a quick, dirt-simple Google Sheet. Column A was the date range (Monday to Sunday). Column B was the exact horoscope snippet (literally copy-pasting the text). Column C was my interpretation: RED (bad week, focus on maintenance), YELLOW (steady, normal effort), or GREEN (push hard, seek new clients/high-value tasks).
I then left two blank columns: Column D for my actual billable hours logged that week, and Column E for the total revenue deposited into my account that week.
I started this tracking process about eight weeks ago. It was tedious work just to log the horoscope every Monday morning before the coffee kicked in.
Phase 2: The Action and Reaction
The real fun was trying to actually follow the instructions of an astronomical body written by a stranger. When the horoscope said something like, “A slow start, but money flows freely by Friday,” which I marked YELLOW, I tried to focus on solid, scheduled work, not chasing new leads.
The week it gave me a strong GREEN – “Financial breakthrough is imminent, grasp opportunities aggressively” – I totally changed my schedule. I spent Monday and Tuesday not coding, but emailing old clients about potential upgrades, following up on dormant proposals, and increasing my visibility on platforms where I usually bid. I pushed maybe 20% more billable hours that week than normal.
Conversely, the weeks that were clear REDs – “Avoid large financial decisions; focus on organizing debt” – I genuinely pulled back. I focused on internal documentation, learning new tools, or knocking out fixed-price, low-stress maintenance gigs. I actively avoided speculative, high-risk contracts.
The Results: Was I Just Working Harder?
After eight weeks of this intense scrutiny, the correlation was still there, but it wasn’t magic. In the three GREEN weeks I tracked, my revenue jumped 15-30% above the monthly average. In the two RED weeks, my revenue dipped by about 10%, but my internal time allocation (documentation, refactoring) was fantastic.
Here’s the kicker, though: the horoscope didn’t magically send me clients. What it did was give me permission to adjust my mindset and focus. When I was told GREEN, I was mentally prepared to network and sell. When I was told RED, I wasn’t stressed about the lower income; I saw it as mandated downtime for preparation.
I realized the horoscope was just a novel way to introduce planned variability into my schedule, forcing me out of the status quo rut. The act of tracking, interpreting, and then consciously acting differently was the actual driver of change, not Jupiter or Mercury. It was a self-imposed external motivator.
Final Thoughts on the Cosmic Ledger
I’m probably going to stop tracking it in the sheet because now I understand the mechanism. It taught me that setting an arbitrary goal or theme for the week, even if it’s based on something ridiculous, can sharply increase focus and change behavior. If I need a big week, I’ll just tell myself it’s a GREEN week and structure my activities accordingly. No stars required, just a shift in hustle focus.
It was a weird, fun little experiment, and honestly, the sheer joy of logging a prediction and watching my actions follow was worth the time. Don’t worry, my code is still firmly grounded in physics, not astrology.
