You know that nagging feeling that you’re not spending enough time with your kids? Or that you’re spending too much time at work? A sense of guilt hovers over you because you feel like you should be doing more of (blank). Tracking your time and having cold hard facts can put an end to the uncertainty. Here’s my first attempt at time tracking and the benefits I gained from doing it.
168 Hours in One Week
I finally did it. I think this was on my monthly intentions list for over two months. I tracked my time in 15 minute increments for a whole week! The book that made me want to do this was 168 hours by Laura Vanderkam. The subtitle tells you why you should do this: You have more time than you think!
She breaks down our time in a very no nonsense way:
- We all have 168 hours in a week.
- We can struggle with feeling like there is “not enough time”
- If you work 8 hours a day for 5 days a week, that’s 40 hours. (168-40=128 hours left)
- If you sleep 8 hours a night for 7 days a week, that’s 56 hours. (128 – 56 = 72 hours left)
- That leaves us with 72 hours a week, 8 hours a day during the work week, and 16 hours during the weekends!
- The question is, what are we doing with that time?
As a person who works outside the home three days a week, and trying to grow a blog and business, I can feel stretched and that I don’t spend enough time with my family. Tracking my hours for a week let me see that I’m actually spending quite a bit of time with the family. It also helped me answer how many hours a week I spend on my blog and business (at least for that week).
The How To of Time Tracking
Aside from Laura Vanderkam’s book, Jenny Shih’s article and podcast on time tracking really helped encourage me to finally track my time. Shih has a time tracker you can download on her website, and it’s the one I used to track my week:
My first time tracking my activities in 15 minute increments!
It took a lot of intentionality to actually carry this around with me and jot things down, but I managed to do it every day except Tuesday night. I’m really not sure what happened that night, but it very well could have been a “I’m so exhausted I’m falling asleep and staying asleep all night while putting my youngest to bed.” Do you ever have one of those nights?
Recently my friend Tanya shared how she tracks her time for greater productivity. She tracks her time every week and color codes the categories of time. I decided to try that as well. I clumped my time into 6 different categories:
- work (outside the home) [ORANGE]
- family time [RED]
- household work (including meal prep, cleaning, laundry) [BLUE]
- blog and business [GREEN]
- personal care [PURPLE]
- sleep [YELLOW]
When I counted the hours in each category, here are my rough estimates of how much time I spend in each category:
- work (outside the home) = 24 hours
- family time = 28.25 hours
- household work (including meal prep, cleaning, laundry) = 15.25 hours
- blog and business = 25.5 hours
- personal care = 16 hours
- sleep = 42 hours
For those of you really good at math – that adds up to 151 hours. I’m not sure why it doesn’t add up to 168, but I’m not going to try to figure it all out. I got a good general idea of my time and that’s good enough for me!
The Benefits of Tracking my Time
Tracking my time helped me in several different ways. The most important way it impacted me was to increase my awareness of how my time is spent (duh, Angela – wasn’t that the point?) That may seem like an obvious point but seeing the blocks of color makes it obvious that:
- my sleep schedule is irregular
- the majority of my focused family time is on the weekends
- my morning routine takes about an hour
- my blogging doesn’t have a set schedule of time
- blog posts from start to finish with images, etc take 1.5-2 hours
Tracking my time also helped me to focus more clearly on the task at hand. If I was with my family, I didn’t try and do other things at the same time. I was present with them. If I was writing a blog post, I was focused on blogging and nothing else. Tracking my time helped me to keep it “uncontaminated time” or free from multitasking and trying to do many things at once.
It also helped reassure me that with the long view of time, my priorities are getting the attention they need. Life changes on a daily basis, so trying to measure my priorities and time within a 24 hour time frame isn’t an accurate measure. If we look at our time, however, by the week or month, it’s much more likely to reflect our priorities accurately.
It’s also not as much about how many hours I spend on something or with someone, but how focused I am during that time. 15 minutes of being fully present is better than one hour of multitasking work and family time.
The Next Step after Time Tracking
So now that I’ve tracked my time, it’s time to try time blocking and plan how I’ll use my time before the week begins!
The reason behind this is simple. Creating success on your own terms requires that you be intentional. That means you have to take yourself off autopilot and be mindful of your choices.
That means, if you value sleep, plan it. If you value exercise, plan it. If you value picking your kids up after school, plan it.
Jenny Shih, How to Dominate Your Day
Tell me – have you tried tracking your time? What insights or benefits did you gain from doing it?
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I love this!! I track all my finances so why not my time?? After all, to me, the time is more valuable. Definitely going to do this this week!
Oh you’re going to love this Liz! There is a digital time tracker if you don’t want to carry a piece of paper around with you!
Ooh yes please! Where can I find the digital tracker?
Nevermind! I made my own. 🙂
No, I havent
time tracking can be good. I work nights, sleep during the day and fit in everything else.
Wonderful share. My sister was telling me about how she was trying to do this a couple of weeks ago and how much it was helping her. Thank you for sharing on Nifty Thrifty Sunday link party. Shared and pinned.
That’s great Amy. Maybe you’ll give it a try too!
This is a really interesting idea – like most people, I feel like I have no time but I couldn’t tell you exactly how I’m spending it, other than working/sleeping/parenting! #FamilyFun
I know! That’s how I felt too. Time tracking will help with that!
This is organised. I did use to colour code all my activities and work but since my daughter I’m more relaxed. It’s made me want to try agin though. The difficulty is travel. I can’t always be sure how long it will take to get to places and if my husband will be back or not, this changes time available to me. Great thoughts though. #FamilyFunlinky
I don’t think I’d do this every week but it definitely brings awareness which is key for change
I did something similar with breastfeeding.. I felt like all I was doing is feeding my son and he never slept. So I tracked how long I fed and how long he was asleep for a good couple of weeks using colours. It really worked out what kinda routine he was in and showed I did have some free time! I’d definitely do again with baby 2!!
Thank you for linking up to the #familyfunlinky
That’s such a great idea Karen!
This seems so interesting because you learn so much. I must have a look at that book that spurred you on to do this. 🙂
#brillblogposts
Good idea to track this… thank you.
Ooh I love the idea of this! I think I already know most of time is spent on my blog/business
Hmmm. This might be worth my trying. I especially like the color coding because, COLOR!
Found you through the July Summer Update Linkup.
My husband works from home and he’s recently started doing this (though he doesn’t colour his in!) so that he can see where all his time goes and can use it for costing and confirming the hours he’s worked on a particular project.
This is interesting! I use a Chrome extension for work called Toggl (I’m a VA) and I find it helpful to see where my time goes. This is a new way to look at my week, though! Thank you for sharing! #fdflinkparty
I love this post – I’m a huge fan of time tracking. When every hour has a place, I don’t feel so lost and disjointed when I’m not doing everything at once. I can focus on one thing knowing there’s a place for the other stuff I’m obsessing about! 🙂
This is a great idea, I think that I will try it and will probably be amazed at the results, not the 3 hour round trip commute though.
What an interesting idea. I never seem to manage my time effectively lately so this would definitely be worth trying. It sounds great. #familyfun
In work I am ultra organised and know where I have to be and what I have to get done. However, home is a different matter. It is like I rebel. My husband can’t believe I am one and the same person. I don’t track my time but after reading this post I think I should. I would love to see my sleep patterns, time for me, time for my husband (must do better) etc etc #FamilyFunLinky
Thank you for linking up at The Blogger’s Pit Stop Link Party. I’m sharing your link on social media.
Carol (“Mimi”) from Home with Mimi
Hi, Angela. I have tracked my time but never like this. I like the idea of color coding the chart to get a visual on how much time is going where. I think this would be great for people who think they don’t watch a lot of Television or don’t spend a lot of time on Facebook.
Tracking it like this is an honest reality.
I love the idea of time tracking…but with three kids under 8 with me full-time over the summer, I can’t imagine what it would even be like to get a full 5 minutes on a single task! ? Perhaps I should give it a try when school starts up again? Thanks so much for sharing your experience at the #happynowlinkup!
This is a great way of setting your time out. I hate to think how much time I waste not doing something like this.
#brillblogposts
The color code system sounds interesting. I track habits, maybe I should add time tracking to my BUJO too. But I know where most of my time goes. I spend far to much of it on the computer.
This is a great concept! I’ve never thought of tracking my time outside of work. I think it would definitely be interesting to try this for a week to see where my time goes. I’m Tweeting this to my followers!
Thanks Tricia! Try it and let me know how it goes!
This is such a great idea! I really need to give this a go and I’m going to. It’s amazing how squeezed time feels sometimes. But as you say, you need to work out where your time is really going. Brilliant! #DreamTeam
It’s true Annette! Give it a go!
This is a great idea. I tried doing something similar in the past, but life definitely got in the way. For August I think I am going to give time tracking another go, though.
Do it Victoria! Don’t let missed gaps of time deter you either. Just start tracking again when you remember again.
I’ve never tried time tracking but it sounds like a useful thing to do. It’s so easy to lose track of small chunks of time in the day and wonder where the time has disappeared to and something like this sounds like it helps you become more aware of that time. I like the idea of time blocking as well. #familyfunlinky
Now I’m so curious/nervous to see what I do with my time! I’m sure I spend more time blogging than I think, and probably not enough time sleeping.
That was my fear too! The important thing to remember is to view your time within a week or month. Kind of like pediatricians reassure us parents to view a toddlers nutritional food intake within a week vs. daily.
Angela, this popular post will be featured on the Blogger’s Pit Stop. Congratulations on a quality post.
Kathleen
Blogger’s Pit Stop
Thank you Kathleen! That’s very exciting.
I need to start tracking my time because I feel a lot of it is wasted on social media. However, I can say that I do make a lot of time with my family.
Thanks for the suggestions!
#ProductReviewParty
It really is amazing how we can get sucked in to SM for much longer than we intended!!
this is so interesting! I am ALWAYS saying that I don’t have enough time or I just don’t know where the day went to. I definitely want to give this a try to get a better idea of how I am using my time and start planning ways to use it better! Thanks! 🙂 Lisa
Oh good Lisa! It was really eye opening. I need to do it every so often to keep my awareness up.