9 lessons learned from tracking time
And why I'm still tracking time after 11 years
In late April of 2015, I decided to try tracking my time for a year. I’d tracked various weeks here and there over the years, but I figured a year would make for an interesting project. I could probably find somewhere to write about it.
As it happens, I did. In April of 2016, an editor at the New York Times read my blog post about how I was finishing the year of tracking and asked if I’d like to write about it for them. The essay that then appeared was spotted by the organizers of TED Women 2016. Their conference theme was “It’s about time” and next thing I knew, I was on the TED stage giving a 12-minute talk that has been viewed over 16 million times on the TED page, and almost 10 million times on YouTube.
So, needless to say, this was a lot of positive reinforcement for my tracking habit. Of course, the next decade did not see nearly that pace of big breaks. But I have still found time tracking useful. Here are some of the lessons I’ve learned that have kept me going for 11 years, and keep me going now.
1. Time tracking is not that hard. I like to think of myself as a disciplined person, but there is absolutely no way I would have kept tracking for 11 years if it were particularly onerous. I use weekly spreadsheets and I simply check in 3-4 times a day, and write down what I’ve done since the last check in. Broad brush strokes are fine: work, sleep, drive, “kids, etc.” Since this takes just a few minutes a day, it has become much like brushing my teeth or washing my face. Brushing my teeth daily doesn’t require some deep well of discipline. Neither does time tracking.
2. I sleep 7.3-7.4 hours a day. I enjoy seeing this consistency over the years. No matter what is going on in my life (two of my kids went through infancy during my time tracking stretch), over a longer stretch of time (like 6-8 weeks) I will average somewhere between 7.3-7.4 hours of sleep a day. Now that I’m not usually being woken up by kids, I can use this knowledge to more rationally plan out my days and nights so I get 7.3-7.4 hours of sleep almost every single day. This knowledge also makes me feel better about any short nights. Most likely I’ll make it up somewhere.
3. I am very productive. I don’t work that many hours. In recent years I’ve averaged somewhere between 30-35 hours of work each week. However, that turns out to be enough to write books every two years, maintain my speaking business, have two podcasts (including one with daily episodes), write this Substack newsletter, write my weekly newsletter, blog, do various promotion for my stuff, etc. It’s good to see. On the other hand…
4. I waste a lot of time. There are a lot of “scroll, etc.” entries plus time spent puttering around. These are not either/or propositions. I’m very productive and I waste a lot of time, because time is vast. If anything, tracking my time has helped me be more accepting of all the time I waste. I’m guessing there is a certain limit on how many hours per week I can productively work, and the wasted time is filling other chunks. Now could I spend my down time better? Probably. I do work at it with my puzzles, magazines, and library trips to get easy-to-read books.
