Inspired by Sarah, Lisa, Kae, I did time tracking last week to see how I am spending my time, whether in line with my values.
Removing time spent sleeping, I am a bit surprised to see I spent almost 13 hrs. exercising, which I am okay with since it brings me a lot of joy.
I count working time as active working hours, not time spent in office. For example, if I have lunch/coffee with some colleagues, I don’t count hours worked.
I also noticed that I have plenty of solo time, mostly in the mornings and sometimes on weekends. I need solo time to reflect, recharge.
I am privileged not to spend much time doing household tasks, even the 12 hrs. spent in household tasks is mainly cooking, packing lunches for the girls, meal preparing on the weekend, that can be easily shortened if I want to. I do enjoy doing them for the family, so I don’t mind.
I spent 8 hrs. with the kids, active engagement like going out for meals with them, solo date, taking them to activities, bedtime chat, walking with them.
Couple time rounded 10 hours last week as we spent time watching a movie together, a solo lunch date, and commute to work.
I spent 8 hours reading, 5 hours watching movie, ate alone for 4 hours vs. 14 hrs. with others.
Overall, it was a good exercise, and I will probably continue to track a la Kae as it’s nice to go back to any day and know exactly what I did.
Have you done time tracking? Were you surprised by any finding?
Our New Journey 
Love the pie chart! I do keep track of my time but interestingly, I never really break down the “data” or do anything specific with it. I guess for me it’s primarily just a journal, really.
I tend to write down multiple activities in one box (e.g. “Dropped A off at swim. Stopped by gas station for gas + gallon of milk. Home and talked to husband a bit.”) So that makes it hard to break it down into neat categories. I know people do though, like Lisa does this I know, using specific terms. To me I feel like a lot of the nuances of my life would get lost that way though?! Still useful to see general big trends though, of course. But it’s a bit like my time spent on social media… I use it in little snippets of time, so it can add up to >30 minutes in a day- but yet, I never just sit down and look at it for 30 minutes straight. Same with things like blog reading- can be a little here, a little there… so it wouldn’t get captured in the breakdown of time log, but yet, it most definitely IS time I’m spending…So ideally it should “count”, if that makes sense? But short of tracking every second, it’s pretty impossible to categorize it all. That’s why I don’t work about tallying about minutes or hours spent and just use my time log as a journal.
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I am riveted by these types of exercises! What do you count as “solo time”? Time commuting/blogging/staring into space. I sort of wish I could click on each segment of your pie chart and see how that time was broken down even more!
I’ve tried time tracking, but it stresses me out. I always feel like time just slips away somehow and I feel like if I miss a 15-minute segment, the time police are going to come and yell at me. But I like the results when other people do it, so maybe I’ll try to do it again sometime.
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During solo time, mostly from 4:30-5:30, I do read blogs, write my 5 years journal, plan for the day. On weekends I do more random read on the net, articles, travel sites etc.
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What she said ^ I love these kinds of posts and I wish I could delve into it. I avoid time tracking because it may make me feel bad about myself.
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No, I’ve never done this! Were you surprised by any of the results? Is there anything you think needs to be changed? It looks to me like your time is well-balanced.
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What about sleep!! Did you only track this for your waking hours versus 168 hours? I like tracking my time each year. I don’t get super granular so I can just get a gist of how my time is spent and I use excel formulas to sum up the time so I can’t get super granular. I do it the same week every year and it is nice to get a feel for how the way I spend my time changes. Like the first year I did it, I was up during the night with our youngest for hours because he was sick that week. Now it is pretty rare to be up during the night with the kids, unless someone is sick or has a bad dream.
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I did track sleep but thought to focus on the waking time.
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I’ve tracked time in the past and I will likely do it again sometime, although I feel like any week could yield different results LOL
I think it’s amazing that you were able to fit in so much me-time and exercise.
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