part of the exercise can be very illuminating, as the numbers you
gather here may confirm why your spouse keeps telling you to
“come to bed.”
We’ll all have “eat” on our lists of basic time-consuming
activities, but again, you may want to split food time into regular
sit-down meals, eat-and-run drive-through raids on nutrition, and
foraging (or snacking or noshing or whatever you call it).
19
Is “work” specific enough for you? It depends on how much
you want to learn from this self-study. I suspect most of us will
want to keep closer tabs on exactly what we’re doing at work,
breaking time into categories such as “meetings” (perhaps also
differentiating between “productive meetings” and “total-waste-
of-time meetings”?), “report writing,” “responding to telephone
inquiries,” “commute time” (
Don’t
forget commute time, which
may be a major and previously unnoted time-consumer), and even
“break time.” (Don’t be afraid to chart breaks. You may well dis-
cover that you take too few rather than too many.)
The more categories you create, the more precise and helpful
the information, and the more annoying keeping track will be. The
more you decide to put in, the more you’ll get out later, so err on
the side of overscrupulous data-keeping. The information you col-
lect here is going to serve you well.
Let your time log sit overnight and take another look at it, add-
ing and deleting as you see fit. Have you forgotten anything? You
can, of course, add items during your survey week if you haven’t
anticipated everything here. The key is to note the items you’re
interested in tracking and to be sure your system enables you to
account for your time fairly accurately. (It will do no good to list
two hours a day as “miscellaneous.”)
You’re almost ready to start your self-study. First, write down
your estimate of how much time per week you spend in each cat-
egory. You can do this in total hours, in percentage of time spent,
or both. When you’re done, you’ll probably want to convert hours
into percentages anyway.
For example, if you figure you average seven hours of sleep
a night, you can write “49” (7
×
7) next to that category on your
list. Since there are 168 hours in a week, 49 divided by 168 is 29
percent (actually, 29.167 percent, if you need to be that precise. On
the other hand, “about 30 percent” may suit your purpose).
Next to your estimate, write the number of hours/percentage
you think you
ought
to be sleeping each week. If in your heart of
hearts you believe that Mom was right and that you really do need
A R E Y O U R E A L LY A S B U S Y A S Y O U T H I N K ?
T I M E M A N AG E M E N T
20
eight hours of sleep, you’d write in “56/33.3 percent” next to your
“49/29 percent.”
Now keep your time log for a full week. Try to pick a “typical”
week (if there is such a thing) that’s neither spent on vacation nor
a business trip, and relatively free of major crises. If a crisis does
erupt during the week you’ve chosen, you can always start over the
following week.
It is important that you be persistent and precise.
Can you do two activities at once? Of course. In fact, tradi-
tional time management books insist you do two, three, even four
things at a time. But for the purpose of this survey you’re going to
decide on the dominant activity at any given time. For example, if
you’re listening to an audiobook while driving to work your domi-
nant activity is “driving to work.” The book-listening is incidental.
If you’re reading a book with the television on, you need to decide
whether you’re mostly reading a book or watching television.
Start your log when you wake up on Day One.
6:15
a
.
m
. Lay in bed, semiconscious, “listening” to “Morning
Edition.”
Make your next notation when you significantly change your
activity.
6:32
a
.
m
. Dragged carcass out of bed. Bathroom. Shower.
Dress.
6:58
a
.
m
. Breakfast.
The smaller the increments, the more precise the results (and
the more work the gathering).
6:59
a
.
m
. Worked sudoku puzzle.
7:02
a
.
m
. Stopped working sudoku puzzle to let dog out in
backyard.
7:02:15
a
.
m
. Resumed working sudoku puzzle.
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Too precise? I doubt you’d find this level of precision desirable
or helpful. I also doubt you’d keep recording that way for a full
week. Make your notes in a way that will tell you what you want
and need to know about yourself at the end of the week.
Be honest, even if it hurts. Folks tend to fudge downward on time
spent playing computer games and upward on time spent exercising,
for example. You want a true picture of your activities in a typical
week. Then you can decide if you want to change anything.
It can be difficult, but try not to let the process of keeping track
of time alter the way you actually spend that time. If you know
you’re going to have to record it, you may be less likely to want
to flop down and watch a
CSI
rerun. But if that’s what you would
have done without the log, that’s what you ought to do with it.
Nobody has to see your log, and you have the power to change any-
thing you don’t like about the way you live (and to decide to embrace
anything you do—public opinion, spouses excepted, be damned).
Allow enough time at the end of your survey week to do the
math. (No, you don’t have to note this time on your log. You’re fin-
ished with that.) Go back to your first page, where you made your
list and created your Estimate column and your Ideal column, and
write in the Actual numbers. Each entry should now have three
sets of numbers after it.
EStimatE
idEal
actual
Sleep
49 (29%)
56 (33.3%)
52 (31%)
If you’ve been rigorous and honest, you may get some
surprises:
EStimatE
idEal
actual
Video gaming
7 (4.2%)
3.5 (2.1%)
42 (25%)
Okay. You’re not likely to get that big a surprise. But you may
note some relatively large discrepancies among estimates, ideals,
A R E Y O U R E A L LY A S B U S Y A S Y O U T H I N K ?
T I M E M A N AG E M E N T
22
and actuals. If so, rejoice. You’re a perfect candidate for time man-
agement. You may find that by adjusting actual times to conform
more closely to your ideal, you’ll improve your life significantly.
You may also find that you need to rethink some of your ideal
times and your reasons for having established them.
If an adjustment leaps out at you now, note it in a fourth col-
umn, “New Ideal,” or “Time Management Goal”:
EStimatE
idEal
actual
NEw idEal
Video gaming
7 (4.2%)
3.5 (2.1%) 42 (25%) 10.5 (6.3%)
Then write the adjustment you intend to make in the form of a
declaration:
“I will play video games no more than one and a half hours a
day,” or
“I will average no more than 10 and a half hours gaming each
week.”
Congratulations. You’ve taken the first big step in successful
time management. You’ve accounted for your time. You’ve per-
haps uncovered areas where you may be spending too much of
that time and areas where you aren’t spending enough. And you’ve
made some initial declarations concerning your future activities. If
you did nothing else, this new level of self-awareness and resolve
would be extremely helpful to you.
But there’s much more you can do, if you’re willing, to help
yourself spend time wisely and well; not to satisfy the numbers on
the chart, but to create a joy-filled as well as productive life.
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