What have you been up to?

Prepared by Elizabeth Grigg for Toastmasters “Get to the Point” May

7, 2011

My story

• Everyone has a dream. That thing we think we would do if we were independently wealthy or free of other commitments. My humble dream starting last Fall was to continue my transition into my new career path. This was going to take a bunch of time. Fortunately, since I was able to leave my job, it seemed like I had that time.

• By January I knew I had a problem. I had no time. It felt like I had even less time than when I was working. Where was it all going?

• If time was money, I was definitely over budget on something, and I didn’t even know what it was! All I knew is that in terms of time, I was broke.

• The theme for this meeting is “A Blast from the Past.” When we look back at what we did during any particular day, week, or hour, and say “What have I been up to,” wouldn’t it be great to have an answer?

Why Time Track

• To answer the question “What have I been up to,” you need to track your time.

• This is exactly what I did.

• I know, boring, right? You’d rather watch paint dry? Or, if you had time to track your time you’d rather use that time to get some more sleep?– You can revel in the irony of pointing out how boring this is, but it won’t get you

anywhere. Sometimes you have to do a boring thing to pave the way to doing something exciting.

– I’m not going to pretend that systematically tracking how you spend your time in a given week is going to be the most exciting thing you’ve ever done. But you’re making room for the exciting stuff by going through this process.

• After hearing my presentation, my hope is you will gain the confidence that – You can track your own time,

– You can learn something from what you find, and

– You can make some changes that will be meaningful to you.

Sunday night

Sunday night before you go to sleep, get ready to time track your week. You will need 3 things.1. A list of categories for how you spend your time.2. A notebook or electronic gizmo.3. Some ground rules .

Let’s go into detail on each of these.

1. List of categories.• Ideally you come up with a handful of categories on how you currently spend your time. • Since this list is potentially infinite, you’ll want to only have a good enough list.• Your list of categories is good enough when you have a discrete category for the type of activity you want to increase or decrease.• For example, I had a category for family support. It encompassed cooking, cleaning, bills, shopping, and driving the kids to places. This

category was good enough because I wanted to know how much of my day was going to the family instead of my own professional development.

2. A notebook or electronic gizmo.• Notebooks don’t have to boot.• If you choose something electronic to track your time, bring around a notebook as backup.• Don’t use a calendar system to project your time in advance. The point of time tracking is to capture actual time spent, as opposed to

planned.• Even if you have a phone with a clock on it, you might want to wear a watch that week.

3. Some ground rules• I decided that 15 minutes was too small a window of time to track. I was only going to round activities to the half hour.• You might want to be more or less granular.• If you write down your time for using the restroom, you’re capturing too much detail.

Remember that you’re operating completely in the dark right now. Any data you collect is better than no data. This will not be perfect, it’s more important that you start collecting the information.

Monday

• Example notebook page• Waking at 8am and going

to bed at 9pm means 11 hours of sleep that day during a 24h period (Even though it was 2 sleep sessions)

• If my notes are really good, with clear times and categories, I can let the notebook fill up for multiple days and enter it into Excel later.

Figure 1

Monday night

• This information was captured while watching TV. If you ever create an “enter data” category, you’re working too hard.

• I used a formula in Excel to ensure the times I entered added up to 24.

• The first day is a test drive of your category system. If you forgot one, now is the time to add one in.

Figure 2

Tuesday night

• Each day that goes by, you capture your time into Excel and double check the total.

Figure 3

Friday night’s data

• Set up an Average column to average the hours you spent on each category over the 5 days.

Figure 4

Analysis

0.50

0.40

0.50

0.20

0.00

0.20

0.00

0.00

0.50

0.83

0.60

4.60

3.25

1.40

0.40

0.40

0.70

0.85

0.00

Meal planning

Consulting - individual

Consulting - group

Nonsocial phone calls

Project writing

Project reading

Safety and security

Charity work

Prioritizing incoming tasks

Looking presentable

Exercise

Family support -…

Professional development -…

Full Attention Creative …

Creative Output -…

Technology - Web …

Commuting - Partial or Zero …

Social - Friends, family, calls …

Job Search -…

0.00 1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00

AVERAGE

• Now that you have all your data for the week, you can start analyzing!

• You’re looking for the silver bullet – the worst offender in the bunch.

• My worst offender was Family Support. The average I spent was 4.5h per day. Too much! I created new rules for myself to help correct this.

1. No Family Support while the kids were at school. If I’m doing stuff for other people, I do it with them around

2. Bring back pizza night so 1 day less cooking per week.

3. Lower my standards. 4. Get the kids to earn screen time from

doing chores

Conclusion

• People often say it takes money to make money. That may be true, but does it take time to make time?

• Imagine if you only had pennies to your name. That’s how many of us feel about our discretionary time. How would we store those pennies? How much thought would we put in to how we spend them?

• Even if you only have a small amount of free time right now, treat it as if you value it by tracking how you spend it.

• It’s easy, straightforward, and may just help you meet your goals.

Appendix

• Want to see the Excel file I used? Here is the link (public google doc)

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AvK6h45rSgjwdDN6T0tkSHoyVE5hUzdhbk5aelVKUlE&hl=en