Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
Speaker 1: This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 1: tip is about how to track your time. Figuring out
Speaker 1: where the time really goes is the first step to
Speaker 1: spending it better, and I promise that tracking time is
Speaker 1: less tedious than it probably sounds. So if you are
Speaker 1: listening to this episode when it first airs in January
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty five, This week I am running my
Speaker 1: annual time tracking challenge. Lots of us will track our
Speaker 1: time for a week to gather people often want to
Speaker 1: spend their time better. It's a common New Year's resolution
Speaker 1: to get more organized. But if you don't know where
Speaker 1: the time is going now, it is hard to know
Speaker 1: if you are changing the right thing. Maybe something you
Speaker 1: thought was a problem really isn't. Maybe something you haven't
Speaker 1: considered is taking more time than you realized. You want
Speaker 1: to be working from good data, you can track any
Speaker 1: amount of time you want, but I always suggest tracking
Speaker 1: a full week. That's because while work days are interesting,
Speaker 1: they are not the full amount of your time. Weekends
Speaker 1: are real time, too. It really counts. Tracking one hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty eight hours will help you create a more
Speaker 1: holistic picture of your life now. Of course, when I
Speaker 1: suggest tracking one hundred and sixty eight hours of time,
Speaker 1: you can imagine that people are often a bit hesitant.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a lot of work. Do you have
Speaker 1: to write things down every few minutes for all one
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty eight hours. The good news is that
Speaker 1: the answer is absolutely not. I have been tracking my
Speaker 1: time for almost ten years straight, and there is no
Speaker 1: way I would would have stuck with this if it
Speaker 1: were particularly onerous. I only check in a few times
Speaker 1: each day, about three minutes. You can do this if
Speaker 1: you're interested in tracking your time with me and others
Speaker 1: this week, or I guess with me any week. It's
Speaker 1: pretty simple. This episode is about how to do it,
Speaker 1: or at least how I do it. I use a
Speaker 1: spreadsheet that has half hour blocks. I put the days
Speaker 1: of the week across the top Monday to Sunday, and
Speaker 1: half hour blocks from five am to four thirty am
Speaker 1: down the left hand side. You can download one of
Speaker 1: these spreadsheets from my website, which is Laura vandercam dot com,
Speaker 1: or you can create your own pretty easily. Then you
Speaker 1: just check in maybe three to four times per day
Speaker 1: and write down what you have done since the last
Speaker 1: time you checked in. Now, to be sure, this is
Speaker 1: not quite as straightforward as it sounds, as most people
Speaker 1: are not used to describing time and daily actions in words,
Speaker 1: so this is not the time to be a perfectionist.
Speaker 1: You do not need to create neat categories and totals
Speaker 1: at the end of the week if you don't want to,
Speaker 1: just do your best. When you get up in the morning,
Speaker 1: what do you do? Shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, drink coffee,
Speaker 1: help other family members get ready, commute to work, go
Speaker 1: to your home office. What do you do after that?
Speaker 1: It is fine to use broad categories. If you are
Speaker 1: half cooking and half watching children in the evening after work,
Speaker 1: you could put kids slash cook. If you are doing
Speaker 1: dishes while on a conference call, it is fine to
Speaker 1: put work slash dishes or anything like that. If you
Speaker 1: are lying in bed scrolling, feel free to write something
Speaker 1: along those lines. No one is here to judge. This
Speaker 1: is just about getting a reasonably accurate picture of your life. Now.
Speaker 1: There will likely be some stretches of time that you
Speaker 1: can't remember. You may also forget to check in and
Speaker 1: then find that, say, ten hours have passed. If that
Speaker 1: is the case, just do what you can. First, write
Speaker 1: down anything time specific that you remember from those stretches
Speaker 1: of time, Like if you looked at the clock and
Speaker 1: saw you ate lunch at one pm on Saturday, and
Speaker 1: you happen to remember that, write that down. Then try
Speaker 1: to remember roughly what you did before and after. Some
Speaker 1: people set alarms three times a day or so to
Speaker 1: remind themselves to check in and write down what they
Speaker 1: did before they forget. But if you do forget, it
Speaker 1: is fine. It is better to keep going and see
Speaker 1: what you can learn about your weeks rather than quit
Speaker 1: in the middle because you are not going to be
Speaker 1: able to construct a perfect pie chart later that this
Speaker 1: isn't hard. If you would like to join me this week,
Speaker 1: that is, starting January thirteenth, twenty twenty five, I will
Speaker 1: be posting my time logs on my blog, feel free
Speaker 1: to comment over there, And whenever you are listening to
Speaker 1: this episode, just give time tracking a try. I promise
Speaker 1: it is useful. You might discover some time that can
Speaker 1: be repurposed for something fun. You might discover that you
Speaker 1: are spending more time on your priorities than you thought
Speaker 1: you were, and at the end of the week, you
Speaker 1: will have an excellent artifact to remember the week by.
Speaker 1: Lots of time just slips into the past, this week
Speaker 1: won't because you will know how you spend all one
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty eight hours. In the meantime, this is Laura.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of
Speaker 1: our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've
Speaker 1: got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at
Speaker 1: Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a
Speaker 1: production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.