Speaker 1: Good morning. This is Laura. Every day on this before
Speaker 1: Breakfast podcast, I share a practical tip that will help
Speaker 1: you take your day from great to awesome. Today's tip
Speaker 1: is to track your time. You can start with twenty
Speaker 1: four hours, but I hope you'll do more. In this episode,
Speaker 1: I'll be explaining why I write and speak about time
Speaker 1: management and so. People sometimes tell me that they want
Speaker 1: to spend their time better. They asked me what's the
Speaker 1: first thing they should do. My answer is always the same.
Speaker 1: If you want to spend your time better, you need
Speaker 1: to figure out where it's going now. Because if you
Speaker 1: don't know where the time is going now, how do
Speaker 1: you know if you're changing the right thing. Maybe something
Speaker 1: you thought was a problem really isn't. Maybe something you've
Speaker 1: never even considered is taking a lot more time than
Speaker 1: you thought. Just like when you're making a business decision,
Speaker 1: you want to be sure you're working from good data.
Speaker 1: The best way to get that data try tracking your time.
Speaker 1: Ideally for a week, but even a few days or
Speaker 1: just one day can be helpful. I guarantee it will
Speaker 1: be enlightening. How do I know that, Well, it's definitely
Speaker 1: been enlightening for me. I've had thousands of people track
Speaker 1: their time over the years. Generally people use a spreadsheet
Speaker 1: I've designed, which you can get from my website or
Speaker 1: you can build one yourself. It's got the days of
Speaker 1: the week along the top from Monday to Sunday, and
Speaker 1: half hour blocks running down the left hand side from
Speaker 1: five am to four thirty am, So if you're counting,
Speaker 1: that's three thirty six half hour cells representing the hundred
Speaker 1: sixty eight hour week. Other people use apps. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's dozens of commercial time tracking apps on the market,
Speaker 1: or some arts A types like to walk around with
Speaker 1: a little notebook and keep notes, writing everything down in
Speaker 1: narrative style. So since fair is fair, I've tracked my
Speaker 1: time too. I actually began tracking my time continuously in
Speaker 1: half hour blocks in April. No crisis or dark moment
Speaker 1: prompted this tracking, but I had recently had my fourth child,
Speaker 1: and I suspected that this might introduce some new challenges
Speaker 1: into my family's already busy life. So I started tracking
Speaker 1: in mid April and figured i'd go for a month
Speaker 1: or so. Then after a month, I decided it was
Speaker 1: easy enough and interesting enough that I would just keep going,
Speaker 1: at least for a year. Sure enough, one year in
Speaker 1: I found out all sorts of interesting things. Even as
Speaker 1: someone who thought she knew everything there was to know
Speaker 1: about time. First discovery, I worked less than I thought
Speaker 1: I did. In my mind, I was working fifty hours
Speaker 1: a week or maybe more. After all, I worked all
Speaker 1: day during the work day, I worked at night after
Speaker 1: my kids went to bed. I often did work on
Speaker 1: the weekends. I traveled for speeches, so that's easily fifty
Speaker 1: fifty five maybe sixty hours, right ump. I rarely did
Speaker 1: all those things in the same week. In my mind,
Speaker 1: I was remembering my most work heavy weeks as typical
Speaker 1: because I wanted to see myself as the kind of
Speaker 1: serious professional who was working long hours. When I tracked
Speaker 1: all my time, I saw that the long term average
Speaker 1: was closer to forty hours. Forty is a different number
Speaker 1: than fifty. It's not that I never worked fifty hours
Speaker 1: a week, because sometimes I did. Sometimes I worked sixty
Speaker 1: hours a week, but those weeks were no more typical
Speaker 1: than the weeks I worked thirty hours. I have since
Speaker 1: learned that this is a common blind spot. There was
Speaker 1: once a study comparing people's estimated work weeks with time diaries.
Speaker 1: They found that people claiming seventy five plus hour work
Speaker 1: weeks were off by about twenty five hours. You can
Speaker 1: guess in which direction right. It's funny, but it's important
Speaker 1: to understand what's going on. We live in a world
Speaker 1: where being busy is seen as a badge of honor.
Speaker 1: We feel like we're working hard, heard, and we feel
Speaker 1: like we're working long, so we put a high number
Speaker 1: on it. You know how these conversations go. I worked
Speaker 1: sixty hours last week. Sixty. I wish I worked sixty.
Speaker 1: I worked seventy. Seventy, Oh, seventy is my light season,
Speaker 1: so on it goes. I once met a young man
Speaker 1: at a party who told me he was working a
Speaker 1: hundred eighty hours a week at his startup, which is
Speaker 1: very impressive if you multiply by seven. Keeping track of
Speaker 1: time gives us a more accurate picture of our life.
Speaker 1: When we know where the time really goes, we can
Speaker 1: make better choices. I could make sure that I spent
Speaker 1: the forty hours I was working wisely, and that I
Speaker 1: made good choices with those ten other hours that I
Speaker 1: didn't know. We're there. I also learned that I spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time in the car since I run
Speaker 1: my business out of a home office. I don't have
Speaker 1: a daily commute, so in my mind, time in the
Speaker 1: car was this negligible number. Except it wasn't. I soon
Speaker 1: learned that I spent more than an hour a day
Speaker 1: in the car, mostly on short trips. This is actually
Speaker 1: one of the reasons I got into podcasts. I realized
Speaker 1: I needed something constructive to do at this time, and
Speaker 1: maybe other people did too. Just to give you a
Speaker 1: sense of how far off my estimation was, I was
Speaker 1: spending way more time in the car than I was exercising.
Speaker 1: But in my mind I was exercising a lot and
Speaker 1: I was rarely in the car. But what was most
Speaker 1: interesting to me is that I still had space in
Speaker 1: my life. My husband and I both work, we have
Speaker 1: four active children. Yet I could see on my time
Speaker 1: log that there was space I could redeploy to new
Speaker 1: activities if I chose so. For instance, I joined a
Speaker 1: choir that rehearsed on Thursday nights during the school year.
Speaker 1: I had been saying how much I missed singing. It
Speaker 1: turned out I did have time to sing. Time tracking
Speaker 1: showed me that I promised that time tracking is easy.
Speaker 1: I just go in three to four times per day,
Speaker 1: writing down what I've done since the last check in.
Speaker 1: Broad categories are okay, we're sleep, drive, run, cooked, dinner,
Speaker 1: play with kids. Consistency is more important than getting bogged
Speaker 1: down in the details. Each check in takes me less
Speaker 1: than a minute, so time tracking takes me about three
Speaker 1: minutes a day. That's the same amount of time I
Speaker 1: spend brushing my teeth, and that's an activity I've yet
Speaker 1: to declare myself too busy to do. I hope you'll
Speaker 1: give it a try. You can start now. In fact,
Speaker 1: here's a way to feel like you've got a head.
Speaker 1: Start starting now, write down how you've spent the past
Speaker 1: twenty four hours. It turns out most of us can
Speaker 1: remember the past twenty four hours with reasonable accuracy. Now
Speaker 1: just keep going for the next twenty four hours, and wow,
Speaker 1: you've got two days of data to work with. That's great.
Speaker 1: You may already be seeing patterns. Make sure you track
Speaker 1: at least one weekend day, because weekends are real days too,
Speaker 1: and this time really counts. After a week. Add up
Speaker 1: the major categories. Ask yourself what you like, ask yourself
Speaker 1: what you want to change, No judgment. This is just
Speaker 1: about data and learning. More about yourself. But I can
Speaker 1: tell you this, Knowing where the time goes has been
Speaker 1: life changing for me, and I promise it will be
Speaker 1: for you too. If you track your time, I'd love
Speaker 1: to know what you find out. You can email me
Speaker 1: at Before Breakfast podcast at i heeart media dot com.
Speaker 1: This is Laura. Thanks for listening and here's to making
Speaker 1: the most of our time. Hey, everybody, I'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. You can send me your tips, your questions,
Speaker 1: or anything else. Just connect with me on Twitter, Facebook
Speaker 1: and Instagram at Before Breakfast Pod that's b E the
Speaker 1: number four, then Breakfast p o D. You can also
Speaker 1: shoot me an email at Before Breakfast podcast at i
Speaker 1: heeart media dot com. That Before Breakfast is spelled out
Speaker 1: with all the letters. Thanks so much. I look forward
Speaker 1: to staying in touch.