Review-A Matter of Time
Last week we worked on setting up our reset framework and so this week we’re actually going to be digging a little deeper and doing a bit of a “life audit”.
First, we’re tackling TIME. The good news and the bad news is that we all have the same number of hours in a day, 24 or 168 per week.
The problem comes when we start feeling like life is racing past us. This can result from either having too many commitments that we just can’t keep up with or feeling like we can’t even really tell where we’re spending our time, we just feel like there isn’t enough of it. Sound familiar?
Further there is often a great gap between how we think we are spending our time and how we actually spend our time.
So this week we will be performing a time audit. In whatever way works best for you, we will all be keeping track of our time for one week. You can write what you’re doing hour by hour in a notebook or journal, use a spreadsheet, keep a detailed account on your planner or calendar app, or some other creative way that you’d prefer. It can be really simple like this:
The key is to write down at regular intervals every 1/2 hour or hour what you are “actually” doing not what you’re supposed to be doing or what you’d like to be doing. Honest assessment and consistency are key.
Then once you’ve gathered your data, it’s time to go through it and analyze. Review the tasks you were performing at each time interval and assign a rating for example you can use colors or numbers (1-3) with 1 being-Very important (must get done or high priority), 2-Somewhat important 3-Worthless/distraction/or numbing activity.
Don’t stress too much about what your “research” will show the goal is just to get some hard, honest facts about where our time is going. Next week we will go over where there are gaps or discrepancies and how to address them.
I started this today! It’s making me want to change what I’m doing because I know I have to write it down.
Hi Jenn, thanks for following along. I hope this is helpful. Have a great weekend!