The last week of March, I logged all my time for a full week. This is the sheet I use to log my time, and yes, it is very tedious. I wouldn’t want to do this for more than a week, and doing it on a yearly basis is about all I can handle at this point. But it’s a fun exercise to look at how I spend my time and see what patterns emerge. Why do I do this exercise? Simply to learn how I’m spending my time. For me, it’s not about looking at the data to figure out how I can more efficiently spend my time. I mean, I already know I spend a lot of time on my phone. I don’t need a time log to show me that. But it’s cool to see a breakdown of exactly how I’m spending my time, and now that I have three years of data (2022, 2023), I can see the patterns more clearly.
Here’s how I spent March 25-31, 2024!
My top categories
- Sleep + napping (36.9%) – I continue to spend over a third of my life unconscious. The first year I did this exercise, I was astonished by this number but now I have come to accept it. I’m a girl who likes sleep! In 2024, my sleep percentage (between sleeping and napping) was the exact same as 2022. (36.9%, which is a smidge lower than my overall percentage in 2023.)
- Work (14.1%) – I like that while work is still one of my top categories (as it has to be), it continues to stay steady around this 14% range. I’ve mentioned before that I feel like being a people manager has freed up some of my time, and it has. I’ve always been someone who likes to work smarter, not harder, and I think I’ve been able to be an efficient worker without logging long hours.
- Social (9.9%) – My social time was way up this week and that’s because I had a very full weekend with social time on Friday afternoon/evening, nearly all day Saturday, and on Sunday afternoon. This is atypical of me, as my social percentage was way lower in 2022 (6%) and 2023 (5%).
- Phone (5.9%) – My phone percentage was down .4% from 2023 to 2024, so that’s something! In reality, I still spent 10 hours on my phone over the course of the week. TEN HOURS. I could read a few books in that time! Alas, I do love my phone games and sometimes scrolling Instagram Reels brings me such delight. I’m not going to stop that, but I think I can try to lessen how much time I spend on my phone.
- Blogging + computer time (5.5%) – I didn’t separate blogging from computer time as I’ve done previously. However, I still ended up spending less time overall on this hobby of mine (6.7% in 2023 and 6.4% in 2022).
Surprises
- My reading time has decreased by 1% each year – In 2022, I spent 5.4% of my time reading. In 2023, I spent 4.3% of my time reading. And this year, it was a measly 3.3%. It was a busier week for me than usual, so I’m hoping that’s the reason for the decline and not because I’m losing interest in my favorite hobby. Say it isn’t so! (It isn’t. I know it isn’t. I’m just dramatic.)
- My morning/evening routine percentage continues to increase – In 2022, I spent 4.1% of my time on my routines. In 2023, that number was up to 5%. And this year, I’m at 5.5%. I don’t feel as if I’m doing anything different that makes my morning/evening routines increase. Maybe I’m just getting slower? Ha.
- I spent less time on the phone with my mom – In 2022 and 2023, I logged 4 hours of time on the phone with my mom over the course of the week. This year, it was only 2 hours. Of course, I did see my mom on Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday so in the end, I spent a lot more face-to-face time with her!
- Medical showed up on my chart for the first time – I had a few doctor’s appointments and I started doing icing sessions for my back, which I categorized as “medical,” which is the first time I’ve ever had this on the list. It’s true what they say: Your body does start falling apart the older you get.
A few notes:
- I am not a perfect time logger. This is supposed to be a fun, not stressful, exercise so I don’t place any pressure on myself to be perfect at it. It’s okay to make guesstimates! Nobody is checking your work.
- I do a lot of tasks at the same time: eating while watching TV, reading while icing my back, playing games on my phone while listening to a podcast. When that happened, I would categorize the time as my main task. For example, if I watched TV while eating dinner, eating would be the category since I was watching TV because I had dinner in front of me.
- I tried to work in 15-minute intervals throughout the week, which was actually very helpful for my brain! Not everything, of course, but if I wanted to take a break while working, I’d wait for the next interval on my spreadsheet so I could categorize it more easily. (It’s 2:38? Wait until 2:45 to take a break!)
Have you ever time logged? What hobby do you spend the most time doing?
Where’s your ten minutes playing the cats every day in this chart? (LOLOLOL. EVERY DAY. What were you thinking?) I’m shocked that reading isn’t a great percentage here based on how much you read. Are you listening to audiobooks when doing other things and so it was not the primary activity?
I think I tried to do this last year when you did (maybe it was two years ago?) and I got so stressed out after half a day! I had so much anxiety and I stopped. LOL. Maybe I could try it again? It would be fascinating to see if I devote my time the way I think I should. I’ll tell you what, my social number would be soooo much lower than yours!
If (when?) I time log, I anticipate sleep, work, pet care, and reading would be big chunks. But maybe it’s better for me that it’s mysterious!
Would it shock you if I said I have managed to play with the cats ONCE this week? And it’s not gonna happen tonight. I think I’m going to bring that routine down to, like, twice a week. We’ll start there. HA.
Yes, whenever I’m listening to an audiobook, I’m doing something else so I categorized the time differently. But I try to listen to at least an hour of my audiobook every day (since they compete with my podcast listening!) so I can get most books done within a week-10 days depending on how long the book is.
If it stresses you out, there’s no reason to time log! I totally get it!
I don’t time log but I feel like I could approximate my time! Lately I’ve become very scheduled because even though I’m not working, it seems like I always have so much I want to get done in a day! I, like Engie above, did try to log my time once but found it incredibly depressing (my GOD I spend a lot of time doing dishes) and so I quickly abandoned the project! But I am trying to be super mindful of time wasting, so that I can spend my time doing things I really love to do. It’s almost gardening season, so I will be spending a lot of time on that!
It does help to structure your time in such a way that will allow you to get the things you want to get done, done! I totally feel that!!
It was pretty depressing to see how many times I reach for my phone throughout the day and disassociate by playing games, ha.
Have you ever time logged? I don’t do it in a formal way, but I am aware of what I do and for how long. I am a creature of habit during the week so I usually know where I’ll be, what I’m planning on doing, and how long it’ll take.
What hobby do you spend the most time doing? Gardening. Even in the winter when I’m inside, I’m researching and planning. The rest of the year there’s always something to attend to outside. I love it.
Gardening must be such a fun and satisfying hobby! I have a few friends who are getting into gardening now and it makes me want a backyard (or even a front yard) to be able to flex my green thumb, but alas.
I’ve never time logged! I’m thinking I should though, because I have absolutely no idea what percentage of my time is spent on these activities. Like you said, it sounds like it would be very tedious. But I think it would be worth it. And, nice job on the sleep percentage! Sleep is important!
It’s an interesting exercise as long as you don’t put too much pressure to be perfect at it or feel stressed out by what patterns you’re seeing. For me, I just like seeing how I’m spending my time and how things change from year to year. The dip in reading time is a bit startling, so I want to make sure I’m not letting other hobbies take over!
I have done this for 3 years, too. I am also not a perfectionist. I am trying to capture the trends of what I am doing and don’t aspire to account for every minute. It has been interesting to see how things shift and change from hear to year. The first year I did it, taco had just turned 1. Sleep has majorly improved from that first time tracking year which was especially bad because he had tubes put in and then got a nasty virus so I was up with him a lot during the night.
I spend the most time reading, too! It ebbs with what I have going on in my life. Like this past week I did not read a lot because I was on vacation and watching the boys very closely since we were by the water a lot. And then in the evening I opted to play cards with my parents instead of reading. But I don’t get to spend so much time with them often so I made the most of it!
It must be ASTOUNDING to see the changes with having such young kids. Imagine what your time log will look like when Taco is, like, 5 compared to the year you started time logging. Crazy!
This is so interesting. And I can only imagine tedious. But I love data fro m years to compare.
I had to laugh about the medical thing. Isn’t it true… the older we get…