Time Management: activity analysis

Photo by Kaleidico on Unsplash

Once a year or so, I do an exercise that helps me to analyze my habits and activities. Here is how I do it.

I buy myself a notebook and a pen. For one week, I write down everything I do in a notebook. The goal is to note every single activity and capture the time that the activity took. Here is an example of how it would look like.

9:00–9:17 Woke up, checked Instagram, email, YouTube.
9:19–9:40 Morning routine, shower.
9:40–10:00 Breakfast.
10:00–10:10 Driving to work. Ten minutes late.
10:10–10:55 Checking emails, reading habr, reading Hacker News, checking RSS feed.
10:55–11:45 Working.
11:45–12:02 Web surfing, tea.
12:02–12:50 Working.
12:50–1:30 Lunch break.
1:30–1:45 Web surfing, reading Hacker News.
…

Once I am done writing down everything for one week, I sit down and do some analysis. Because I have data for seven days, I can find some patterns. I can also easily calculate how much time certain activity takes during the week. Here are some things that I was able to identify.

• I noticed that my workday consists of 40–50 minutes chunks when I am productive. I can try to have a 10-minute break in between.
• I am barely walking. I need to start walking every day for 15 minutes. When it is not hot outside, I can have two 15 minute walks.
• I am drinking too much tea. I should drink less tea and I should stop putting sugar in it.
• My snacks are unhealthy. I can substitute them with yogurt, fruits, nuts. Buy it in bulk and grab it every day.
• I am spending too much time on some websites. I need to analyze each website. I need to limit some websites usage.
• I am using the phone in bed. I can put it to charging far away from my bed.

It helps to identify some bad habits, unhealthy routines, and things that eat my time. It is important for me to see the data, the number of hours I do one or another unhealthy activity, or the number of hours something takes. It motivates me to fight some of the bad habits and be more serious with the time I have.

Try it out and let me know how it worked for you.

Blessings.