My First Quantified Self Project: Tracking the Last 744 Hours of My Life
Where is all my time going?!?!
My favorite new question is,“What has been the highlight of your past few days/weeks/month?” I am constantly surprised by how many people can’t answer this question or can’t remember a single thing in the previous week. But I’m the same way… When I try to journal about previous weeks, I almost always forget over half of the things I did. The worst feeling is looking back on a day and not being able to remember a single thing.
So, I set out on a month-long experiment in time-tracking to recover this lost time.
I wanted to answer the following four questions:
- Where is my time going?
- What am I spending too much time on?
- What am I spending too little time on?
- How do the numbers compare to my self-image?
Tools
For this project, I broke up my whole day into 48 30-minute segments and estimated what I was primarily doing during each 30-minute section in Google Calendar.
In addition, to using Google Calendar, I used a combination of Rescue Time, Moment, and Mi Band Fitness Tracker to piece together the rest of my time.
Using these four apps, I was able to put together my time spent during the whole month, minus four days where I was traveling and didn’t bother to log each 30-minute period.
Findings
Sleep — 249 hours 57 minutes (8 hours 3 minutes/day)
- Including 18 hours 48 minutes (36.6 minutes/day) of napping
Total Computer/Phone Time — 254 hours 55 minutes! (7 hours 3 minutes/day)
Hard Work — 47 hours 8 minutes
- Word — 33 hours and 19 minutes (66.6 minutes/day)
- PowerPoint — 6 hours 49 minute (13.6 minutes/day)
- Scrivener — 4 hours 33 minutes (9.1 minutes/day)
- Google Documents — 2 hours 27 minutes (4.9 minutes/day)
Email + Planning — 20 hours 53 minutes
- Gmail — 17 hours 29 minutes (39.0 minutes/day)
- Google Calendar — 3 hours 24 minutes (6.1 minutes/day)
Personal Work — 23 hours 33 minutes
- Anki (Flashcard program to study Vietnamese) 17 hours 36 minutes (35.2 minutes/day)
- IA writer — 5 hours 57 minutes (11.9 minutes/ day)
Social Messaging — 23 hours 54 minutes
- Facebook- 21 hours 9 minutes (42.3 minutes/day) — Most of this time was spent chatting or looking up events because I don’t have a Facebook Newsfeed
- IMessages — 2 hours 45 minutes (5.5 minutes/day)
Other computer time (Likely mindless time) — 94 hours 3 minutes (3 hours 5 minutes/day)
- Phone 35 hours 20 minutes (1 hour 8 minutes/day)
- YouTube — 26 hours 25 minutes (52 minutes/day)
- Google — 11 hours 5 minutes (22.2 minutes/day)
- Uncategorized in RescueTime (Likely Googling restaurants, cafes, events, and workout stuff; reading blogs and news; planning vacation and logistical stuff) — 21 hours 24 minutes (42.8 minutes/day)
Non-sleep, non-computer time — 201 hours 57 minutes
- Social Activities (non-eating) — 77 hours 30 minutes (2.5 hours/ day)
- Social Eating — 28 hours 8 minutes (54.6 minutes/day)
- Eating Alone — 11 hours 15 minutes (21.6 minutes/day)
- Work-related meetings — 25 hours 15 minutes(48.6 minutes/day)
- Gym — 22 hours 56 minutes (44.4 minutes/day)
- Walking — 36 hours 53 minutes (1 hour and 11.4 minutes/day)
- Transportation — 17 hours 40.8 minutes (34.2 minutes/day)
Lessons Learned
What am I spending too much time on?
“Dicking around” on the computer — This is by far the biggest sink hole of time. I call it my quality computer time, but it is mindless time. This includes all time watching YouTube, reading blogs, surfing random sites, and looking up new workouts. Although some of this surfing is necessary recovery time, most of this “Dicking around” time comes after I wake up and before I go to bed. None of the information that I watch / read gets internalized.
TO DO: No phones or computer the first and last hours of the waking day (This is my challenge for month of May, so stay tuned)
Making plans — Since my Facebook Newsfeed is blocked (thanks to Facebook Newsfeed Eradicator), a lot of my time on Facebook was spent either making plans via Facebook messenger or looking up events. I spent a total of 21 hours on Facebook. I’m guessing I spent an hour doing legitimate work-related tasks, 10 hours making plans, and 10 hours keeping touch with friends back home. That is 20 minutes of making plans each day, not counting time for waiting for responses and the time it took me to task switch back to messaging.
TO DO: If something requires more than 5 texts, call to make plans. Try to make all plans at night (I.e., a little before I go to bed)
Transportation — Even though I live a 15-minute walk away from my office and refuse to drive during rush hour, non-walking transportation still consumed an average of over half an hour each day. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but after this experiment, I’m starting to realize each half an hour block is precious!
What am I not spending enough time on?
Focused work — I spent a lot of the workday doing work, but not being engaged with one task. Rather, I would switch from task to task without a real purpose.
TO DO: Block out a 2–3 hour period for productive, focused work each day at the start of the day.
Reading — I logged a grand total of 0 hours for recreational reading.
TO DO: I probably should read a little more..
Doing nothing — Since I’m always trying to make the most of life, I am rarely doing nothing. When I was walking, I had a podcast in. Before bed, I was watching YouTube videos. When I was on a plane or train, I was asleep. But doing nothing is doing something.
TO DO: Spend more time looking out the window, taking mindful walks, and meditating. (My current challenge for the month of April, is meditating for at least 20 minutes a day, so stay tuned)
Getting Ready/Hygiene — When looking at other people’s time-tracking projects, some of them spent up to 1 hour a day getting ready (showering, picking out clothes, drying hair, making coffee etc.). While I definitely do these things, in my Google Calendar tracking, this all took 15 minutes or less, so it was never logged in as a 30-minute block.
TO DO: Nothing. As long as I don’t smell, I’ll be happy.
Self Image — How did my self-image (of being a relatively introverted public health researcher, gym-rat, and productive person compare to the numbers)?
Self Image: I’m relatively introverted
Number: I spend a good amount of time around others
I spent a total of 4 hours 13 minutes/day talking to others (Over 4 hours 30 minutes/day if you include Facebook chat), of which 3 hours and 45 minutes/day were fun (not work-related). These numbers are probably inflated because I spend a solid amount of time chatting to random people to practice my Vietnamese, and I spent some of my weekends on mini-trips, in which I spent the whole day with others.
Previous Thought: I’m becoming a Gym Rat
Numbers: Probs true
I worked out for 23/31 days for about an hour each session, which includes days traveling. I probably would have lifted every day if I didn’t force myself to rest. I also walked 9557 steps/day.
Previous thought: I don’t waste a lot of time
Numbers: I waste at least 2–3+ hours/day on mindless activities
I spent 1 hour 8.4 minutes/day on my phone, 52 minutes/day on YouTube, 22.2 minutes/day on Google, and 42.8 minutes/day “uncategorized” in RescueTime. That is 3 hours of wasted time each day!
- Every morning I would wake up, but it would take me ~30 minutes of dicking around on my phone (Facebook, Instagram, and email) to actually wake up and get to the gym. After lunch, I would mess around on my computer for at least another 30 minutes (reading blogs, news, restaurants to go to, travel plans, messaging people, etc.). Every time I moved locations or had a meeting, I would mindlessly surf the internet for another 30-minute period. Every night, I would do nothing on my computer for another 1–1.5 hours.
Final Thoughts
These numbers are probably “better” than an average month. Knowing that I was watching myself and actively entering my activities into Google Calendar made me not waste as much time this month. I spent 94 hours on mindless activities this month (~19% of my awake time). How high would this number be if I weren’t tracking anything?
Data is super cool. Maybe I’m a geek, but this project was suuuper exciting for me. I’ve worked with public health data sets before, but I have never bothered to analyze my own data. Data is everywhere, we might as well make use of it.
I recovered over half my time in 6 minutes a day. I spent a total of 6.1 minutes/day on Google Calendar each day, the rest of the apps that I used did not require any effort. I went from not being able to recount over half my time, to being fully accountable of almost every single minute of each day. Time is the most important resource we have!
