What I learned from tracking every minute for 2 years
About five years ago I read This Strange Life, a book written by the Russian writer Daniil Granin in which he talked about his time tracking system. Daniil used it for decades and could remember any day in detail, what he did, and how much time he spent on it.
I started tracking time at the end of 2017 and have been doing this every day for more than two years. I’ll tell you more about what this habit gives, why you need to track time, and how to start doing it.
At the end of 2017, I formed long-term goals, a vision, and started to live a meaningful and productive life. Along with this, I wanted to track how much time I spent on particular tasks, meditation, study, and others.
So I created a simple document in Google Spreadsheets and got down to business. My first time tracking system looked like this.
The time tracking works like this: I set a timer on the computer when I start working on a task and stop when I take a break or finish working.
There is only net time in the spreadsheets. I used to fill a similar spreadsheet on work, but I paid more attention to my self-development and personal projects; they are more attractive for me in the long run.
I measure my time even in travels wherever I am. Sometimes it’s inconvenient to open Google Spreadsheets; then I simply write the time in notes on the phone and transfer it to a spreadsheet later.
Of course, at the initial stage, you may not find a lot of insights for yourself, because you will not have much data to analyze. But the more you track your days, the more data you will have for analysis.
Moreover, you can try to improve the spreadsheet as you want by adding habit tracking. For example, this is what my spreadsheet looked like a year and a half ago:
Now I fill it in a simpler form, recording the days and minutes spent on specific tasks.
I will briefly show what I found out and analyzed for two full years (2018 and 2019).
Here, for example, is the analytics for my activities in 2018. I see declines during those periods when I traveled for a long time.
What is more interesting is to watch trends in different areas. For example, I began to spend more time on my business projects. This increase was especially noticeable in the second half of 2019 when I left work and was able to dedicate more time to them.
There was a clear trend that I began to spend less time on planning, and I fell it. A couple of years ago, I spent more time defining a mission and long-term goals, and that gave more support and joy in life. Hence, it’s definitely worth more planning.
As for reading, I noticed the following trend: I usually read a lot in December-January, when I fly home. There is time to think and relax as well as on trips. But most of all I have time to read in these two months.
I started to meditate a couple of years ago, and I have a decrease in meditation time. On average, I do not meditate much, but I still try to do it every day. Surprisingly, I thought there was a downtrend and I meditate less, but in fact, I meditate the same amount of time.
You can also look at your time distribution, for example.
Here are my figures in 2018 and 2019 (it is worth noting that I had 12% more net time in 2019).
The three main priorities remained unchanged: personal projects, learning English and reading. But the rest of the things are different.
Also, if you break it down into minutes per year, you can see how important small intervals are.
On average, I had about 3.5 hours of useful time every day in 2019 (excluding work).
Personal projects 104 min per day
Learning English 23 min per day
Reading 22 min per day
Social projects 16 min per day
Self-development 12 min per day
Planning 11 min per day
Meditation 8 min per day
Sport 4 min per day
For example, finding on average16 minutes a day to social projects, I managed to study podcasting, learn interview theory, create the idea of a podcast, logo, find a lot of social entrepreneurs, contact them, arrange interviews, record, and publish ten episodes in a year.
By reading 22 minutes a day, I was able to read 50 books a year (mostly business and self-development, and non-fiction).
Now open the statistics on Instagram and see how much time you spend on Instagram on average. Could you make a habit of spending this time on something more useful?
As for the time tracking, it does not bother me at all. It takes practically no time, and I cannot imagine life without it. Doing different tasks, depending on mood, health, etc., we can feel the time differently, and we don’t understand how much time we spent on a specific task. Such tracking allows you to evaluate and understand how much time you have been doing this.
Remember, it’s important to know what exactly you did, not how much time you worked. So all this works well together, along with summarizing, planning, and executing. And of course, do not forget that the process is often more important than the result.
