I tracked my time for a week...
Oh man, this was scary stuff. I’ve always wanted to try this to see where my time is actually going. After a few weeks of feeling like I was working far too much, with no time for myself and for other people, I looked in the mirror (figuratively speaking) and decided to track my hours for a WHOLE WEEK! Here’s what I found…
How much are you actually working? 👀
To provide you with some context I was mostly interested here in the hours I spent working for clients and producing an output. I’ve not included procrastination - which obviously happened - meaning whatever the total hour figure comes out as is likely to be an underestimate!
The goal I envisioned when being self-employed was to be in charge of what I did and to create the “perfect” work-life balance for myself. I do believe this is possible but it’s not by default just going to magically happen.
I had a few weeks of over-working where I felt super unbalanced. This prompted me to do this exercise. Over the past couple of months, things have generally been going well and I can now owe that to clearly defined ON and OFF times.
Monday
Working day started at 7am
Working day ended at 9pm
Total client hours: 12.5
This day was mainly working across two clients, and by seeing the time spent clearly, I knew that I needed to focus elsewhere for the rest of the week to keep any sense of my pricing structure. This was a good outcome from my tracking time already!
Monday was also a lot of firefighting. I had tech troubles and this was frustrating and led to a longer working day than normal. This is part of the parcel and certainly something we don’t usually plan for or accommodate in our schedules.
Tuesday
Working day started at: 7am
Working day ended at: 6:30pm
Total client hours: 8
Thanks to being able to visualize that Monday’s workload cannot continue for the rest of the week, I made it a priority to go to the gym and this helped me to break my day up.
Tuesday was a lot more balanced and I felt that I made good progress and successfully stopped work for the evening. Still, on paper, I personally want to get up earlier to finish earlier, although with all things considered, I think this was a pretty sustainable day.
Wednesday
Working day started at: 9am
Working day ended at: 5:30pm
Total client hours: 8
With Lockdown 2 and it being winter, I found it hard to get up this morning and realized I’m going to need a new routine going forward that takes this into consideration.
I realized that I was pretty behind on my own content and ended up spending half an hour writing up a single LinkedIn post. This is a great example of why we must create content in batches.
Thursday
Working day started at: 9am
Working day ended at: 5:30pm
Total client hours: 8
Interestingly this was more of a 9-5 and I was able to have breaks, probably prompted by my realization that self-care is even more important right now.
Friday
Working day started at: 11am
Working day ended at: 11pm
Total client hours: 10
Silly day. I didn’t batch my tasks and so a painful amount of task switching happened and I felt distracted. This highlighted to me that I need to get some help with my work as soon as possible. To maintain standards, I need to win some of my time back and this is a priority!
This folks is what happens we over work! It is not productive to run yourself into the ground working more and more hours. It’s actually just poor time management.
“Don't get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.”
Saturday
Working day started at: 12pm
Working day ended at: 9pm
Total client hours: 8
To get back on track I figured I would need a halfday on Saturday. I’d be interested to hear other people’s experiences with this, but whenever I’ve tried to do a half day of work and a half day off it’s never allowed me to actually switch off.
Sunday
Working day started at: 10am
Working day ended at: 5pm
Total client hours: 6
This was meant to be a day off and I really felt like I needed a break. With clients in the US, I realized I had 3 deadlines nearing due to the timezone difference. I decided it would be best to try and do some work to allow myself for an easier week ahead.
Total Hours Worked
12.5 + 8 + 8 + 8 + 10 + 8 + 6 = 60.5 hours
I worked 60.5 hours directly producing output, not including moments of procrastination where I was still glued to my laptop or phone.
As I really hope this email has made clear, this is not healthy nor productive. When we get into these dangerous cycles of over-working, we really can run ourselves into the ground. This was not a fun week, but it has made me feel determined to change and to stop this from happening again.
Will you track your time this week?
This was a different kind of newsletter this week and I strongly recommend that you try this exercise for yourself.
You can track your time manually by just jotting down your time starting a task and then roughly when it ends, or you can use free time tracking tools online. I came across the Google Chrome extension Clockify which looks like a good option!
Talk soon,
Joe
I’m Joe, a content marketer passionate about personal development and psychology. Every Sunday, I write an email newsletter with 1 thought, 1 content tip, and 1 article I’d recommend. Usually, I go over-board and provide a little more 😁