Have you ever wondered where the time goes? How some days you set out with modest ambitions to achieve just two or three things, yet before you know it the day has gone and it’s time for bed? It’s something I’m sure everyone can identify with – often more the rule than the exception.

So in an attempt to better understand where my own time vanishes to I set about a week of closely monitoring and recording what I was doing in every 30 minute chunk throughout the day.

The method couldn’t have been more simple.

I created a Google Sheet template that I could access any time, breaking each day down into 30 minute bites, and creating a colour coded key for the major activity themes that I imagined I would be doing: Fitness, Work Meetings, Family Time, Travel etc…

All I then needed to do was remember to update the tracker as each day passed, in as much detail as possible. Being honest enough to not to just input the intended use of the time, but a realistic representation of what actually happened, including distractions, interruptions etc. There’s a big difference between 30 minutes of solid work time and 30 minutes in which colleagues come to ask you questions, or immediately responding to emails or alerts as they pop up.

The more detail you can capture, the more beneficial the exercise is. How are your energy levels throughout the day? What did you have for breakfast or lunch? Is your routine the same each morning? By capturing as much information as possible you can start to draw correlations between ups, downs and likely causal factors.

How are your emotions throughout the day? Did that one meeting or conversation leave you feeling frustrated, or angry? Is it really because the other person is an idiot, or could it be because all you had for lunch was salad and you haven’t eaten anything in the subsequent four hours?

So that’s all you have to do. Fill out the template as regularly and honestly as you can, for one week, and then look back on your results and see what insights emerge.

So what did I learn?

1. I waste an enormous amount of my life doing things that don’t make me happy, or aren’t the best use of my talents

It’s a tough one to swallow, but looking at a 30-minute-by-30-minute record of what I genuinely did over the past seven days was a sobering reality check that made me question a few things.It made me recall the old adage “Nobody dies wishing they had worked more hours.” When you realise that on average you’re only spending a few short hours each week doing things that genuinely bring joy or fulfilment to you or your loved ones, it’s an important wake-up call.

2. It really helps you be intentional

Knowing that I would be recording everything I did automatically made me more mindful and intentional about how I was spending my time.

For example, in those precious and rare time slots I had reserved for ‘Work Doing’ or ‘Work Thinking’ I really focused on doing the most important tasks at hand, sometimes turning off email and finding a place I knew I wouldn’t be disturbed to ensure the critical actions for the day would be done and I wouldn’t be tempted to stay late or take work home.

A net result of this was that during the week of tracking I was much more effective at getting the important things done, in comparison to an average week when I’m admittedly more likely to get sucked into responding to emails, or solving other people’s problems.

The subconscious thought in my head of “Do I want to be recording things I’ve successfully achieved, or do I want to be recording time running away on unimportant things?” acted as a good motivator to keep me focused on what really matters to me.

3. Maximise leisure time and time with people you love

There were hours recorded when I was physically present with my partner, and indeed with her Mother who happened to be visiting us that week, but were we necessarily fully experiencing the time together? Some of the time yes, for sure, but there were definitely some hours when we were physically in each other’s company, but without much interaction.

One learning from this exercise is that, if you have just a precious few hours with good friends or family, then make them count. Be fully present, enjoy each others’ company, laugh, do something memorable, let each other know you really appreciate them. Absolutely do not spend the time looking at your mobile phone or zoning out in front of the TV. Life’s too short, and one day you’ll wish for those hours with that person back.

4. Make the most of ‘dead time’

There will be periods in your days when you’re driving, traveling by some other means, perhaps waiting in line for a coffee, for lunch, for a bus. This doesn’t have to be recorded as ‘waiting’, condemned to be dead, wasted time. Instead, what could you do in those moments that would help you towards your personal goals or present challenges?

Driving? Queue up a podcast or audiobook about a topic that really interests you, or is related to a personal or work project, and learn whilst you drive. My current favourite podcasts include the James Altucher Show and the Unmistakeable Creative, but these days there are phenomenal audio recordings relating to just about every field and niche you could wish for.

Commuting by train or bus? Journal, write blog posts, scribble down notes about whatever is on your mind.

Queuing? Think intentionally about a work or personal challenge you want a solution for. Or fire up a fun educational app like Duolingo and learn 10 new words in your language of choice.

Or simply daydream with intention: this has plenty of benefits too.

5. It takes time and commitment

Although the process of tracking your time is pretty straightforward. It does take some time and commitment to keep on top of it.

Ideally I’d recommend updating your tracker as frequently as you can, at least every couple of hours throughout the day. My memory at least isn’t as effective as it once was. The longer I left it, the less precise about the details I was able to be. And the devil in this exercise is all in those details.

6. Time disappears in the cracks when you’re not looking

In reality, it’s rare that we spend a full 30 minutes doing something. Although we tend to have a habit of over-exaggerating how long we spend on a particular task, life today is so full of distractions that we’re lucky to spend 10 minutes fully focused on an activity before something else comes up or we get bored. For example, if hoovering my apartment took a full 30 minutes, it would be a task I would dread so much more than the maybe 15 minutes it probably actually takes.

My point is that although tracking my week in 30 minute chunks has been a fascinating and insightful learning exercise, it doesn’t give the most detailed picture, leaving room for some fudging of the truth. Using the vacuum example above, I may have recorded the activity as ’30 minutes of housework’, but what probably happened was more like: Get hoover out of cupboard (1 minute); pick up phone to select ideal vacuuming soundtrack (30 seconds); get distracted by notification on screen – before I know it, I’m scrolling through my newsfeed, or reading a news site (10 minutes); start vacuuming (3 minutes); pause to pick up my gym bag from the floor and put the contents from last night’s tennis session in the wash (1 minute); remember that I need to find two additional players for a Doubles game next week, so get my phone again to fire off some WhatsApp messages (5 minutes); return to vacuuming… You get the picture.

Therefore, to really fully understand where my time is going, I will do this exercise again, but instead track my hours in blocks of 15 minutes, allowing for far less fudging and kidding myself.

My hope is that not only will this give me clearer and more detailed insights to work with, it will also make me much more focused on being fully intentional for short blocks of time, and eliminating the unproductive distractions.

In conclusion

I would recommend that everybody tries this exercise for at least a week.It’s definitely perfect for anybody who wishes they could find more time to do more of what they love, who has big projects that they want to find more time for, or those who want more time to spend with friends and loved ones. And I think it’s just a beneficial exercise for all people to get a honest picture of where their precious life time is going, rather than being swept along by external pressures and demands.

Addendum

Since writing this article I have discovered the book 168 Hours by Laura Vanderkam, which very much addresses the principles outlined above.

The core premise of 168 Hours is that every single one of us has the same amount of hours each week, yet whilst the majority of us spend our time bemoaning the fact that it simply isn’t enough and fantasizing about all the things we would do if we could even find an extra 15 minutes for ourselves, there are outliers who manage to flip that paradigm and somehow cram an astonishing amount into their week.

Laura cites real, inspiring examples such as the lady who runs a large construction business, is a very hands-on mother to six children, and still manages to find the time for leisurely walks in nature and devouring novels by her favorite author. 168 Hours investigates what makes these people seemingly able to do and have it all.

Her key finding, from what I can gather from the first few chapters so far, is that rather than letting life and circumstance dictate how they spend their week, these high achievers instead first decide how they want to spend their time, and then make life and circumstance fit to their plan.

They are the masters and mistresses of their own schedules who, rather than just post-actively filling in a time tracker like the one I describe above as a record of what transpired. They instead start with a blank time tracker and fill in how they want to spend every block of time in advance.

When one takes this proactive approach you realize that 168 hours per week is actually more than enough to sleep the recommended eight hours per night, exercise for more than the recommended time each day, cook food, do housework, achieve ambitious goals and maintain interesting hobbies, as long as we can be fully intentional and disciplined about how we use them.

It’s amazing to see just how much of the stuff that we often say we want to do more of (e.g. Reading, exercising, writing, playing with your kids, socializing with friends and family) we actually have space for if we focus on scheduling what really matters to us first, and building the stuff we care less about around it.

The key is intentionality and minimising the quick-to-accumulate minutes wasted unconsciously falling into default habits like scrolling through social media or mindlessly watching TV.

It’s a brilliant way to think about our valuable time on this earth and I’m excited to find out if it is as much of a game changing approach as it sounds.