Comments on: 168 Hours Time Tracking Challenge Day 7

By: liz

liz — Tue, 19 Sep 2017 16:50:56 +0000

In reply to Meghan.

I’m so glad you mentioned the productive day/slack day phenomenon– I thought it was just me! I tend to have 2 very long days per week– because of a bad commute, I’m at work for 12 hours/day two days/week, and churn through things. but then am useless the days after, when working from home.

By: liz

liz — Tue, 19 Sep 2017 16:49:10 +0000

Thanks for inspiring me to track! My biggest insight of the week was that my son (7.5) doesn’t need me as actively as he used to. I clocked 40 hours of proximity to him, but only about 4.5 of engaging directly with him.

On a related note, I have little to show for my mornings with him– I need to find more purposeful things to do while I periodically remind him to get dressed, brush teeth, etc… one morning I wrote a long email to a friend, which was satisfying.

By: Meghan

Meghan — Mon, 18 Sep 2017 19:08:13 +0000

Hope you were able to get more work done and get a good night’s sleep — hooray for the clock! It is amazing both how much better things go with just one kid at a time *and* how much slower they go. There’s probably something profound in there about taking things slowly, one thing at a time.
I did track my entire week last week! I discovered that a really productive day is often followed by a really unproductive day — something I’ve long suspected. I worked for a solid four hours Monday (that doesn’t sound like a lot, but it was multiple hours in a row, which is unusual for me right now), and was useless Tuesday (no school, either). Same thing Thursday and Sunday — several long chunks of concentrated “deep work” (2 hours minimum) meant the next day I found it much harder to focus. I hope this will make planning my weeks easier, and I can stack admin/marketing work on those more scattered days.

By: Cheryl Fewell-Brown

Cheryl Fewell-Brown — Mon, 18 Sep 2017 13:55:09 +0000

So bummed I will miss your Facebook live. I will be driving to a physical therapy appt. I’m continuing for another week, I have already decided no computer time at all until lunchtime, but better yet evenings. I’m wasting an hour every morning while drinking coffee. Thanks Laura and I’m amazed at your 2 year old. I have a just turned 3 year old granddaughter and I have a hard time figuring out what she’s trying to tell me!

By: lauravanderkam

lauravanderkam — Mon, 18 Sep 2017 00:53:28 +0000

In reply to Tana.

@Tana – yes, I added the description for blogging purposes. My spreadsheets are more bare bones: play outside w/2-year-old. I didn’t write in the details of the game. But the funny thing is, when I look back on my logs, even the bare bones stuff often triggers more specific memories of what I’ve been doing.

By: Tana

Tana — Mon, 18 Sep 2017 00:31:08 +0000

So what you’ve posted here all week isn’t in the Excel format. Do you track your time like this and then fill in the Excel sheet? Or was all this description extra just for this week? I’m also interested to see how you tallied your hours for the week after reading your blog posts. This has been so interesting. Thanks so much!