Is “work” specific enough for you? It depends on how much
you want to learn from this self-study. I suspect most of us will
want to keep closer tabs on exactly what we’re doing at work,
breaking time into categories such as “meetings” (perhaps also
differentiating between “productive meetings” and “total-waste-
of-time meetings”?), “report writing,” “responding to telephone
inquiries,” “commute time” (Don’t forget commute time, which
may be a major and previously unnoted time-consumer), and even
“break time.” (Don’t be afraid to chart breaks. You may well dis-
cover that you take too few rather than too many.)
The more categories you create, the more precise and helpful
the information, and the more annoying keeping track will be. The
more you decide to put in, the more you’ll get out later, so err on
the side of overscrupulous data-keeping. The information you col-
lect here is going to serve you well.
Let your time log sit overnight and take another look at it, add-
ing and deleting as you see fit. Have you forgotten anything? You
can, of course, add items during your survey week if you haven’t
anticipated everything here. The key is to note the items you’re
interested in tracking and to be sure your system enables you to
account for your time fairly accurately. (It will do no good to list
two hours a day as “miscellaneous.”)
You’re almost ready to start your self-study. First, write down
your estimate of how much time per week you spend in each cat-
egory. You can do this in total hours, in percentage of time spent,
or both. When you’re done, you’ll probably want to convert hours
into percentages anyway.
For example, if you figure you average seven hours of sleep
a night, you can write “49” (7 × 7) next to that category on your
list. Since there are 168 hours in a week, 49 divided by 168 is 29
percent (actually, 29.167 percent, if you need to be that precise. On
the other hand, “about 30 percent” may suit your purpose).
Next to your estimate, write the number of hours/percentage
you think you ought to be sleeping each week. If in your heart of
hearts you believe that Mom was right and that you really do need
A R E Y O U R E A L LY A S B U S Y A S Y O U T H I N K?