Looking at my time logs from last week, I did a cursory analysis. The findings included:
– Just under 8 hrs of sleep per night
– 41 hours of work*, coming out to ~6 hrs/day when spread out over 7 days (I did not work at all on the weekend)
– 8 hours of commuting
– Almost no TV (I watched 2 episodes of Mindy Project and that was it)
– Average of 5 hrs/day of active time w/ the kids (more on weekends, less on weekdays)
– About an hours daily of phone/zone out time
– A little under an hour daily (average) of exercise
I am generally happy with this. Like most of the participants in this exercise, I did not discover some mountain of wasted time. Things are pretty tight overall. In fact, I am pretty happy with my overall balance. The only thing that stands out to me is that hour a day of phone/zone out — something I have already written about here dozens of times.
It probably wouldn’t matter to me if I did have 28 hours of leisure time to spare. But since it is clear that my ‘extra time’ budget is very limited (after subtracting things that feel pretty much mandatory to me, like time with kids / exercise / work / commuting), I can’t stand that a large percentage of it is getting frittered away. And so I continue to strive to improve this! I would love to do this again and have that hour a day down to 15-30 minutes or so, and have more time noted reading, writing (here or elsewhere), journaling, listening to music, planning vacations (something I really do like to do), even watching TV or (yes) coloring.
So: the journey continues. I think I will take a little break but resume tracking in a week or so to see how things are going. I could even see myself doing it long term à la LV, which might help. We will see!
Off to run – first interval run in forever. I’m kind of nervous! Will report back.
* Did not count time spent at lunch while at work, or my work dinner, even though that involved being with work colleagues and often talking about work topics
2 Comments
What struck me about this post is the enormous amount of time you spend with your kids. Five hours is a lot! I am a bit envious. 🙂
I have also noticed lately that I’ve been sucked into the phone more than I’d like. I think it’s a way of procrastinating doing actual reading for my job. So…. I bought some fiction, which I enjoy more (even if strictly speaking, reading fiction isn’t exactly productive…). I also want to do something about the amount of time Dyl spends watching tv after dinner (20-40 min per night). I’d rather have quality time with her upstairs playing games and reading. But then that might be more tiring for me and as it is I’m often already falling asleep. And she does love the Octonauts.
One day residency will end, I guess.
8 hours of commuting is a lot! Is that included in your work totals? When I go to my downtown office, I take a commuter train where I can work/read/rest, so it doesn’t feel like totally wasted time. The rest of the days I work from a satellite office about 15 minutes’ drive from my house or work from home. Clearly, not doable for every job. But I do find commuting to be an enormous waste of time, especially stuck behind the wheel of a car. I’d be much more concerned about that one than the 1 hour/day average of phone/screen time.