I thought this month would be a good one for time tracking, since it contains a variety of kinds of days, and because I thought it would bring some awareness and clarity as we build our back-to-school routines in a couple of weeks.
I also am hoping it will help me curb my email checking habit a bit — this is something I just want to cut down on as I find it distracting. Not nearly as distracting/numbing as social media is for me, but distracting nonetheless.
I brought out my neglected 2022 Hobonichi Techo A6 for this purpose!!
This works well because of the natural timeline on the left, and the page size is about right for what I have going on.
Yesterday I wrote down whenever I checked email — I checked work email (outlook) 4 times and personal (gmail) 6 times, and checked for blog comments 3 times. Today I will continue to track this but in a different format; I tried to capture number of new emails and number remaining, but that seems a little extra.
(ALL of this is a little extra I realize. Lol. But that’s ok.)
I did have an extremely pleasant and productive day yesterday. I’m not going to assume it was the time tracking that helped, but . . . maybe a little?
My plan is to keep it up for a month and then reassess. My track record with time tracking is not that successful so this may be ambitious, but I’m going to give it a try.
Hobonichi Countdown Alert!
Every August, Hobonichi puts out a countdown calendar where they gradually reveal tidbits about the next year’s lineup, from new design elements to cover options and more. Well — it’s August, so here it is! I am not using Hobonichi as my primary planner right now, but I have no doubt that I’ll be ordering something for 2023, even if it’s just some supplementary materials (time tracking journal? hmmm!).
9 Comments
I tracked my time for a week in January and plan to do that every year to get a sense for how my time shifts. But being the finance/excel nerd that I am, I did it in excel and used lots of “sumif” equations to make it easier to calculate how I spent my time. But that means I had broader categories/less granular info on how I spent my time. But it was still an interesting exercise. The week I tracked, our youngest had tubes put in and then got another virus later in the week so it was a very odd week – but I know there is no “normal” week so I still tracked even though I knew the totals wouldn’t be representative of a typical week for me.
I feel like there are very few truly “typical” weeks … there’s always something!
it’s interesting to know that you don’t check email all the day during working hours. I guess because you attend to physicians. at my work, when I’m at my desk, I have outlook, WhatsApp and Viber open as that’s part of my job to respond/react to emails/text work related.
I do get annoyed with myself when I check email at home for no apparent reason, just to know which always takes my mind where it shouldn’t be other than home/family.
I check every few hours which is enough. Email is definitely not my primary job- Monday and Tuesday are full patient days so that is what I am doing. My clinical inbox remains open (lab results etc) but not my outlook 🙂
Any suggestions for a planner just like the hobinichi (love the thin paper and yearly, month,week, and day planning) but that is in English?
Hobonichi is releasing English versions this year!!!!!!!!! So the English cousin would have everything you love.
I plan to see what the new hobonichi layouts are. But does the thin paper bother you? I love EC and Plum and A&O journals so these just look SO thin when you share.
It does sometimes. But not always! Im not sure I’ll use the cousin as my main planner but I have waited so long for this option that you can bet I am ordering it!!!
I think this is such a good idea!