Time Tracking: A New Approach
I absolutely love the idea of periodically tracking time. We tend to tell ourselves stories about how we spend our days, but they are not always accurate. The only way to really get a glimpse of the truth is to actually capture it and record it somewhere.
AND YET: I am terrible at doing this. I start off strong (and I know exactly how I tend to spend my mornings!) but somewhere in there I get distracted, forget to track, and somehow I find myself going to bed without a clear idea of anything that took place after ~12 pm or so.
You all know I *love* working with paper. Notebooks. Pens. Highlighters. ANALOG. But finally something snapped and I decided to give electronic time tracking a try.
And no one is more surprised than me that it worked. And I LIKED IT.
I used Toggl because it had the most reviews in the app store. And I am not even close to using all of the features, but I like how you can see your data in lots of different ways, like a list view (this was much of Sunday):
Or a calendar view:
Anyway, I am going to try to keep this going for the next 1-2 weeks and will work on learning how to color code. I also have to decide how granular I want to be — I prefer less granular since it’s less disruptive AND that way you can see the captions on the calendar view (little tiny chunks of time just appear as blank, and you have to hover to see them).
(Example: can lump “breakfast + cleanup” into one block rather than two smaller ones, or “morning routine” into one block rather than plan, read, Headspace, etc).
I am not planning to abandon paper. (AT ALL!). But I think for this particular use case . . . digital works better for me. One reason I had avoided it for a while was because I worried it would tether me to my phone more, but I haven’t really found that to be the case. This may be because I’m already pretty tethered (sigh), but I did not see my screen time minutes climb when I tried it.
There is also Apple Watch integration but I don’t find that it works all that well; you can stop an activity that way but are not able to start a new one. It would have been great if this worked better; I rely on watch for the timers on the Invisalign tracker I have, and love that I can do this without actually picking up my phone!
Anyway! I am not sure I have too many deep insights regarding my time use quite yet, other than the fact that my kids really have started sleeping pretty late (!) — even G, probably because she ends up staying up late with the bigger kids way later than they ever did at her age.
Other Weekend Happenings:
- I played around with my meds. I *think* I may have found the right balance after spending Saturday SOOOOO dysfunctionally tired. I will definitely let the cardiology team know and ensure they are on board. I will be doing another heart monitor next month, so *fingers crossed* it will look better. My overall sense (plus Apple Watch spot checks) suggests it will.
- I tried out my new sticker printer! This is the Canon Selphy QX20. It is way crisper than my old photo printer (that one – Kodak Step – used Zink photosensitive paper; this one uses ink like a tiny printer).
I have some fun things I want to try with it.
- I took the girls to the mall to meet up with A’s friend and her little sister. (J + C stayed home and watched football). We had fun and G got a new outfit (we didn’t really do any back to school shopping since the kids have uniforms, so this seemed reasonable).
- WE SOLD THE PRIUS! Josh got a bunch of online offers and we went with the highest one, from Carmax. The whole ordeal including drive time took 1 hr and 40 minutes — guess how I know 🙂 ? We made $3000 which would have felt a bit more like a victory if we hadn’t spent about half of that on fixing the car when it broke + a rental while we scrambled to replace it. Ahh well. I am not sure we will try to keep the next car for 14 years — instead maybe the sweet spot is more like 10-12 (?) before things get kind of tenuous. That said, the Prius did give us many healthy years and close to 150,000 miles!
- We (the kids + I — Josh went with a friend to a Miami Hurricanes game!) watched Harry Potter #1 and decided we will watch them in order over the next couple of months (unless they get too scary for G at which point we will have to take a break).
It doesn’t feel like fall outside but something about those movies does sort of say autumn coziness to me! (Maybe it’s the academic setting!).
9 Comments
So many fun updates in the post! Congrats on selling the Prius!! And yay for mall wins – I still really enjoy going to the mall, maybe it’s nostalgia, maybe it’s just fun to walk around? Prob both, but maybe more the first one! Ha!
I wanted to comment on Toggl and time tracking – I don’t track my time all the time, but I do it every now and then. What I have found to be most helpful, especially with Toggl, is have categories instead of actually what you did. For example, family time, 1:1 kid time, personal time, commute, etc. And then write the main activity happening at the time. For example, if i’m walking outside + listening to a podcast/book – sometimes if I want to track my exercise time, I used to put it as exercise, but since my apple watch captures my steps, I now mostly just write ‘personal time’. So basically use it to track the categories you’re interested in and it’s so much easier! I know it’ll be less of a personal diary that way, but I find, that I still tend to remember many of the “family time” moments I have captured. A little less of the personal time.. but that’s okay.
Yes, the later HP films might get too scary for G- they definitely get more mature. But, maybe not- it depends on how sensitive she is. Anyway they are fun to watch and I agree, they give off fall vibes somehow. I guess it’s because they all start with Harry going back to school.
I love the idea of a sticker printer! I wonder if I can finagle one for Christmas…
That’s good news about the new meds- I hope everything continues to go well.
I will just add my daughter was probably G’s age when we started Harry Potter (and she then became obsessed). We made it through all of them, but to this day she refuses to watch #4 (Goblet of Fire). I don’t think it caused any nightmares, but she is just not a fan of that one.
I just watched the first Harry Potter movie with my kids and found out that a couple movie theater chains are doing a back to Hogwarts limited showings of the Harry Potter movies in theaters this Fall. Just in case you want to take your kids to see some of them in theaters theater.
Oh that is so fun! I will look!
i should give it a try too because my problem with time tracking is what you had. Great until noon and then just forget.
I used to use Toggl for time tracking, and seeing that calendar view makes me want to do it all over again! I just love getting the data, even if I don’t know what I’d do with it right now!
I started using toggl, but feel like there’s a better way to utilize. Don’t create a category for each type of thing so you can see the accumulated data better? I’m not seeing where to get a list like you showed.
I didn’t create categories since I wasn’t trying to get specific quantification but you totally could! I found it easier to view when I logged in on my laptop but yes I could see a ‘recreation’ of what I put in for that day!