A little break from goals this morning (though THANK YOU for the insightful comments on yesterday’s post re: home goals! Your wisdom is super helpful as organizing space is not an area of strength for me.)
Time, however, is my jam.
Which brings us to Time Tracking Week! I do not track time on a consistent basis, but love doing it every season or so, and Laura’s Time Tracking Challenge seemed like a great time to jump in (plus, we are running a parallel challenge on our Patreon)!
In the past, I’ve done this on paper, but I discovered Toggl and have found this actually works much better for me, especially at the end of the day. I just have the free version, and it seems to do what I need it to do!
Here’s what Monday and Tuesday looked like in the app:
Monday January 12
Monday irregularities/notes:
- Car eval (I managed to dent the side of one of our doors pretty badly – thankfully nothing harmed in the process – and took the car into a body shop to get an estimate. FUN TIMES.)
- We did not have any sort of family dinner (kids ate before I was done with work somehow)
- Eye drops: G + C are doing prescription atropine drops for myopia prevention (MiSight contacts were attempted on C but not successfully, so going with drops for now). Some of your comments on this post helped me decide to get a consult and move forward with this!
- Entry labeled “Sourcebooks” = meeting with marketing team from my publisher
- Walk ‘n’ talk with Sarah J was totally impromptu but great!
- Reading in bed with G – she is into reading her own book while I read mine before we read together which is a-okay with me!
- C had basketball + A had gymnastics; our nanny dropped off on her way home, and J did the late pickups
Tuesday January 13
Tuesday irregularities/notes:
- Tuesday was a totally abnormal day! Basically any other normal Tuesday: patients ~8:30am – 12pm. However, on this particular day J had to have a procedure (routine, all good!) so I dropped him off early and had blocked off my clinic day for the morning. (I usually have ~2 hours of admin time per week on Thursday mornings, but they made an exception and allowed me to block Tuesday AM instead to help him out as long as I found space for the patients, which I did.)
- Workout = Caroline Girvan glute/hamstrings — so many hip thrusts!
- As noted, in the evening the kids were indeed acting insane — C didn’t have any sports and I don’t think he got enough outside time. (A was at dance and the G/C combination is always . . . active.)
- Lots of time in the car! I wish self-driving cars were better. I really do hate driving.
- I read ~60 pages of My Friends (Fredrik Backman)
Overall things of note:
I really don’t see a lot of ‘wasted’ time. I’ve been using Opal so I have a good idea of my screen time, but I am so happy to report that scrolling/mindless phone use just generally is not a thing for me anymore! I don’t actually even have interest in doing it!
What you can’t tell from these logs are that I was in A MOOOOOOD yesterday (just feeling overwhelmed about how much I want to do, and how my time is limited even without a lot of ‘waste’). In fact, doing this exercise might have contributed to my funk but I’m not entirely sure.
Quite honestly, I think I was pretty stressed about the number of things I have TODAY, which . . . you will hear about on Friday most likely! Hopefully they will go well! I’ve written about this before, but it used to be that my clinical days felt like ‘real’ work and my creative work felt like a break, and now I am often feeling like there is more stress/self-induced pressure on the creative side! I think part of this is that creative work has no ceiling. You can ALWAYS do more. (But it doesn’t always mean you should . . .)
Some very arbitrary achievements:
I GOT WORDLE IN 1 ON MONDAY!!!!!! (using the same word I always use . . . I was waiting for my day to come!!!!)
(Also, the fake AI Spanish conversations with Lily are pretty helpful! I should have upgraded a while ago.)
3 Comments
Thank you for the toggl rec!! I’ve been using it for about a month-ish and it’s been very interesting. I also spend a decent amount of time in the car which I do not love but also see no way around (DMV traffic, kid activities). I can’t yet decide what I’m going to DO with the info that I’m learning but it is enlightening and feels like it could be ammunition for change – just not sure what.
I also find your ‘abnormal notes’ to be amusing – doesn’t Laura always say that there is no normal week???? If not the car stuff, J’s procedure, I bet it would just be something else =) I feel like someone always has an appointment, or there’s a half-day of school, or a kid is sick, or, or, or…always something that derails the ‘normal’ schedule!!
That is a lot of time in the car! But like you said, it was an abnormal day with driving J to and from a procedure in addition to driving kids and to work, so hopefully makes you happy you don’t have to do this every day! I almost never drive during the week during the academic year–I have a walking commute to work and my husband drives the kids to school 80% of the time, which is only 20 minutes round-trip anyway, plus they take the bus home. So really during the week I probably drive 1-2 hours total (to kid activities in evening, most of which are close by), and I recognize I’m very lucky! However, during the summer, which is my slow season because I’m in academia, I drive WAY more shuttling kids around to camps, and going to various outdoorsy things just outside the city, etc. Last summer it was the most driving I think I’ve done in years, and it made me feel grateful that during 9-10 months of the year I am NOT doing that (and also that it falls during my slow season at work so I have a bit more time).
Tesla self drive is pretty amazing, so next time you are in the market for a car, it’s worth looking into! I’m tracking my time and seeing a surprising amount of “kid” time, which I guess makes me feel good that I am in fact parenting even though it often feels like they are in school for the entire day.