My Time Log

So, for the last one week I have been keeping a time log which basically was meant to give me an indication of how I fritter away the 24hrs I am given each day. I cannot lie- it was tedious to do mainly because I had to consciously be aware of time all the time (excuse the pun). But I am glad I did it and did not take the easy way out and quit.

I actually kept the log for 6 days, Mon – Sat, as I felt I should have a day off on Sunday to spend as I pleased without keeping tabs on my time.

Doing this exercise flagged up a few things for me – TV watching for example. I spend quite a lot of time in front of the TV especially in the evenings but then again, I do so much during the day that when I settle down in front of the box at 8pm, I feel I deserve it. Another thing that struck me was the extraordinary amount of time I spend in the kitchen. As I am not at all a ready meal person I tend to make every meal from scratch – I guess it’s a Naija thing but the good thing about this is that know exactly what goes into my food and meals are always fresh and nutritious. However doing this takes up enormous amounts of my time. For instance mixing a cake can take up to an hour (excluding baking time) and that’s a lot. But then again I don’t do it everyday.

I have to add though that this may not be the most balanced of logs as I have had the week, save Wednesday, off from work. So as I go back to work this week, should I care to do another time log, it would look quite different e.g. there would be a lot less hours spent on household chore, cooking and watching TV.

Anyway, not wanting to bore you with my time log for the whole week, here are three of my entries. And for those of you who joined in, how did you do?

MONDAY

AM

8.00 – 10.50 Wake up, have breakfast, shower, make a lengthy phone call to my parents, do some ironing

10.50 – 11.35 Watch The Oprah Show

11.35 – noon make a mid-day snack for my daughter, briefly check blog, call the GP’s surgery, sort out the post, write up time log

PM

noon – 1.00 Finish off the rest of the ironing

1 – 2.30 make lunch, clear up kitchen

2.30 – 4.20 SIESTA

4.45 – 7.00 Go to the park with hubby and daughter, do some grocery shopping, pick up prescription from GP’s surgery, miscellaneous tasks.

7.00 – 8.00 Shower together with my daughter, dress her up and make her dinner.

8.00 – 8.20 Read my daughter her bedtime story and put her to bed, write time log

8.20 – midnight have my dinner, watch the Oscars on TV

0.00 – 0.45 read a magazine, lights out


WEDNESDAY (AT WORK)

AM

7.00 9.15 wake up, shower, dress up, shower my daughter and dress her up, have breakfast, pack my daughters snack bag, drop her off at nursery, stop to buy petrol on the way to work, arrive at office

9.15 – 11am (Chaotic day as all the PC’s in the office are being changed) sort out my new PC, skim though my work folder, take a few phone calls etc

11.00 – noon Monthly Team Meeting

PM

Noon – 1.30 test new PC, deal with staff expenses (writing cheques, vouchers, other boring financial stuff), check my work email and respond to a few of them, make telephone calls etc

1.30 – 2.00 Lunch break

2.00 – 4.00 Deal with other mundane office tasks

4.00 Close from Work

4.15 – 6.00 Pick daughter up from nursery, drive home, make dinner, clear up kitchen.

6.00 – 7.00 have shower (hubby bathed daughter), dinner

7.00 – 8.30 Read bedtime story to my daughter and put her to bed, write up time log, browse the internet

8.30 – 11.00 Veg out in front of the TV, go to bed and read a magazine, lights out.


THURSDAY

AM

7.15 – 8.15 out of bed, bath and dress my daughter up for nursery, give her breakfast, pack her snack bag.

8.15 – 10.25 have breakfast, watch the news (20 mins), household chores;
empty and reload dishwasher, load the washing machine, dust living room, clean out the fridge, make preliminary preparations for lunch.

10.25 – 11.10 Watch The Oprah Show. During the commercial breaks I clear out the drawers of a side table, and pack a parcel to be posted.

11.10 – noon Make the salad for lunch and clean and spice up the fish – tidying up the kitchen as I go along.

PM

Noon – 2.00 Have my shower, re-list books for sale on Amazon, check blogs, grill fish for lunch.

2.00 – 3.00 Have lunch while watching Midsomer Murders on TV

3.00 – 3.30 Rearrange contents of side drawers.

3.30 – 5.05 SIESTA

5.05 – 6.30 Cooked a pot of spaghetti sauce, blogged

6.30 – 7.00 Bathed my daughter, dusted the book shelves upstairs while she was in her bath.

7.00 – 9.00 Gave my daughter her dinner, had my dinner while watching TV, chatted with a friend on the phone

9.00 – 9.40 Read my daughter her bedtime story and put her to bed, have my shower, write my time log

9.40 – midnight Watch TV, go to bed

So, Just What DO You Do All Day?

Have you ever found yourself moaning about how there just aren’t enough hours in the day to get all the things you want to do done? Do you start your day with good intentions and a long list of all the stuff you are going to accomplish only to find at the end of the day you have managed to put a check mark against just one thing on the list? Do you spend hours in front of the TV and then kick yourself afterwards? Do you ever wonder what EXACTLY you do with your time?

If you do, then welcome to the club!

So, to find out exactly what it is I do all day I have decided to embark on a week long project and I am hoping that perhaps one or two or more of you will join me. Here’s the plan:

Starting from Monday 26th February, 2007 I am going to keep a Time Log of all the activities/tasks I do in a day for one week. So it may look something like this:

7.00am Woke up
7.10- 8.30 am Had shower, dressed up, got daughter ready, breakfast etc
9.00 – noon Got to work, phone calls, meetings etc.

Of course, daily logs will differ depending on whether you do or don’t work, have kids, work from home or run your own business. The important thing is to just log what you do.
It looks tedious and it probably will be but I’m sure I/you will get into the grove of things after the first couple of days.

What I am hoping it will do is give me a visual account of what exactly I do with my time each day. Ideally, it should flag up ‘dead’ time in my day e.g watching TV, aimless phone calls or web crawling - and armed with this information I can eliminate my dead time and in the future use that time more effectively and productively instead.

And that’s it!

If you do decide to join me – one week is not very long, is it? – you can, if you want, post your daily time log on your blog (if not the whole week then maybe two days out of the week will be fine). I will be doing the same.

Here’s to being more productive! Good Luck!