On Time

The first step in changing how you spend your time is to understand how you currently spend it.

Time is our most precious resource. We all have the same 24 hours in a day, and how we choose to spend that time can have a profound impact on our lives. But we often end up feeling like our time is constantly slipping away from us - and then we wonder why it feels like we never have enough time for the things we actually care about.

Conscious use of our time is one of the key ingredients to escaping the Unilevel Loop of Increasingly Uncomfortable Stagnation. When we are intentional about how we spend all of our resources, including our time, we can direct those resources more effectively to the stuff we actually care about - or figuring out what that is in the first place.

One of the first steps in changing how you spend your time is to understand how you currently spend it. I embarked on this practice religiously for the better part of a year, logging every single activity I engaged in throughout the day. This included the work tasks that I already needed to track because I had clients paying for that time, but I also made a point to log personal activities and how I was spending my downtime, too.

By tracking my time in this way, I was able to identify patterns and habits that were not serving me well. When you are confronted with how much time you're spending doom-scrolling social media or binge-watching TV shows, it can be quite a wake-up call. I've done this exercise multiple times for sprints of a week or two over the years, and each time it has helped me identify where I've slipped and allowed my habits to shift in ways that aren't lined up with who I want to be. It's also helpful to have something of a concrete vision of who you want to be and what you want to achieve to compare your current time usage against.

I've never been one to use a strict schedule or time-blocking approach to managing my time. I, and most of the people I work with, find that approach too rigid and constraining. But doing a time audit like this can really help identify patterns and habits that we can then adjust more organically.