You can track some of your time

You don't need to track a full week for time tracking to be useful

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
tip is that time tracking doesn't have to be all
or nothing. If you are not up for tracking all

(00:23):
one hundred and sixty eight hours in the week, you
can track just some of your time. This partial tracking
can still provide insights about the parts of the week
that you are most curious about or most want to improve.
I know some people are somewhat interested in time tracking,

(00:44):
but are also not that enthusiastic about tracking their time
for an entire week. Perhaps they think it will be tedious.
Perhaps they think they know how certain things look, which
may be true. For instance, for work, if you do
set shifts, set a job, or punch in and out
at set times. Perhaps people are busy and feel it

(01:05):
is just one more thing to do. But that doesn't
mean that time tracking absolutely can't happen. You can track
just a part of your day, or any part of
the week that you would like to improve. For instance,
if your mornings tend to feel rushed and inefficient, you
could track from the time you wake up until the

(01:27):
time you get to work. If you want to learn
more about where your work time goes, or why you
feel you are never making progress on your professional priorities.
You could track just your work time, or maybe you
feel like your evenings have the potential to be a
lot better than they are. You could track from the
time you stop work or the time your kids get

(01:48):
home from school until the time you go to bed.
Some people feel disappointed by their weekends. Maybe you feel
like your weekends are consumed by chores and driving, or
maybe you feel like you never get time for life
maintenance tasks on the weekend and so they just stack up.

(02:08):
Perhaps your weekends are full of adventures for your kids,
but you're wondering if you could fit in something memorable
for yourself. Tracking your weekend time could provide insight and
to where your time is currently going. Practically speaking, if
you do decide to track just some of your time,
you can still use a weekly spreadsheet. You simply leave

(02:32):
the blocks blank for the periods you are not tracking.
After you track part of your time, you can analyze
and reflect on it just as you would if you
had tracked the whole week. You can look for patterns
time that could be repurposed for something else. Activities you

(02:52):
could do more efficiently and so forth. Now, to be sure,
there is a lot of value in tracking your whole
week and seeing how your whole week fits together. Sometimes
spending time better is about shifting time from one activity
to another, so seeing the whole week laid out can
be valuable. Sometimes good time management really is about looking

(03:15):
at all the puzzle pieces. Your mornings are going to
be rough. If you are not going to bed on
time the night before, maybe you're not going to bet
on time because you're trying to score some leasure time.
Maybe that's because evenings feel unfocused until late at night.
Maybe that's because you don't know exactly when work will

(03:36):
be done. So we're looking back at the variable of
quitting time to find out why you can't seem to
run at six am. But that said, if you know
you are not going to track all your time, tracking
some of your time could still offer some insights, and
who knows, maybe in tracking some of your time, you

(03:59):
may realize that time tracking isn't so hard after all.
You might just decide to track a whole week in
the future. In the meantime, this is Laura, Thanks for listening,
and here's to making the most of our time. Thanks

(04:23):
for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app,

(04:45):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.