September 30, 2025 • 36 mins
In today's episode, Laura discusses the merits of time tracking, while Sarah shares how her own time tracking has evolved over time. Laura shares some of the most common findings from the (many) others who have shared their time logs with her, and she also talks about why she's kept put the habit for more than TEN years running now!
In the Q&A, a listener writes in asking for advice for when one needs more hours to work in a flexible job.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist,
and speaker.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
And I'm Sarah Hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer,
and courtse creator. We are two working parents who love
our careers and our families.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about
how real women manage work, family, and time for fun.
From figuring out childcare to mapping out long.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Term career goals.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
We want you to get the most out of life.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
This episode is airing in late September of twenty twenty five.
We're calling this the Time Tracking Manifesto, an episode devoted
to the subject of time tracking and why you might
want to give it a whirl. I have been tracking
my time for ten and a half years now. Nobody
else needs to do that, but I've found it useful
(01:05):
for me at least. However, you don't need to just
hear about me doing this, because Sarah also recently decided
to start tracking her time, at least for a while.
I know you've not necessarily done this much in the past.
There maybe you could talk about why not and what
changed this time.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Yeah, I mean I have done it off and on
in the past, with various levels of success. Sometimes I
find myself going strong for a few days and then
give up, and other times I find myself doing really
well on the morning and then just kind of losing
steam toward the end of the day and find that
post work time frame, those golden hours turn into this
like milledge of nothingness. I usually use paper, so I
(01:46):
would just do it right in my planner, or i'd
use a separate notebook. I definitely did get a boost
in accountability and consistency when I forced myself to blog
how I spent the time, So I have been successful
on those occasions where I'm like, you know what, I'm
just gonna this is my content for the week. But
I had not tried an electronic tool until I finally decided,
(02:07):
you know what, they exist. My phone is with me
a lot of the time. Let me see if these
things work. And I downloaded toggle, which is free, just
because it had by far the highest number of reviews,
and I actually found it to be quite user friendly
and easy, and you can even see the time allotment
(02:27):
on your Apple Watch, which I now have, and I
don't think I had in past times when I tried
to use electronic methods, so it actually turned out to
be a better method for me, and I was able
to be more consistent, and I'm actually still kind of
doing it. I'm not sure when my end date is.
I am not going for ten years, but I'm finding
it kind of interesting.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
So yeah, I often recommend people try Toggle if they're like, well,
I want to use an app because I use spreadsheets,
which is a perfectly fine way to do it as well.
But if people want a time tracking app, Toggle does
have the upside being free, at least for the basic version,
so you know, you can download it and try it,
(03:06):
and if you decide that, hey, I'm really into this
electronic time tracking, but there are a few other features
I'd like to see, Well, then you could go into
the whole app market for time trackers that might be paid.
But you know what you were looking for, right, so
it wouldn't be quite as just guessing as you might
if you hadn't tried it out. So yeah, I often
(03:27):
tell people to start with Toggle, So how does it
actually work? Like, maybe you can tell people how you
use Toggle to actually track your time.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Yeah, So too bad. We don't have visual aids. I
could pull up my phone right now it probably says
podcast recording, But basically it has a running timer and
you type in what it says what are you doing now?
And you type in what you're doing now, and then
when they were going to switch activities, you press stop
and then you type in what you're doing now, so
you type in the new thing, And there is definitely
a learning curve. Like when I started, I was like, oh,
(03:55):
let me be really granular and like now I'm taking
a shower, and now I'm doing that instead. I've definitely
found that it's easier to lump categories together. I've also
found that I like to make my category names really
short and use emojis. Just makes it more satisfying and
like quicker, and it is easy to go back and
fix it, so it's not like if I forgot to
hit press podcast recording that I couldn't go back in
(04:18):
time and like it. Maybe it thinks I'm showering for
three hours, but I could pay you're still in the shower,
So I do like that. It's kind of like you
can edit it without it looking like a mess, so
that's nice.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Yeah, yeah, which is not the case necessarily with paper
if you are crossing things out left and right, or
though you might not have even put it down in
the first place. But yeah, I mean, and so it
sounds like it's pretty easy then, right, Like it's not
taking a whole lot of time to track your time.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
No, it takes like a second. You just have to
remember when you're switching activities, which just takes a little
bit of a learning curve. But I feel like after
the first few days, when you're annoying yourself by having
to go back and fix things, you get better at
it now. One thing I haven't done with it that
I think I could do a lot more with is
like the analysis piece. I've looked at what the day
looks like, just like scrolling through. You can get it
in like schedule view and you can basically like see
(05:05):
how many hours were spent doing each thing, which is
how I was able to quantify various things. But I
haven't done any kind of like higher level analysis. I
have a feeling I am not using this app to
its full extent, and I also have the free versions.
So yeah, I'm sure there's a lot more you can
do with it.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
But it actually is, Especially something like that, it might
be easier to add things up than it would be if. Now,
theoretically the upside of a spreadsheet is it could calculate too,
like how many entries said sleep. But if you ever
describe things slightly differently that are the same thing in
a spreadsheet, then obviously you quickly lose that functionality.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
And I sometimes have that.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Like if I have a bathroom trip in the middle
of the night, I might put that in or and
so then it would have sleep and something else in
the cell instead of just sleep. But I'm not really
awake for that whole thirty minute block, so I lost
that functionality quite quickly, so I'm often adding things up manually.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
And the upside of something.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Like toggle is that could just do it for you, right,
like everything that said work could say work.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Yes, although you have the same risk like if you
enter it differently, it doesn't know if you However, when
you start typing, it gives you suggestions based on what
you have before. So maybe that would lower the chances
that you would put some novel description for something because.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
On a freelance version of your work in there. Yeah, well,
I'm curious, you said you haven't really done a whole
lot of high level analysis of it. Do you see
any thing as you're looking at it?
Speaker 3 (06:32):
I've done low level analysis, and I had a couple
of takeaways. One is that I spend a lot of
time in the car. I mean I knew that, but
like when you actually do the drive leaving your house,
press start, and then like finally arrive at the office
and go, oh my god, that was eighty five minutes,
Like really, you can't tell yourself stories that it doesn't
take that long to drop off both of your kids
(06:54):
get to work, and that's okay. I'm not saying that's
like a terrible thing, but it's like, oh, well, let
me make sure that, like I, I'm attentively doing things
that I want to be doing within the limitations of
what you can do behind the wheel, But like chatting
with my kids, picking music that they like, listening to it,
listening to my own music, listening to podcasts, et cetera,
and not seeing that as like, oh, this is just
(07:14):
quick and transitional, because eighty five minutes is not.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Eighty five minutes is a lot of time. I mean
that's leaving at seven thirty five to be at your
office at nine right, correct.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly it. That's eighty five minutes. It's
usually skewed slightly earlier than that, so it's like leaving
at seven twenty to get there at whatever, five.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Minutes, eight forty five exactly. It's not really I don't know.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Suddenly the math is beyond me at this moment, but
we're recording. But yeah, yeah, no, I think a lot
of people sort of have discoveries like that.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
I was thinking about that today, of.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
How much time I am going to spend in the
car today because my Beethoven listening project for today assigned
me Fidaleo, which is a whole opera. So the question
is am I in the car for a whole opera today?
And it's not going to be that far off, right,
Like I took Sam to school this morning and drove home.
(08:16):
I will pick him up from cross Country and drive home.
He's just going to have to listen to Fidelio because
he's in the car with me. I will drive to
rehearsal tonight and back home, and I don't think that's
total two hours for all of it, but it's not
that far off of it. So in theory, I could
in fact listen to the whole of Fidaleo in the car,
(08:39):
which is like, oh my goodness, that is a lot.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Of time in the car. Like would you think, like, oh,
on a Monday, I could see a whole opera.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
I mean no, But in fact, all this time does
add up, and if you're you're listening to it, So yeah,
I think it's worth trying, right, I mean, Sarah, you
would agree with us.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Oh, one hundred percent. I think. Well, let me share
my other takeaway, which is that classic Laura van OrCam
you have more time than you think. I always feel like,
oh my gosh, my evenings are so rushed, like there's
nothing of quality I can put in here. But when
I actually acknowledge the sheer minutes between, like when I
get home from work on a clinical day or when
I finish work on a regular day, a non clinical day,
(09:18):
and then like when the kids go to bed, like
there are a lot of minutes and I'm not doing
the kind of hands on parenting that I used to
do when they were little. There is homework help, there
are emotional supports, there are drives sometimes to pick someone up.
So it's not like I'm doing nothing, but like, there's
just more time there than I think, and I wouldn't
have without quantifying it. I really do think we can
(09:38):
just kind of tell ourselves stories.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
No, it is easy to say like, oh, well, we
have so much stuff this evening, there is no time whatsoever.
But certainly, as I have been coming out of that
intense handholding parenting stage as well, I'm starting to see, yeah,
like the evenings have a lot of time.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Like the other day, I got Henry to bed.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
It was about eight forty five, and I'm like, well,
I'm not planning on going to sleep until like ten
forty five. There's two hours here. I don't necessarily have
something I was planning on doing. I hadn't really thought
it through, but I like two hours.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
There's a lot of time. Like I have two mostly
kid free hours here.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
I'll make sure the other kids have turned their lights
off at some point, but they're supposed to be doing
their own thing, and I have time, and yeah, I
have to sort it out, like this is leisure time.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
It is a lot of leisure time, and yet if.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
You don't think about it, it's easy to lose it
to random things.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
And so yeah, we're just throwing.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Out of here in our time tracking manifesto that you
might want to consider if to track time, because if
you want to spend your time better, it really helps
to know where it is going now, because otherwise, like
how do you know if you're changing the right thing.
You may be telling yourself a story that I have
no time because I'm always cleaning my house, and then
you track your time and you see that you're spending
(11:01):
more time in the car than you are cleaning your house.
It's like, okay, well maybe both could go down, But
let's look at the thing that's occupying the biggest chunk
of time to see if there's some opportunities there or
maybe something you haven't thought. It's taking a lot more
time than you imagine. You just want to be working
from good data, and really the only way to get
that data is to actually keep track of your time, because,
(11:23):
as Sarah said, we tell ourselves a ton of stories,
and the stories may not be one hundred percent true.
So we're going to take a quick ad break and
then we'll be back with more about time tracking.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
All right, we are back, and I'm going to ask
you a few questions about time tracking. Particularly what do
people discover? And I will just start with a tiny
thing for myself, which is that I mentioned discovering I
had more time in the evenings and yeah, yet I
discovered that my limiting factor was not time but energy.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
So that was like an.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
Interesting thing that I came up with. But I am interested.
You have looked at like nine million time logs. Well
maybe that's a hyperbole, but you've looked at a lot
of time logs.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
And we're into the four figures for sure, in terms
of numbers.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Yeah, that's amazing, and I can imagine there are some
common themes, So tell us, like what are the undercover
discoveries that people have when they finally shine light on
how they're using their one hundred and sixty eight hours.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Yeah, well, the first thing people discover is that there
aree hundred and sixty eight hours in a week. I mean,
that is something that I will tell you most people
don't know, and that was great for me for search
engine purposes. I don't know if it's still the case,
but for a while, if you typed one hundred and
sixty eight hours into Google, you would get me, which
is kind of crazy because that's like typing twenty four
hours in a day and getting Laura Vanderkam like, you
(12:51):
wouldn't do that, But one hundred and sixty eight is
so not known. People say twenty four to seven, and
yet they never multiply it through. The first thing people
discover is like, oh, yeah, that's what a week looks like.
That's how many hours are in a week, which is
helpful in and of itself. I mean, if you've been
telling yourself, I have no time for anything because I
have a full time job, and then you realize, okay,
(13:11):
well I work forty five hours of one hundred and
sixty eight. There are a few hours left over when
you subtract, so maybe it's possible to do some other things.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
So that's kind of exciting to discover, but those are
so what you mentioned. Energy.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
People might see that the limiting factor is not that
I have zero time. It is that the time I
do have tends to come when I have very limited energy.
But then you can decide, well, are there things I
can do about that? And there might be one is
you can choose low energy activities.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Right, maybe there are.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Things that you can do that don't require a lot
of energy, but that you still enjoy, but you know,
if you set an intention, then you are able to
seize that time. In some cases, if it's lower energy
and it's not like late at night, if it's for
whatever reason, you have low energy in the afternoons and
that's when you have free time for some reason, maybe
there are things you can do to boost your energy.
(14:05):
There are certain activities people do, I mean, like getting
fresh air or exercise that sometimes make people feel like
they can do more things than if they didn't. Sometimes
people decide, not in your case, Sarah, but other people
decide to move where that free time happens. So if
you've been staying up late and you have little energy
(14:26):
at night, maybe you could decide to go to bed earlier,
wake up a little bit earlier, and have some of
that free time in the morning when you might have
more energy for other things. So that's something that maybe
a time log could show. But yeah, in general, not
having a sense of how much time there is or
like where the space is, a lot of time is
just spent unintentionally, we overestimate things we don't want to do.
(14:50):
So in many cases, people overestimate how many hours they
are working because let's say maybe some of us love
our jobs, but not everybody and not every minute, so
it's easy to overestimate how many hours we are working.
We overestimate housework often by somewhat ridiculous factors, but that's
because we don't want to do it, and so we
(15:11):
decide that emptying the dishwasher takes thirty minutes.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
It does not. So if that's what's in your brain,
you might want to.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Time in you know what, So folding laundry takes forever,
that's been I take to state that like unloading the
dishwasher is a very brief task, it's like eight minutes
a lot of times, and folding the laundry takes like
I can spend thirty minutes folding a giant I mean,
we do giant loads of laundry. But that's a reason
to do that while you're listening to a great.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Podcast or watching that fund If Rgilio is the case
making an opera, yes, definitely, yes an opera. So if
you are telling yourself that you are spending a ridiculous
amount of time on housework, it might be worth timing
it just to see.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
I'm not saying you like it.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Like I could totally buy that we dislike every minute
of it, but it may not be as many minutes
as we think. People tend to underestimate things they do
want to do, So people underestimate leisure time, and they
underestimate sleep. We tend to view our shortest night as typical.
(16:12):
If you ask someone to describe a typical night for you,
they will never describe a Friday or Saturday night, or
a holiday night. It'll always be like a Tuesday night,
and that it tends to be like the Tuesday that
they actually got up at the time they intended to.
There was no snoozing, there was no sleeping through alarm,
and it was when they were doing stuff in the evening.
They didn't crash on the couch or anything like that.
(16:34):
So those things do add up over the course of
one hundred and sixty eight hours.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
I but here's some good news.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
I've greatly enjoyed tracking my sleep, by the way, which
is not like I'm not a sleep tracker person. I
don't wear like my watch, debat or anything like that,
but something about like when I if I wake up
on my own and then I look at it and
I'm like, oh, seven and a half hours or like
on the weekend. I got one night where I got
eight and a half, and I'm like, wow, I don't know,
it's just been interesting because not something that I really
quantified before. But I am in that camp of like
(17:02):
seven seeming like my normal. But really I make up for.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Yeah, yeah, which is fine.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
I mean, as long as we're not like doing like
four hours and then twelve hours to come out to
an average of eight.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
I mean probably between seven and nine.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Coming out to an average of eight is a little
bit more reasonable. But yeah, you're definitely not the only
one to have that experience.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
I was gonna say.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
One positive thing is a lot of working parents, perhaps
mothers in particular, have been telling themselves a story that
like I never see my kids, or I don't spend
nearly enough time with my kids, or some version thereof.
They track their time for one hundred and sixty eight hours,
discover again that they're working forty hours, sleeping seven to
eight hours a night. We've got somewhere like seventy hours
(17:47):
in here that is not working and is not sleeping,
and in many cases quite a bit of that time
is spent with children, especially if they are very young
and require constant supervision.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
That's starts to.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Change as kids get a little bit older. But certainly
when people are saying these sort of things about guilt,
it's often that they have younger children, and so people
are often very pleasantly surprised at how much family time
winds up happening in the course of the week.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
No, that's awesome. Well why have you ended up tracking
your time for is it ten years now? Eleven? I
don't even remind me of where we are.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
I started in April of twenty fifteen doing it continuously,
so I guess this is airing At the end of September,
we were almost ten and a half years. And I
don't like celebrate my anniversary every year, like woo, you know,
I made it because it's not hard. It's like saying,
I'm celebrating my anniversary of brushing my teeth for whatever.
(18:44):
I've been doing it independently now for probably.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Three forty two years.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
No, it does because it isn't hard, right, It is
very easy, and it's somewhat takes the function of journal
for me, Like I feel that I'm recording my life
and so I have the memories and not just when
you keep a journal sometimes it's the memories of what
(19:11):
you were like angsty about at the time, or only
the real highlights of something, whereas a time log gets everything.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
And so when I pull.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Up past logs, I can see what I was doing,
and I could reconstruct everything in memory, particularly if there
was anything out of the ordinary on a day, because
then it's like, oh, yeah, that, and then I remember
what I was doing before because it's right there on
the log, And so you just have access to memories
in a much more convenient way.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
I would say.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
It's also a little bit of accountability for me, and
not really so much like, oh, I'm not.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Going to scroll because I'm keeping it on my luck.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
I scroll a lot way more than I probably should.
But especially if I do share these logs on occasion,
or even just do my own check in on Monday morning,
I'm like, was the week interesting? Like did I do
something that I will remember in the future, Like is
there anything on this log that makes this week feel cool?
Speaker 1 (20:14):
And often I look back over I'm like, oh, yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Did this, and I did this, and wow I fit
a lot in and it just feels really cool.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
I totally can see that I actually this reminds me
of the fact I'm reading Die with Zero right now,
which is a very interesting and possibly polarizing book by
Bill Perkins. But he actually talks about something about like
memories being like paying back dividends in life, and how
like you can have all these experiences and then looking
back on them almost like compounds the experiences that you've had.
(20:42):
So timelog is a really interesting way to do that,
and so I tend to do that through I think
my blogging. But then also I do have a five
year journal that I write in. I've well, I've done
it for five years. I wish I've done it for
forty five years. But every single day I'm in my
fifth year and I basically put like a highlight. It's
a highlight reel, right, but it has some angs in it,
(21:03):
a low light reel, like what was big in my
life yesterday? Like that's what I asked myself. I'd usually
fill it out in the morning, and I love it.
I love looking through it. It's like the memory dividends,
but yours is different because it's more objective. It's not
like what did I feel was important looking back a day,
It's like, here's everything, and maybe I'll actually find out
that what I thought was important, this other thing was important.
(21:23):
So I guess it's really neat that you have like
all of that data cold together.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
I mean one of the most fun weeks to look
back on was this one. I think it's actually the
one I wound up using in the paperback version of
I Know How She does it, because it's like, there's
these easter eggs from this week that. I mean, it
happened to be the It was like the first week
of November and I started working on this Nato Riimo
novel that eventually turned it into Juliete School of Possibilities.
(21:51):
I also put a post on Fast Company, which I
was writing for at that time, that was the Norwegian
secret to enjoying a long winter. I just put the
that I was right it like in the gym or
something while waiting for my kids, and then I wound
up being this ridiculously viral post. It's like there's all
these things I see in there, which is kind of fun.
I was like, oh, yeah, that week, who knew. Well,
(22:12):
We're going to take one more quick ad break and
then we'll be back with more about time tracking.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
All right, we are back and we are going to
go through a few FAQs that people tend to ask
when it comes to time tracking, maybe a little bit
of a rapid fire section. So Number one, do I
need to track weekends?
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Yes, Sarah, you should track your weekends.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
And I'm not saying that you need to be writing
down every fifteen minutes what you're doing. So if you
use my spreadsheets, which you can go to my website
Laura vandercam dot com and get a copy, they come
in thirty minute versions fifteen minute versions.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
I'm not saying like.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Every fifteen minutes on the weekend, check in with what
you are doing. If you are doing interesting things on
the weekend, some of this will already be planned in
ahead of time, Like if you know you're going on
a hot air balloon ride at four pm, like, well,
you can reconstruct that after the fact and probably like
your drive too there and all that, you'll be able
to do that for like seven or eight hours and
(23:20):
not have to check in every fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Right, the memory is there.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
It gets a little bit more complicated if people aren't
doing anything right, if they're just sort of this mash
of weird puttering around, half dealing with the kids not
which is one reason to try to do cool things
on the weekend, but it is also you can just
put kids et cetera. Or you can just guess like
(23:46):
it doesn't have to be perfect. You can even leave
many hours blank and just put in what you remember it.
I think it's better to try to get through a
whole week then to stop on.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
The weekends and not even try.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
And I don't think that it really like some people
are like, oh, it'll be for this weird time pressure.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
It doesn't have to be. This is not about playing
gotcha at all. It's just to show yourself, like where
the time is, what are you doing if there is
available time that you might like to repurpose?
Speaker 2 (24:15):
That is good to know. So weekends are real days.
They are just as real as Monday through Friday. I
highly encourage people, if you are time tracking, to try
to get through the weekend. Maybe it doesn't work the
first time, Maybe you lose track the first time, reconstruct
what you can when you remember, and then maybe try
it again, try it another weekend and see what you get.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
And I think it will get easier with time.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
The benefit of using an electronic tool, and I'm going
to go back to toggle one more time. Is like,
let's say it's Sunday and you have forgotten and you
know you were puttering and you like left it on
folding laundry, but you forgot, and it's two hours later
at least when you notice that, because it does show
up on the front of your phone. At some point,
you're going to pick up your phone and you're going
to see that. You can go, oh, and you don't
have to like put in five different things, but you
(25:01):
can just jot like folding laundry, and then you could
just be like and random pottering and then you move
on to your next thing. Like it's a nice way
to avoid letting perfection. Have you throw this out the window?
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Yeah? Absolutely agree with that.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
All right, So question number two, I think we get
this from the lawyers. What if I already track my
time for work and I just don't feel like doing
it anywhere else.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Yeah, I get this sometimes every time I talk to
groups of lawyers, and I've been hired by a number
of wonderful law firms over the years to come speak
to their lawyers, and I'm like, I don't have to
explain the concept of what time tracking is because they
have been logging their time in six minute increments for years,
and many people are like, oh no, I do this
for my work. I can't stand to do this to
the rest of my life. Okay, I get it, but
(25:47):
you don't have to do it in six increments. Right.
You could do thirty minute blocks and only check in
every couple of hours.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Right.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
That would be irresponsible during your work day, but it
is not in the rest of your life. But it's
also about treating the rest of your life with the
same respect and intentionality that you give to your clients
and to your firm with your legal work. Right, because
you are saying, I want to see where this other
(26:15):
time is going.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
I mean, because there is other time like you.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Treat the Let's say you're billing forty hours a week
and working fifty in your legal work like, there are
still sixty other hours in the week, and they don't
feel as big to you because you're not logging them. Right,
they don't feel as full and intentional and knowing what's
going on as you're very intricately calculated legal work does
(26:43):
because you don't know where the time is going. But
when you do, then you can start to see that
there is this time outside of work and maybe you
can do cool and exciting things with it, even if
you are billing a significant number of hours.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
So I would suggest trying again. You don't have to
do it for ten years.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
You have probably been billing your legal work for ten years,
but you don't have to do that for the rest
of your time. Just try the time outside of work
for a week, maybe every couple of months or so.
Just try it once, see how it goes. But I
think you will be pleasantly surprised. I've had enough lawyers
and accountants and other such people do this now and
have been intrigued or pleasantly surprised at what they see.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
That you've got nothing to lose by just giving it
a word.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
I like the empowering angle, which is like you're doing
it for them during work, but do it for you
the rest of your time. Make sure you're giving your
own time the same careful attention that you are giving
your work time. So that's a great spin. So you
kind of answer this, but is a suggestion to go
ahead and do it for ten years everyone or forever.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Just start now, No, don't just one week, Like if
you're hearing this, why don't you start? You could start
today my timelog start on Monday morning, but there's no
requirement that you do that. Or you could start next
Monday morning if you do want to start on a
Monday morning, but just give it to try for a
week if you have never done it. If you think
it's going to be an atypical week, well welcome to life.
Every week is atypical in some way or another. I
(28:08):
think you will still learn a lot even by tracking
weeks that have things that are out of the ordinary
in them. However, you don't have to do it for
ten years. I would say try it once, see how
it goes. If you find it interesting and think, well
maybe I would like to see something else, then try
it again in a couple months. I think every season
(28:28):
is helpful for people. Or if there is a big
switch and how you are spending your time, So if
you move, if you switch jobs, if your kids start
a different school that starts at an entirely different time,
or they were doing travel soccer and now or not
doing travel soccer. There's all sorts of reasons that life
shifts enough that you might decide it's worth it to
get a new baseline of how you are spending your time.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
Yeah, I like every season. I think that's a great,
great guideline. You can kind of improvise from there.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Yeah, but and shure, I just think this.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
If you want to spend your time better, this is
the first step. So give it a try. Let us
know how it goes. If you have tracked your time,
I would love to see your log. You can always
email it to me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
We'll get ourselves maybe up to the five figures of
logs eventually. But yeah, I love seeing where people's time goes,
their schedules and analyzing my own. I don't see any
(29:21):
reason I would stop this anytime soon. Sarah, You're not
gonna do this forever, but for now.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
I'm not doing it forever.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
But it's fun.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
It's fun, all right, all right? We have our Q
and A. This comes from a listener who says, I
work flexibly, but after studying my timelog, I honestly think
I need more time to work. What can I do?
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Yeah, this is a surprising discovery some people have.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Now.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
If you have to go to an office and you
are expected to be there at a certain time. For instance,
let's say your first patient is roomed at eight thirty.
You are not looking to spend more time at work,
like you have to be there at certain hours.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
That is fine.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
People who work flexibly, though, have a different thing going on.
And many people who can work from home a lot
of the times and set their own hours discover that
they may not be working forty.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Hours a week.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Now that may not be a huge problem, Like if
your manager is happy, then you don't have to rock
the boat if you decide if you look at your
log and find that most weeks you're working thirty to
thirty two hours, like, if everyone's happy.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
It's okay, right.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
However, if you are feeling like you're a little more
frazzled during your work hours than is necessary because you
are trying to get everything done by I don't know,
three fifteen, so you can go be in the line
for pickup at school and then you're running people around
to sports afterwards, and you're like answering emails at the
(30:46):
same time, Like you might decide that you want to
rework your schedule to have a little bit more longer
stretches to work, or at least to have more hours
of available for concentrated work if that's something you desire.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
So just a couple of things to think first. Just
because you can doesn't mean you should.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
You could pick up your kids from school three days
a week and send them to an aftercare program two
days a week and pick them up at like five
point fifteen on those days and buy yourself some longer
days of focused work on those. Somebody else might be
able to drive kids. So maybe, again, it's not either
or maybe you do it three days a week and
(31:28):
two days a week your spouse takes it, or your
neighbor who also has kids and that could do it.
You could carpool, or you hire a sitter to do
the evening runs of activities two days a week and
see if you can get some extra time with that. Sarah,
you've had some success with each of you taking a
(31:49):
morning right.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
Yes, and actually like that. I'm it's exactly and I'm
using it to work because on Mondays I absolutely could
drive the kids to school, It's not a problem. But
then I'm not going to get home and be able
to start my own work until like eight forty five,
and I am struggling to give enough time for my
creative work at as it is, so it's wonderful when
he's kind of taking over. I can go to a
pilates in the morning and then they're out of the
(32:10):
hoss by seven thirty and I can really get a
nice long morning in. I got a lot done this morning.
It's Monday as we're recording this, and I would not
have if I was driving. So just because you can
doesn't mean you should. And having an awareness of these
patterns and like really understanding like, Okay, I don't have
to feel bad if I'm spending eighty five minutes driving
three days a week, then he can do it two
days a week.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
This doesn't have to be all on you, even if
you theoretically have a more flexible job. I would also
be careful with appointments. This is another like work from
home temptation. You're like, oh, well, like my favorite hairstylist
has an appointment at eleven o'clock, I could just take it,
and you can, but those things can chop up a
(32:50):
work day pretty easily, So just be careful with that
if you are trying to work more focused hours. And
also you might just get in the habit of as
you were looking forward to any given week, map out
when your work hours are. And again, people who work
in an office at set times are like, this is
the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Like, I have
(33:12):
to be at work at eight thirty, Therefore my time
it starts at eight thirty.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
I mean in the office from eight thirty to four
thirty every day. I get it.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
But for the people who work flexibly, you're just sort
of generally working. And so look and see when that
is going to start on any given day. When is
it going to get chopped up? When are you trying
to be done by? Are there additional hours after that
initial stop that you are also planning to work. If
with all your best intentions looking forward to the week,
(33:41):
this only adds up to like thirty hours and you
are trying to work more than that, then something has
to change. You have to flip something in your schedule.
You need to get additional driving help or additional childcare
or something, because you can't just magically manufacture extra time.
So I think having this little bit of accountability can
(34:03):
help as well.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
Totally all right, love of the week, We're going to
go on theme today.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
On theme, I gotta say, looking at old time logs,
it really is fun to haul up a time I've
been doing it less this year because I was in
the habit of looking at the corresponding date from the past.
So let's say that, okay, this week is that we're recording.
This starts September twenty two, twenty twenty five. So when
(34:31):
was the last time that Monday was a September twenty two?
But this year that doesn't work because it was back
in like twenty fourteen, so I don't have time logs
from then. But for the past ten years that has worked.
It has been a corresponding date. Like starting recently in
the past three years, I've been able to look at
a corresponding year and read through that and see what
(34:51):
was going on.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
So that's been kind of fun.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
And thirty years from now you're going to have to
go back to multiple.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
I know exactly well it is.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
I hadn't really thought about how date cycle works, like
with all the leap years and stuff, but it does
affect like how frequently you get Mondays of each day. Anyway,
fun stuff, little esoteric. Don't need to get into it,
but let's just say it is fun to look at
old time looks.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
Totally well, I'm gonna go on theme as well and
use my hope in each five year journal, which by
the way, shines the same light on what you just said,
because on the left hand side of the page it's
each year, and I always would write the day of
the week, so you can see on any given page
it'll say like Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Monday, like its skips
a day, like I forget, but it's it's very interesting
to look at, so you're looking at different days of
the week. It would be kind of interesting to complete
(35:34):
a five year journal lined up by day of the week,
so you saw all mondays like, but I don't know,
there's many.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
It wouldn't be the same date, right, it wouldn't be right,
Like you'd have to be.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
Like Monday, one of the year, Monday number two, Monday.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Yeah, that's true. That's true. It could be that.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
But anyway, I love that thing. I've put photos in there,
I stick random stickers, I have like tickets, I write stuff,
and it's like it's a really fun artifact. I am
actually starting to rethink my practice of throwing out my planners,
but I am absolutely not throwing out my five year journal.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
That's absolutely not you know, that's an archive that one
put it in the museum. All right, well, this has
been best of both worlds. This has been our time
Tracking manifesto. Highly suggest you give time tracking a try.
And Sarah has.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Been somewhat reluctant over the past, but now she's been
doing Togglin has been excelling with that, so yeah, we
love it. All right.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
We will be back next week with more on making
work and life fit together.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the
shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram,
and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
This has been the best of both worlds podcasts.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Please join us next time for more on making work
and life work together.
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist,
and speaker.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
And I'm Sarah Hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer,
and courtse creator. We are two working parents who love
our careers and our families.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about
how real women manage work, family, and time for fun.
From figuring out childcare to mapping out long.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Term career goals.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
We want you to get the most out of life.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
This episode is airing in late September of twenty twenty five.
We're calling this the Time Tracking Manifesto, an episode devoted
to the subject of time tracking and why you might
want to give it a whirl. I have been tracking
my time for ten and a half years now. Nobody
else needs to do that, but I've found it useful
(01:05):
for me at least. However, you don't need to just
hear about me doing this, because Sarah also recently decided
to start tracking her time, at least for a while.
I know you've not necessarily done this much in the past.
There maybe you could talk about why not and what
changed this time.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Yeah, I mean I have done it off and on
in the past, with various levels of success. Sometimes I
find myself going strong for a few days and then
give up, and other times I find myself doing really
well on the morning and then just kind of losing
steam toward the end of the day and find that
post work time frame, those golden hours turn into this
like milledge of nothingness. I usually use paper, so I
(01:46):
would just do it right in my planner, or i'd
use a separate notebook. I definitely did get a boost
in accountability and consistency when I forced myself to blog
how I spent the time, So I have been successful
on those occasions where I'm like, you know what, I'm
just gonna this is my content for the week. But
I had not tried an electronic tool until I finally decided,
(02:07):
you know what, they exist. My phone is with me
a lot of the time. Let me see if these
things work. And I downloaded toggle, which is free, just
because it had by far the highest number of reviews,
and I actually found it to be quite user friendly
and easy, and you can even see the time allotment
(02:27):
on your Apple Watch, which I now have, and I
don't think I had in past times when I tried
to use electronic methods, so it actually turned out to
be a better method for me, and I was able
to be more consistent, and I'm actually still kind of
doing it. I'm not sure when my end date is.
I am not going for ten years, but I'm finding
it kind of interesting.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
So yeah, I often recommend people try Toggle if they're like, well,
I want to use an app because I use spreadsheets,
which is a perfectly fine way to do it as well.
But if people want a time tracking app, Toggle does
have the upside being free, at least for the basic version,
so you know, you can download it and try it,
(03:06):
and if you decide that, hey, I'm really into this
electronic time tracking, but there are a few other features
I'd like to see, Well, then you could go into
the whole app market for time trackers that might be paid.
But you know what you were looking for, right, so
it wouldn't be quite as just guessing as you might
if you hadn't tried it out. So yeah, I often
(03:27):
tell people to start with Toggle, So how does it
actually work? Like, maybe you can tell people how you
use Toggle to actually track your time.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Yeah, So too bad. We don't have visual aids. I
could pull up my phone right now it probably says
podcast recording, But basically it has a running timer and
you type in what it says what are you doing now?
And you type in what you're doing now, and then
when they were going to switch activities, you press stop
and then you type in what you're doing now, so
you type in the new thing, And there is definitely
a learning curve. Like when I started, I was like, oh,
(03:55):
let me be really granular and like now I'm taking
a shower, and now I'm doing that instead. I've definitely
found that it's easier to lump categories together. I've also
found that I like to make my category names really
short and use emojis. Just makes it more satisfying and
like quicker, and it is easy to go back and
fix it, so it's not like if I forgot to
hit press podcast recording that I couldn't go back in
(04:18):
time and like it. Maybe it thinks I'm showering for
three hours, but I could pay you're still in the shower,
So I do like that. It's kind of like you
can edit it without it looking like a mess, so
that's nice.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Yeah, yeah, which is not the case necessarily with paper
if you are crossing things out left and right, or
though you might not have even put it down in
the first place. But yeah, I mean, and so it
sounds like it's pretty easy then, right, Like it's not
taking a whole lot of time to track your time.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
No, it takes like a second. You just have to
remember when you're switching activities, which just takes a little
bit of a learning curve. But I feel like after
the first few days, when you're annoying yourself by having
to go back and fix things, you get better at
it now. One thing I haven't done with it that
I think I could do a lot more with is
like the analysis piece. I've looked at what the day
looks like, just like scrolling through. You can get it
in like schedule view and you can basically like see
(05:05):
how many hours were spent doing each thing, which is
how I was able to quantify various things. But I
haven't done any kind of like higher level analysis. I
have a feeling I am not using this app to
its full extent, and I also have the free versions.
So yeah, I'm sure there's a lot more you can
do with it.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
But it actually is, Especially something like that, it might
be easier to add things up than it would be if. Now,
theoretically the upside of a spreadsheet is it could calculate too,
like how many entries said sleep. But if you ever
describe things slightly differently that are the same thing in
a spreadsheet, then obviously you quickly lose that functionality.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
And I sometimes have that.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Like if I have a bathroom trip in the middle
of the night, I might put that in or and
so then it would have sleep and something else in
the cell instead of just sleep. But I'm not really
awake for that whole thirty minute block, so I lost
that functionality quite quickly, so I'm often adding things up manually.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
And the upside of something.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Like toggle is that could just do it for you, right,
like everything that said work could say work.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Yes, although you have the same risk like if you
enter it differently, it doesn't know if you However, when
you start typing, it gives you suggestions based on what
you have before. So maybe that would lower the chances
that you would put some novel description for something because.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
On a freelance version of your work in there. Yeah, well,
I'm curious, you said you haven't really done a whole
lot of high level analysis of it. Do you see
any thing as you're looking at it?
Speaker 3 (06:32):
I've done low level analysis, and I had a couple
of takeaways. One is that I spend a lot of
time in the car. I mean I knew that, but
like when you actually do the drive leaving your house,
press start, and then like finally arrive at the office
and go, oh my god, that was eighty five minutes,
Like really, you can't tell yourself stories that it doesn't
take that long to drop off both of your kids
(06:54):
get to work, and that's okay. I'm not saying that's
like a terrible thing, but it's like, oh, well, let
me make sure that, like I, I'm attentively doing things
that I want to be doing within the limitations of
what you can do behind the wheel, But like chatting
with my kids, picking music that they like, listening to it,
listening to my own music, listening to podcasts, et cetera,
and not seeing that as like, oh, this is just
(07:14):
quick and transitional, because eighty five minutes is not.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Eighty five minutes is a lot of time. I mean
that's leaving at seven thirty five to be at your
office at nine right, correct.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly it. That's eighty five minutes. It's
usually skewed slightly earlier than that, so it's like leaving
at seven twenty to get there at whatever, five.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Minutes, eight forty five exactly. It's not really I don't know.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Suddenly the math is beyond me at this moment, but
we're recording. But yeah, yeah, no, I think a lot
of people sort of have discoveries like that.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
I was thinking about that today, of.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
How much time I am going to spend in the
car today because my Beethoven listening project for today assigned
me Fidaleo, which is a whole opera. So the question
is am I in the car for a whole opera today?
And it's not going to be that far off, right,
Like I took Sam to school this morning and drove home.
(08:16):
I will pick him up from cross Country and drive home.
He's just going to have to listen to Fidelio because
he's in the car with me. I will drive to
rehearsal tonight and back home, and I don't think that's
total two hours for all of it, but it's not
that far off of it. So in theory, I could
in fact listen to the whole of Fidaleo in the car,
(08:39):
which is like, oh my goodness, that is a lot.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Of time in the car. Like would you think, like, oh,
on a Monday, I could see a whole opera.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
I mean no, But in fact, all this time does
add up, and if you're you're listening to it, So yeah,
I think it's worth trying, right, I mean, Sarah, you
would agree with us.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Oh, one hundred percent. I think. Well, let me share
my other takeaway, which is that classic Laura van OrCam
you have more time than you think. I always feel like,
oh my gosh, my evenings are so rushed, like there's
nothing of quality I can put in here. But when
I actually acknowledge the sheer minutes between, like when I
get home from work on a clinical day or when
I finish work on a regular day, a non clinical day,
(09:18):
and then like when the kids go to bed, like
there are a lot of minutes and I'm not doing
the kind of hands on parenting that I used to
do when they were little. There is homework help, there
are emotional supports, there are drives sometimes to pick someone up.
So it's not like I'm doing nothing, but like, there's
just more time there than I think, and I wouldn't
have without quantifying it. I really do think we can
(09:38):
just kind of tell ourselves stories.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
No, it is easy to say like, oh, well, we
have so much stuff this evening, there is no time whatsoever.
But certainly, as I have been coming out of that
intense handholding parenting stage as well, I'm starting to see, yeah,
like the evenings have a lot of time.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Like the other day, I got Henry to bed.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
It was about eight forty five, and I'm like, well,
I'm not planning on going to sleep until like ten
forty five. There's two hours here. I don't necessarily have
something I was planning on doing. I hadn't really thought
it through, but I like two hours.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
There's a lot of time. Like I have two mostly
kid free hours here.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
I'll make sure the other kids have turned their lights
off at some point, but they're supposed to be doing
their own thing, and I have time, and yeah, I
have to sort it out, like this is leisure time.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
It is a lot of leisure time, and yet if.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
You don't think about it, it's easy to lose it
to random things.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
And so yeah, we're just throwing.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Out of here in our time tracking manifesto that you
might want to consider if to track time, because if
you want to spend your time better, it really helps
to know where it is going now, because otherwise, like
how do you know if you're changing the right thing.
You may be telling yourself a story that I have
no time because I'm always cleaning my house, and then
you track your time and you see that you're spending
(11:01):
more time in the car than you are cleaning your house.
It's like, okay, well maybe both could go down, But
let's look at the thing that's occupying the biggest chunk
of time to see if there's some opportunities there or
maybe something you haven't thought. It's taking a lot more
time than you imagine. You just want to be working
from good data, and really the only way to get
that data is to actually keep track of your time, because,
(11:23):
as Sarah said, we tell ourselves a ton of stories,
and the stories may not be one hundred percent true.
So we're going to take a quick ad break and
then we'll be back with more about time tracking.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
All right, we are back, and I'm going to ask
you a few questions about time tracking. Particularly what do
people discover? And I will just start with a tiny
thing for myself, which is that I mentioned discovering I
had more time in the evenings and yeah, yet I
discovered that my limiting factor was not time but energy.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
So that was like an.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
Interesting thing that I came up with. But I am interested.
You have looked at like nine million time logs. Well
maybe that's a hyperbole, but you've looked at a lot
of time logs.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
And we're into the four figures for sure, in terms
of numbers.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Yeah, that's amazing, and I can imagine there are some
common themes, So tell us, like what are the undercover
discoveries that people have when they finally shine light on
how they're using their one hundred and sixty eight hours.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Yeah, well, the first thing people discover is that there
aree hundred and sixty eight hours in a week. I mean,
that is something that I will tell you most people
don't know, and that was great for me for search
engine purposes. I don't know if it's still the case,
but for a while, if you typed one hundred and
sixty eight hours into Google, you would get me, which
is kind of crazy because that's like typing twenty four
hours in a day and getting Laura Vanderkam like, you
(12:51):
wouldn't do that, But one hundred and sixty eight is
so not known. People say twenty four to seven, and
yet they never multiply it through. The first thing people
discover is like, oh, yeah, that's what a week looks like.
That's how many hours are in a week, which is
helpful in and of itself. I mean, if you've been
telling yourself, I have no time for anything because I
have a full time job, and then you realize, okay,
(13:11):
well I work forty five hours of one hundred and
sixty eight. There are a few hours left over when
you subtract, so maybe it's possible to do some other things.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
So that's kind of exciting to discover, but those are
so what you mentioned. Energy.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
People might see that the limiting factor is not that
I have zero time. It is that the time I
do have tends to come when I have very limited energy.
But then you can decide, well, are there things I
can do about that? And there might be one is
you can choose low energy activities.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Right, maybe there are.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Things that you can do that don't require a lot
of energy, but that you still enjoy, but you know,
if you set an intention, then you are able to
seize that time. In some cases, if it's lower energy
and it's not like late at night, if it's for
whatever reason, you have low energy in the afternoons and
that's when you have free time for some reason, maybe
there are things you can do to boost your energy.
(14:05):
There are certain activities people do, I mean, like getting
fresh air or exercise that sometimes make people feel like
they can do more things than if they didn't. Sometimes
people decide, not in your case, Sarah, but other people
decide to move where that free time happens. So if
you've been staying up late and you have little energy
(14:26):
at night, maybe you could decide to go to bed earlier,
wake up a little bit earlier, and have some of
that free time in the morning when you might have
more energy for other things. So that's something that maybe
a time log could show. But yeah, in general, not
having a sense of how much time there is or
like where the space is, a lot of time is
just spent unintentionally, we overestimate things we don't want to do.
(14:50):
So in many cases, people overestimate how many hours they
are working because let's say maybe some of us love
our jobs, but not everybody and not every minute, so
it's easy to overestimate how many hours we are working.
We overestimate housework often by somewhat ridiculous factors, but that's
because we don't want to do it, and so we
(15:11):
decide that emptying the dishwasher takes thirty minutes.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
It does not. So if that's what's in your brain,
you might want to.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Time in you know what, So folding laundry takes forever,
that's been I take to state that like unloading the
dishwasher is a very brief task, it's like eight minutes
a lot of times, and folding the laundry takes like
I can spend thirty minutes folding a giant I mean,
we do giant loads of laundry. But that's a reason
to do that while you're listening to a great.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Podcast or watching that fund If Rgilio is the case
making an opera, yes, definitely, yes an opera. So if
you are telling yourself that you are spending a ridiculous
amount of time on housework, it might be worth timing
it just to see.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
I'm not saying you like it.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Like I could totally buy that we dislike every minute
of it, but it may not be as many minutes
as we think. People tend to underestimate things they do
want to do, So people underestimate leisure time, and they
underestimate sleep. We tend to view our shortest night as typical.
(16:12):
If you ask someone to describe a typical night for you,
they will never describe a Friday or Saturday night, or
a holiday night. It'll always be like a Tuesday night,
and that it tends to be like the Tuesday that
they actually got up at the time they intended to.
There was no snoozing, there was no sleeping through alarm,
and it was when they were doing stuff in the evening.
They didn't crash on the couch or anything like that.
(16:34):
So those things do add up over the course of
one hundred and sixty eight hours.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
I but here's some good news.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
I've greatly enjoyed tracking my sleep, by the way, which
is not like I'm not a sleep tracker person. I
don't wear like my watch, debat or anything like that,
but something about like when I if I wake up
on my own and then I look at it and
I'm like, oh, seven and a half hours or like
on the weekend. I got one night where I got
eight and a half, and I'm like, wow, I don't know,
it's just been interesting because not something that I really
quantified before. But I am in that camp of like
(17:02):
seven seeming like my normal. But really I make up for.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Yeah, yeah, which is fine.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
I mean, as long as we're not like doing like
four hours and then twelve hours to come out to
an average of eight.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
I mean probably between seven and nine.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Coming out to an average of eight is a little
bit more reasonable. But yeah, you're definitely not the only
one to have that experience.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
I was gonna say.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
One positive thing is a lot of working parents, perhaps
mothers in particular, have been telling themselves a story that
like I never see my kids, or I don't spend
nearly enough time with my kids, or some version thereof.
They track their time for one hundred and sixty eight hours,
discover again that they're working forty hours, sleeping seven to
eight hours a night. We've got somewhere like seventy hours
(17:47):
in here that is not working and is not sleeping,
and in many cases quite a bit of that time
is spent with children, especially if they are very young
and require constant supervision.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
That's starts to.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Change as kids get a little bit older. But certainly
when people are saying these sort of things about guilt,
it's often that they have younger children, and so people
are often very pleasantly surprised at how much family time
winds up happening in the course of the week.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
No, that's awesome. Well why have you ended up tracking
your time for is it ten years now? Eleven? I
don't even remind me of where we are.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
I started in April of twenty fifteen doing it continuously,
so I guess this is airing At the end of September,
we were almost ten and a half years. And I
don't like celebrate my anniversary every year, like woo, you know,
I made it because it's not hard. It's like saying,
I'm celebrating my anniversary of brushing my teeth for whatever.
(18:44):
I've been doing it independently now for probably.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Three forty two years.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
No, it does because it isn't hard, right, It is
very easy, and it's somewhat takes the function of journal
for me, Like I feel that I'm recording my life
and so I have the memories and not just when
you keep a journal sometimes it's the memories of what
(19:11):
you were like angsty about at the time, or only
the real highlights of something, whereas a time log gets everything.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
And so when I pull.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Up past logs, I can see what I was doing,
and I could reconstruct everything in memory, particularly if there
was anything out of the ordinary on a day, because
then it's like, oh, yeah, that, and then I remember
what I was doing before because it's right there on
the log, And so you just have access to memories
in a much more convenient way.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
I would say.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
It's also a little bit of accountability for me, and
not really so much like, oh, I'm not.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Going to scroll because I'm keeping it on my luck.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
I scroll a lot way more than I probably should.
But especially if I do share these logs on occasion,
or even just do my own check in on Monday morning,
I'm like, was the week interesting? Like did I do
something that I will remember in the future, Like is
there anything on this log that makes this week feel cool?
Speaker 1 (20:14):
And often I look back over I'm like, oh, yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Did this, and I did this, and wow I fit
a lot in and it just feels really cool.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
I totally can see that I actually this reminds me
of the fact I'm reading Die with Zero right now,
which is a very interesting and possibly polarizing book by
Bill Perkins. But he actually talks about something about like
memories being like paying back dividends in life, and how
like you can have all these experiences and then looking
back on them almost like compounds the experiences that you've had.
(20:42):
So timelog is a really interesting way to do that,
and so I tend to do that through I think
my blogging. But then also I do have a five
year journal that I write in. I've well, I've done
it for five years. I wish I've done it for
forty five years. But every single day I'm in my
fifth year and I basically put like a highlight. It's
a highlight reel, right, but it has some angs in it,
(21:03):
a low light reel, like what was big in my
life yesterday? Like that's what I asked myself. I'd usually
fill it out in the morning, and I love it.
I love looking through it. It's like the memory dividends,
but yours is different because it's more objective. It's not
like what did I feel was important looking back a day,
It's like, here's everything, and maybe I'll actually find out
that what I thought was important, this other thing was important.
(21:23):
So I guess it's really neat that you have like
all of that data cold together.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
I mean one of the most fun weeks to look
back on was this one. I think it's actually the
one I wound up using in the paperback version of
I Know How She does it, because it's like, there's
these easter eggs from this week that. I mean, it
happened to be the It was like the first week
of November and I started working on this Nato Riimo
novel that eventually turned it into Juliete School of Possibilities.
(21:51):
I also put a post on Fast Company, which I
was writing for at that time, that was the Norwegian
secret to enjoying a long winter. I just put the
that I was right it like in the gym or
something while waiting for my kids, and then I wound
up being this ridiculously viral post. It's like there's all
these things I see in there, which is kind of fun.
I was like, oh, yeah, that week, who knew. Well,
(22:12):
We're going to take one more quick ad break and
then we'll be back with more about time tracking.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
All right, we are back and we are going to
go through a few FAQs that people tend to ask
when it comes to time tracking, maybe a little bit
of a rapid fire section. So Number one, do I
need to track weekends?
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Yes, Sarah, you should track your weekends.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
And I'm not saying that you need to be writing
down every fifteen minutes what you're doing. So if you
use my spreadsheets, which you can go to my website
Laura vandercam dot com and get a copy, they come
in thirty minute versions fifteen minute versions.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
I'm not saying like.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Every fifteen minutes on the weekend, check in with what
you are doing. If you are doing interesting things on
the weekend, some of this will already be planned in
ahead of time, Like if you know you're going on
a hot air balloon ride at four pm, like, well,
you can reconstruct that after the fact and probably like
your drive too there and all that, you'll be able
to do that for like seven or eight hours and
(23:20):
not have to check in every fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Right, the memory is there.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
It gets a little bit more complicated if people aren't
doing anything right, if they're just sort of this mash
of weird puttering around, half dealing with the kids not
which is one reason to try to do cool things
on the weekend, but it is also you can just
put kids et cetera. Or you can just guess like
(23:46):
it doesn't have to be perfect. You can even leave
many hours blank and just put in what you remember it.
I think it's better to try to get through a
whole week then to stop on.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
The weekends and not even try.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
And I don't think that it really like some people
are like, oh, it'll be for this weird time pressure.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
It doesn't have to be. This is not about playing
gotcha at all. It's just to show yourself, like where
the time is, what are you doing if there is
available time that you might like to repurpose?
Speaker 2 (24:15):
That is good to know. So weekends are real days.
They are just as real as Monday through Friday. I
highly encourage people, if you are time tracking, to try
to get through the weekend. Maybe it doesn't work the
first time, Maybe you lose track the first time, reconstruct
what you can when you remember, and then maybe try
it again, try it another weekend and see what you get.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
And I think it will get easier with time.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
The benefit of using an electronic tool, and I'm going
to go back to toggle one more time. Is like,
let's say it's Sunday and you have forgotten and you
know you were puttering and you like left it on
folding laundry, but you forgot, and it's two hours later
at least when you notice that, because it does show
up on the front of your phone. At some point,
you're going to pick up your phone and you're going
to see that. You can go, oh, and you don't
have to like put in five different things, but you
(25:01):
can just jot like folding laundry, and then you could
just be like and random pottering and then you move
on to your next thing. Like it's a nice way
to avoid letting perfection. Have you throw this out the window?
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Yeah? Absolutely agree with that.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
All right, So question number two, I think we get
this from the lawyers. What if I already track my
time for work and I just don't feel like doing
it anywhere else.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Yeah, I get this sometimes every time I talk to
groups of lawyers, and I've been hired by a number
of wonderful law firms over the years to come speak
to their lawyers, and I'm like, I don't have to
explain the concept of what time tracking is because they
have been logging their time in six minute increments for years,
and many people are like, oh no, I do this
for my work. I can't stand to do this to
the rest of my life. Okay, I get it, but
(25:47):
you don't have to do it in six increments. Right.
You could do thirty minute blocks and only check in
every couple of hours.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Right.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
That would be irresponsible during your work day, but it
is not in the rest of your life. But it's
also about treating the rest of your life with the
same respect and intentionality that you give to your clients
and to your firm with your legal work. Right, because
you are saying, I want to see where this other
(26:15):
time is going.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
I mean, because there is other time like you.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Treat the Let's say you're billing forty hours a week
and working fifty in your legal work like, there are
still sixty other hours in the week, and they don't
feel as big to you because you're not logging them. Right,
they don't feel as full and intentional and knowing what's
going on as you're very intricately calculated legal work does
(26:43):
because you don't know where the time is going. But
when you do, then you can start to see that
there is this time outside of work and maybe you
can do cool and exciting things with it, even if
you are billing a significant number of hours.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
So I would suggest trying again. You don't have to
do it for ten years.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
You have probably been billing your legal work for ten years,
but you don't have to do that for the rest
of your time. Just try the time outside of work
for a week, maybe every couple of months or so.
Just try it once, see how it goes. But I
think you will be pleasantly surprised. I've had enough lawyers
and accountants and other such people do this now and
have been intrigued or pleasantly surprised at what they see.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
That you've got nothing to lose by just giving it
a word.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
I like the empowering angle, which is like you're doing
it for them during work, but do it for you
the rest of your time. Make sure you're giving your
own time the same careful attention that you are giving
your work time. So that's a great spin. So you
kind of answer this, but is a suggestion to go
ahead and do it for ten years everyone or forever.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Just start now, No, don't just one week, Like if
you're hearing this, why don't you start? You could start
today my timelog start on Monday morning, but there's no
requirement that you do that. Or you could start next
Monday morning if you do want to start on a
Monday morning, but just give it to try for a
week if you have never done it. If you think
it's going to be an atypical week, well welcome to life.
Every week is atypical in some way or another. I
(28:08):
think you will still learn a lot even by tracking
weeks that have things that are out of the ordinary
in them. However, you don't have to do it for
ten years. I would say try it once, see how
it goes. If you find it interesting and think, well
maybe I would like to see something else, then try
it again in a couple months. I think every season
(28:28):
is helpful for people. Or if there is a big
switch and how you are spending your time, So if
you move, if you switch jobs, if your kids start
a different school that starts at an entirely different time,
or they were doing travel soccer and now or not
doing travel soccer. There's all sorts of reasons that life
shifts enough that you might decide it's worth it to
get a new baseline of how you are spending your time.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
Yeah, I like every season. I think that's a great,
great guideline. You can kind of improvise from there.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Yeah, but and shure, I just think this.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
If you want to spend your time better, this is
the first step. So give it a try. Let us
know how it goes. If you have tracked your time,
I would love to see your log. You can always
email it to me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
We'll get ourselves maybe up to the five figures of
logs eventually. But yeah, I love seeing where people's time goes,
their schedules and analyzing my own. I don't see any
(29:21):
reason I would stop this anytime soon. Sarah, You're not
gonna do this forever, but for now.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
I'm not doing it forever.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
But it's fun.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
It's fun, all right, all right? We have our Q
and A. This comes from a listener who says, I
work flexibly, but after studying my timelog, I honestly think
I need more time to work. What can I do?
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Yeah, this is a surprising discovery some people have.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Now.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
If you have to go to an office and you
are expected to be there at a certain time. For instance,
let's say your first patient is roomed at eight thirty.
You are not looking to spend more time at work,
like you have to be there at certain hours.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
That is fine.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
People who work flexibly, though, have a different thing going on.
And many people who can work from home a lot
of the times and set their own hours discover that
they may not be working forty.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Hours a week.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Now that may not be a huge problem, Like if
your manager is happy, then you don't have to rock
the boat if you decide if you look at your
log and find that most weeks you're working thirty to
thirty two hours, like, if everyone's happy.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
It's okay, right.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
However, if you are feeling like you're a little more
frazzled during your work hours than is necessary because you
are trying to get everything done by I don't know,
three fifteen, so you can go be in the line
for pickup at school and then you're running people around
to sports afterwards, and you're like answering emails at the
(30:46):
same time, Like you might decide that you want to
rework your schedule to have a little bit more longer
stretches to work, or at least to have more hours
of available for concentrated work if that's something you desire.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
So just a couple of things to think first. Just
because you can doesn't mean you should.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
You could pick up your kids from school three days
a week and send them to an aftercare program two
days a week and pick them up at like five
point fifteen on those days and buy yourself some longer
days of focused work on those. Somebody else might be
able to drive kids. So maybe, again, it's not either
or maybe you do it three days a week and
(31:28):
two days a week your spouse takes it, or your
neighbor who also has kids and that could do it.
You could carpool, or you hire a sitter to do
the evening runs of activities two days a week and
see if you can get some extra time with that. Sarah,
you've had some success with each of you taking a
(31:49):
morning right.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
Yes, and actually like that. I'm it's exactly and I'm
using it to work because on Mondays I absolutely could
drive the kids to school, It's not a problem. But
then I'm not going to get home and be able
to start my own work until like eight forty five,
and I am struggling to give enough time for my
creative work at as it is, so it's wonderful when
he's kind of taking over. I can go to a
pilates in the morning and then they're out of the
(32:10):
hoss by seven thirty and I can really get a
nice long morning in. I got a lot done this morning.
It's Monday as we're recording this, and I would not
have if I was driving. So just because you can
doesn't mean you should. And having an awareness of these
patterns and like really understanding like, Okay, I don't have
to feel bad if I'm spending eighty five minutes driving
three days a week, then he can do it two
days a week.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
This doesn't have to be all on you, even if
you theoretically have a more flexible job. I would also
be careful with appointments. This is another like work from
home temptation. You're like, oh, well, like my favorite hairstylist
has an appointment at eleven o'clock, I could just take it,
and you can, but those things can chop up a
(32:50):
work day pretty easily, So just be careful with that
if you are trying to work more focused hours. And
also you might just get in the habit of as
you were looking forward to any given week, map out
when your work hours are. And again, people who work
in an office at set times are like, this is
the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Like, I have
(33:12):
to be at work at eight thirty, Therefore my time
it starts at eight thirty.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
I mean in the office from eight thirty to four
thirty every day. I get it.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
But for the people who work flexibly, you're just sort
of generally working. And so look and see when that
is going to start on any given day. When is
it going to get chopped up? When are you trying
to be done by? Are there additional hours after that
initial stop that you are also planning to work. If
with all your best intentions looking forward to the week,
(33:41):
this only adds up to like thirty hours and you
are trying to work more than that, then something has
to change. You have to flip something in your schedule.
You need to get additional driving help or additional childcare
or something, because you can't just magically manufacture extra time.
So I think having this little bit of accountability can
(34:03):
help as well.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
Totally all right, love of the week, We're going to
go on theme today.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
On theme, I gotta say, looking at old time logs,
it really is fun to haul up a time I've
been doing it less this year because I was in
the habit of looking at the corresponding date from the past.
So let's say that, okay, this week is that we're recording.
This starts September twenty two, twenty twenty five. So when
(34:31):
was the last time that Monday was a September twenty two?
But this year that doesn't work because it was back
in like twenty fourteen, so I don't have time logs
from then. But for the past ten years that has worked.
It has been a corresponding date. Like starting recently in
the past three years, I've been able to look at
a corresponding year and read through that and see what
(34:51):
was going on.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
So that's been kind of fun.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
And thirty years from now you're going to have to
go back to multiple.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
I know exactly well it is.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
I hadn't really thought about how date cycle works, like
with all the leap years and stuff, but it does
affect like how frequently you get Mondays of each day. Anyway,
fun stuff, little esoteric. Don't need to get into it,
but let's just say it is fun to look at
old time looks.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
Totally well, I'm gonna go on theme as well and
use my hope in each five year journal, which by
the way, shines the same light on what you just said,
because on the left hand side of the page it's
each year, and I always would write the day of
the week, so you can see on any given page
it'll say like Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Monday, like its skips
a day, like I forget, but it's it's very interesting
to look at, so you're looking at different days of
the week. It would be kind of interesting to complete
(35:34):
a five year journal lined up by day of the week,
so you saw all mondays like, but I don't know,
there's many.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
It wouldn't be the same date, right, it wouldn't be right,
Like you'd have to be.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
Like Monday, one of the year, Monday number two, Monday.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Yeah, that's true. That's true. It could be that.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
But anyway, I love that thing. I've put photos in there,
I stick random stickers, I have like tickets, I write stuff,
and it's like it's a really fun artifact. I am
actually starting to rethink my practice of throwing out my planners,
but I am absolutely not throwing out my five year journal.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
That's absolutely not you know, that's an archive that one
put it in the museum. All right, well, this has
been best of both worlds. This has been our time
Tracking manifesto. Highly suggest you give time tracking a try.
And Sarah has.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Been somewhat reluctant over the past, but now she's been
doing Togglin has been excelling with that, so yeah, we
love it. All right.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
We will be back next week with more on making
work and life fit together.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the
shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram,
and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
This has been the best of both worlds podcasts.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Please join us next time for more on making work
and life work together.
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