I've written about time tracking before -- if you haven't seen one of these, you can search 'time tracking' in the box on the right.
Here's the newest version --
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START OF DAY:
Time awake/total sleep:
Appointments today:
What's required for reasonable sleep?
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MORNING ROUTINE
Time started:
Make bed:
Drink water:
Vitamins:
Brush teeth:
Stretch:
Breathe:
Gratitude:
Life goals:
Visualize very briefly:
Meditate:
Time complete:
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LOOK AT RESOURCE BOOK
What observations, if any?
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SIMPLE TRACKING:Accomplished —>
Time Spent —>
Project A:
Science/Controls/etc:
Projects B:
Lights:
Admin:
Learning:
Leisure:
Other:
Off:
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ANALYSIS:What did I do right?
What did I do wrong?
What environmental factors affected me?
What would I do differently if I had the day to live over?
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END OF DAY:
Finished Eating:
Brief mindsweep/project sweep:
Plan tomorrow:
Happiness/Equanimity:
Time complete:
Noteworthy changes --
"Make Bed" added to morning routine. Simple enough. Makes life better.
"LOOK AT RESOURCES BOOK" -- a few weeks ago, I started making a binder of all my key projects and key people in my life. I'll very likely write about it later after I flesh it out more, but so far it's very good. I have a single, off-computer place to look at everything going on. This section of the time tracking sheet will develop more and have more precise guidelines than "Any observations?" with time; it'll get more specific as I get better at using it for organization.
Then, how I categorize time -- "A Project" (current #1), "Science/Controls/etc" (developing new solutions to things, or actively researching how to do stuff better), "B Projects" (other projects ongoing), Lights (the daily Lights Spreadsheet posted recently), etc. I've been playing around with new categorizations to see where time goes. This will probably evolve more too, but I'm getting something out of it.
On the topic of tracking time vs. tracking accomplishments, I go back and forth. Sometimes it's good to drop tracking specific minutes, because it can be very tempting to pat oneself on the back for "spending a lot of time working" -- at doing something inefficient or ineffective. When caught in that mode, it's better to just track progress and achievements for a while. But at other times, nailing down exactly how long things take is very valuable.
If you haven't read the past posts about time tracking, go do a search and check out past templates and their notes. A decent starting point would be "The Evolution of my Time/Habit/Life Tracking" from four years ago -- the general principles have actually held up completely; the rest is just refinement since then, and it gives you the basics of how to get started and some guidelines.
Once you've read up on at least a couple of the past posts, questions and comments are very welcome.