Life tracking

During two recent weeks, I recorded what I did with my time. I find this fascinating and hope you will too.

I took notes every hour, which means this is more of a big-picture view. For instance, if I spent an hour training a new person at work, that is counted as an hour of work and not as socializing, even though I spent some time chatting with her about non-work topics. And the lunch eaten in front of my computer is counted as Internet time, not food. I would also suspect that the “wasted time” category would be a lot bigger if I were examining my time at the five-minute level.

Activity	Average time spent per week: Hours.minutes
Sleeping	53.45 or 7.41 per day
Reading	23.33
Working	19.42
Socializing with significant other	9.30
Socializing with others	7.15
Watching movies or TV	6.30
Travel by Metro, car or walking	6.25
Exercise	6.25
Errands	6.23
Food	6.00
Internet	5.55
Getting ready	5.13
Cleaning/showering	3.25
Computer science class	2.15
Driving practice	1.15
Wasted time	1.15
Hedonism (leisure activities not otherwise specified)	0:45
Napping/relaxation	0:30

Overall, I wouldn’t have thought I spent so much time sleeping and socializing. Very pleased that I read more than I work. I was also pleasantly surprised to see that the wasted time/hedonism category was kept pretty low.

The working category looks low because a) these were slow weeks for the company and I got more time off than usual and b) I excluded everything one might normally think of as part of the work day that fell under another category, like traveling from job to job, chatting with coworkers, or surfing the Internet while waiting for work to appear.

Watching movies and travel were almost always done multitasking; listening to podcasts while I walk or folding laundry, planning, or sewing while a movie plays. The exercise number dropped radically from 10 hours on Week 1 to 2.5 hours on Week 2, reflecting the fact that my gym membership ended.

Seems like there is a lot of leeway in my schedule. In my future life in Chicago, commuting and "getting ready" time will be down, and I could cut way down on movies and Internet and moderately down on reading without any pain.