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168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think, books, challenges, Flylady, Hello Best Life, Laura Vanderkam, Raelyn Barclay, time management
We all have the same number of hours in our week. Obviously, successful peeps make better use of those hours. Lindsay reviewed 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think and then followed it up with these results. I’d heard of the idea before and taking Lindsay’s lead, I preformed a time study.
And y’all, it was a bitch. I often do multiple things at once, or will do five minutes of something (say unload the dishwasher) then move on to something else for five or ten minutes (like collecting trash) and move on to yet another thing (like checking email) for ten or fifteen minutes. Thus filling in the worksheet, which is broken into half hour allotments, was challenging.
But I did it. For two weeks. My time breaks down as this:
There weren’t a lot of surprises.
Getting ready takes up a bit more time than I thought but it covers my Morning Routine (drinking water, weigh-in, dressing for walk, and dog stuff), post walk getting ready for the day (obviously a bit more time spent here during the work week), and my Before Bed Routine (setting the coffee pot for the morning, checking my calendar, laying out my exercise and work clothes for the next day, staging my breakfast and lunch for work, “shining my sink” which is a Flylady thing, and getting ready for bed).
Pampering included reading and TV time. This was a bit of a surprise as it showed even though I don’t watch a lot of TV (and the few hours I actively watched involved cross-stitching the stocking) I do get distracted by it.
Social Media included email. As you can tell by my less than stellar presence on said Social Media that means email is taking up more time than it should.
Kinda eye opening to see it all laid bare on a chart. And it does pose the question, how to improve? Where to be more mindful of time thereby being more productive.
Do you think you’d be surprised by your results? Are you up to the challenge?
Wow! I tip my hat to you for doing the time study. I won’t even lie and say that I’m up for doing it. Maybe before things got a little wonky but for now, I’m sort of enjoying the moment of floating between second job stints lol!
Yeah, your work percentage would probably be off the charts. Thanks for swinging by Angela.
I’ve never counted how I spend my hours. I’m still trying to get used to being retired–which is a laugh in itself because I’m busier now than I ever was when I worked for the man.
I do know I spend far more time on research for books or design projects than I probably should. I can’t help it. I get sucked in and want to learn more.
Oh, I hear you on getting sucked in! If I’d been in the brainstorming stage of a project during this study… Thanks for swinging by Maria.
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