Happy Tuesday!
Hopefully, your week is going better than mine. Those of you who were on this mailing list back in March may recall that I had to take a rain check on one newsletter because my primary computer stopped working, and I was fully preoccupied with trying to fix it ASAP while still maintaining some kind of normalcy with my day job and other responsibilities.
Well...
It happened again this weekend, though I think the cause must be different. Fortunately, the important pieces are under warranty this time. As before, it's not a matter of lost data; the machine simply won't boot. I won't bore you with the details here, but if anyone is interested in my troubleshooting efforts, I have a post over in the ASUS community on Reddit. (So far, no luck.)
Apart from the disruption, the extra sad part is that I actually did really well with cleaning up a ton of data in my 2025 Consistency Challenge project, but now I can't quantify the week's results because I can't get at the files easily. I'll have to give you a double report next week, assuming I'm back up and running normally next week...which I sure better be.
All that is to explain why it's almost the end of Tuesday and I have no newsletter to speak of yet. It's just been that kind of day.
Fortunately, some wonderful readers came to the rescue and sent some follow-up questions after last week's post about time audits. That means I have something to answer easily.
First, here's the simple two-step process I described for performing a time audit, to obtain a detailed look at where you time actually goes rather than a vague idea of where you think it goes:
- Whenever you start doing something, however small, make a note of the start time for that task.
- Whenever you complete something or switch tasks without completing what you started, note the end time for what you stopped doing.
Now, here's the first question:
>> When I pay such close attention to my time for an audit, the ways and amount of time will change because I am paying attention. Won't that result in an inaccurate picture of how I spend time?
Fair point! This is a real concern, and it's a phenomenon known as the observer effect or, more specifically in terms of observed human behavior, the Hawthorne effect from a study which found that "the novelty of being research subjects and the increased attention from such could lead to temporary increases in workers' productivity."
In short, paying close attention results in different outcomes than what would have happened if nobody was watching.
Of course, any parent knows this; it's why we stick around and pointedly stare at our children after giving them an instruction, to make sure it's actually carried out.
While it doesn't feel exactly the same when we monitor our own behavior, the simple act of noting everything you do will likely change your actions--probably in a positive way since that's usually the goal in performing the exercise in the first place. But is this a problem? That depends on whether your goal is a perfect picture of your day-to-day activity (pure data) or making better decisions about time management (personal improvement). For most of us, we're likely much more interested in the latter.
Also, you can't really fake it for very long. If you audit your time for more than a day or two, you'll probably see at least one of two things happen:
- You'll slide back into less productive behaviors by accident.
- You'll start changing your habits so your faking becomes reality. (As Orson Scott Card put it in one of the Ender's Game series books: "Relentless hypocrisy eventually becomes the truth.")
Now, the second question--more accurately, a request:
>> I’d love to see part of your recorded time tracking so I have a clearer picture of what you described about start and stop times and the other info you recorded.
I can't give you a real example of this in my own life off-hand because I don't track quite this level of detail on a regular basis. I use Amazing Marvin as my uber-flexible task management and time-tracking tool. Although it does track start and end time details whenever I begin or pause the built-in stopwatch for whatever I'm working on, I only pull out the overall duration and chronological task order when I add the list to my daily journal note in Obsidian.
Here's an example of the imported calendar event and tracked task info for one day (a few details redacted for privacy):
While not a 100% comprehensive record of every activity from wake to sleep, this is an extremely low-effort result that nevertheless gives me a very good idea of what I spent time on that day. At the end of each day, a quick glance is enough to know whether I got through the items that were important to me, or where the time went instead if I feel like it was an unproductive day.
I've tweaked this system for a while to fit into my workflow, and while I could describe how to replicate it exactly if anyone is truly interested, I wouldn't automatically recommend it as "the best" solution. But hopefully it gives you an idea of the type of activity I track and the level of detail I target.
Honestly, my favorite part about having daily recorded task history is that I can easily search my notes to figure out when I did some specific thing. It's come in handy far more often than I would have guessed.
Getting back to core Tidy Bytes principles: because I have exactly one location for all creative or informative writing, notes, journaling, etc., I always know exactly where to look. I mentioned that I use Obsidian for this, but you can use Notion, Roam, UpNote, Evernote, OneNote, Apple Notes, a spiral-bound notepad, or literally anything that works for you--as long as you use it consistently.
If anyone has any more questions about time audits or anything else, please do send them in! I'm always happy to answer them. And if I haven't fixed my desktop PC before next Tuesday, I may be in dire need of ready-to-go material.
Until next week, happy data-taming!