Category: Efficiency

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Where Does My Time Go?

I’m back… After a long hiatus from the blog, I’ve decided to start posting things again. I meant to keep posting and had a few ideas in the pipeline but then 2020 happened and all such plans went out the window. It didn’t seem relevant to post anymore. Still, I think I’m finally getting back to equilibrium here so let’s just pick up where we left off.

Over a year ago, I started tracking how I spent my time. Have you ever found yourself complaining that you just don’t have enough hours in the day to get everything done? Haven’t we all? Sure, everybody is busy but I wanted to see where it was going and how I could be more efficient. Someone once told me that saying, “I’m too busy to do XYZ” is just another way of saying “It’s not a priority.” Was I spending time on the things that I wanted to?

I learned that I do have a decent amount of downtime especially on the weekends (though it never feels like it). I get a decent amount of sleep (or at least, time trying to go to sleep), and have cut down on the boring must-do’s as much as I can though I think there’s always room to improve. It also made me rethink one item (rolled up under projects) that I realized wasn’t worth 3-4 hours of my time each week. Sure, it only seemed like an hour here or there a few days a week but it added up and I wasn’t even really enjoying it anymore. Seeing the data just gave me the validation I needed to let it go and free up my time toward other things I actually want to do.

Now, how did I track my time? For 2 weeks, I used the app Now Then to track my every move. This was a pretty typical 2 weeks for me. I admit it was tedious but worth it to see how I usually spend my weeks. Of course, this is all pre-pandemic life, so I maybe it’s worth repeating for new data…. We’ll see.

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How often am I talking to a robot?

In theory, talking to robots sounds super cool. In practice, not so much.

Between increased robo-calls and the increased preference for texting among my friends over the last few years, it occurred to me that the number of useful calls has plummeted. But how bad is it? I sorted through my call history one boring day and categorized my incoming and outgoing calls to find out just how many of my calls were adding value.

The results are pretty dismal… Over the 9 months period that I tracked, only 7% of the calls were from friends, family, or people I knew IRL and to be honest, I really only wanted to talk to the person on the other end about half the time or 3% of all calls. Over 80% was spam or wrong numbers or telemarketers. The remaining 12% was for non-personal reasons, such as reminders for appointments with the dentist, calling about my car repair, and buzzing in someone at my door. Now you know why I never answer the phone.