Jan062009
Who Knows Where the Time Goes?
Filed under Self,work by Kim at 1:43 pm on Jan 06 2009
Yeah, it’s a classic song, and if you don’t know it, just read. I am particularly fond of the Judy Collins version.
But this post is about thinking about how I spend my time, since sometimes it seems like I don’t understand why I don’t have time for the things I enjoy. I was looking around online for people’s notetaking strategies for school when I found this incredibly simple tool for visualizing your daily time. I mean, I know you could do this with Excel in a heartbeat, but I hadn’t thought of it yet. So sue me. 
I find that most paper planners or things like google calendar don’t actually lend themselves to daily breakdowns like this, and I actually do like to know where my time is going without making a bunch of assumptions.
If you fill this thing out and then get depressed about how little time you have after clocking work, commute, sleep, etc, my advice is to try to think of it as a knowledge = power situation. If you know how much time you have left over to tend to your cactus garden, go to zither lessons, and watch videos of kittens falling asleep, you can then set your priorities so that the things you most love get tended to first.
There’s a weekly tool on the site as well, since nobody does the exact same thing every day.
