Takeaway:Tracking where your time actually goes—rather than where you think it goes—is the first step to reshaping your days so they align with what matters most. Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes, 59s.
There's a line from Annie Dillard's book The Writing Life that I think about often: “how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
I love the double meaning here. If we want better days, we need to change how we live. But there's something deeper: a day of our life is our life. Life doesn't only happen at the macro level—the career arc, the decades, the big milestones. It happens across every layer of time. Including today. Including this moment, as you're reading these words.
In Hyperfocus, I wrote that the state of our attention determines the state of our lives. I still believe this. But I've come to see attention and intention as two sides of the same coin. We need to manage both. Attention is how we engage with what's in front of us. Intention is what we choose to put in front of us in the first place.
So how do you know if your days are aligned with what you actually want?
There are countless ways to do this, that I cover in the new book. One of my favorites for eating started is to increase your level of “time awareness”—knowing where your time even goes in the first place.
Two tactics for time awareness
Here are two of my go-to tactics that will work for increasing your time awareness.
1. The first is to track where your time actually goes. Not where you think it goes: where it actually goes. The best way I've found to do this is to track your time for around30 days, in 30-minute increments. Yes, it's tedious. But the data is revelatory. Doing so is simple: I prefer tracking my time the analog way, on a sheet of paper in 30-minute increments. Excel works too.
More than a decade ago, while writing The Productivity Project, I remember tracking my time obsessively. I still remember being shocked at how many hours I spent on busy work every day. And how much time went to procrastination. There was a significant gap between where I thought my time was going and where it actually went.
Over the years since, I've used that awareness to massage my days into something that actually aligns with my values. Now when I look at where my time goes, I feel good about it—not because I'm perfectly productive, but because I've deliberately shaped it.
2. The second tactic—which is less involved—is to simply regularly reflect on where your time goes. As a ritual, if you can. Regularly ask yourself questions like:
- Am I spending too much time on admin work?
- Are there things I could be delegating?
- Are there any unimportant, low-leverage projects I'm spending too much time on?
- Where am I wasting time?
- What am I procrastinating on?
These work as both a journaling prompt and a mental reflection.
Compare what's actual to what's optimal. Then, set intentions for what you would like to do differently. (Remember, any activities connected with your strongest values are naturally more motivating.)
Bite off whatever you have the appetite for.
This isn't just about becoming more productive every day. It's an exercise to be happier with how you've spent your time in general.
When you see that you spend too much time on busy work, intention gives you the structure to change it.
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This article riffs on a few ideas in my new book, Intentional, which explores how to follow through on what matters most.
