Time logging off the computer (+ weekend report)

Whenever people say they want to get a grip on where the time really goes, or whenever people say they’d like to spend their time better, I suggest keeping a time log. If you don’t know where the time is going now, it’s hard to know if you’re changing the right thing!

I’ve been logging my time for 9+ years now, always on spreadsheets that break the 168-hour week into 336 30-minute blocks (you can download various versions here). I often have my laptop with me, so it’s easy enough to write what I’ve been doing a few times per day.

However, I do not always have my laptop with me. For instance, this weekend we went to visit family in Cape Cod. I didn’t want to bother with the computer. However, given that I always have my phone with me, it was easy enough to email myself a written description of how I spent my time every 12 hours or so. I then put this into the spreadsheet on my laptop this morning (and yes, I know I could have worked things out to input directly on the spreadsheet from my phone but this way works too…). I got a record of how I spent my time and I wasn’t tied to my computer. If I’d been off my phone all weekend I could have written down notes on a sheet of paper and that would have worked too. But I tend not to be off my phone for days at a time!

Anyway, my time log from this past weekend showed a lot of time in the car. On Friday I was driving all over the place to kid events. A great many weeklong day camps have some sort of showcase on Friday. The 14-year-old also needed to go work on his projects for a technology competition he’s going to this week. The 9-year-old had an appointment. Then in the evening, my husband, the 14-year-old and I went downtown for a Phillies game! This was on my summer fun list — and while it was still fairly hot at 7 p.m., and the Phillies lost, the game was indeed fun. We sat on the third base line just a few rows back and enjoyed our hot dogs and left by the 8th inning in order to beat the traffic…because we had to be up early to be back in the car!

My husband’s brother’s family has kids fairly close in age to my older four. In particular, the 12-year-old is very close with her cousin of matching age. The family offered to host her for a week at their beach house in Massachusetts, so we all drove up to visit and drop her off.

It was a lot of driving for a short trip. We left at 7:45 a.m. on Saturday and arrived at about 2:30 p.m. — and that was with fairly minimal traffic. We left at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday and didn’t get home until 9:30 p.m. (That was with more traffic!) But the ocean was beautiful and it was fun to visit, with the upside that Cape Cod was about 75 degrees while everywhere else on the east coast was 95 degrees. We went in the well-heated pool + hot tub on Saturday and everyone else went on a boat on Sunday morning that had a capacity of 12 — meaning one person had to be left behind. I sacrificed myself (trying not to appear too eager as I did so) and hung out for a lovely 2 hours by myself, looking out at the waves and thinking semi-deep thoughts. Then I met up with everyone else for bowling and lunch before getting back in the van to drive home.

This week promises to be reasonably chill — and next weekend won’t involve as much driving. My husband will be meeting them in NYC to retrieve our daughter so that is much closer!