2025 Time Tracking Challenge wrap-up thread

Congratulations to everyone who finished the time tracking challenge! If you made it to this morning at 5 a.m. then you’ve recorded an entire 168 hours of time. If you didn’t quite make it, or if you were just so excited about time tracking that you want to keep going, then feel free to record this week! There are no typical weeks, and any week has something to show.

Since I posted last night, I worked on my puzzle from 7:30-8. I decided to take a bubble bath since the 5-year-old was occupied. However, he was not as occupied as I thought, and I wound up getting out fairly quickly when he was yelling outside the door. Then eventually I went outside from about 9:15-9:55 p.m. to shovel snow on the driveway. I was doing this with my 15-year-old (he and my husband did a shift earlier) and we managed to get it all clear. I came back in, read the 5-year-old a story and got him down by 10:30 (hey, no school the next morning). I scrolled and relaxed for 30 minutes and was in bed at 11.

I printed out my log from last week as I do most Monday mornings. I also looked up the corresponding log from the last time that January 13th was a Monday (2020). My life looked a little different then, as I had a 3-week old baby. Obviously a lot of time was spent caring for him, but with four other kids, there’s still a lot of other stuff too. For instance, I went to a middle school choir concert…

Anyway, this past week was pretty good, and fairly typical as these things go. I worked 37 hours, which is right in the 35-40 I tend to average. I did not count my Monday driving as work (except for the hour in the car I practiced my talk on the way to the talk) — I recognize that this is debatable, but to me, listening to music in the car is not work, even if I was on my way to/from work. I do see that my work days often get a bit chopped up, and this is something I’m working on, especially as I’m entering crunch time for my book manuscript. I need long stretches to work. It is somewhat within my power to make that happen, so I should when I can. But hey, 37 hours was enough time to give a speech, turn in my Author Questionnaire (with stuff like the “flap copy” for my next book), run this challenge, record 4 BB podcasts plus 4 longer interviews for that show, write my newsletters, do final edits on a piece in the WSJ, etc.

I slept 51.5 hours, which comes out to approximately 7.4 hours per day. This will surprise no one who has been following my time tracking saga for lo these many years.

I ran about 11 miles, spread over 4 workouts. Two of my treadmill running sessions also featured my resistance training (I’d run for 5 minutes, do some weights, run for 5 minutes, do some weights). I did a 5 mile long run outside on Saturday. I worked out with my trainer on Tuesday. On the other days, I did some short walks. According to my phone, I averaged 11,759 steps per day over the last 7 days.

I spent 3 hours practicing singing (2 choir practices, plus one on my own). I spent only 15 minutes playing the piano. That’s something I might try to increase.

However, I did not lack for leisure time. I spent 4.5 hours doing puzzles! Some of this was while simultaneously supervising children, but hey. I spent 1.25 hours doing Legos with my 5-year-old.

In terms of little adventures, I went to the art museum on Saturday. I took 4 children out to Olive Garden on Wednesday.

I hope you had an excellent week! Let me know how it went.

Photo: Snow this morning…the hammock looks a little less appealing in this state!