I spent some time recently adding up how I spent my time in 2024. There were 8784 hours during the year (it was a leap year, so 8760 + 24) and I have now reviewed all of them!
A few observations…maybe for 2025 I will do more real-time analysis so I don’t have to do it all at the end of the year. Any given week doesn’t take that much time, but doing 52 weeks (plus 2 days) takes a lot of time. Theoretically using spreadsheets means you can just sum the cells with a certain entry but…due to some choices I made early on in time tracking that are now habits this doesn’t really work. So there was a lot of manual tallying. Oh well.
I do not work that much. Well, on some days I do. On a “normal” workday I’m at my desk at 7:45 a.m. and end the work day at 5 p.m., or later, and often do 30-60 minutes at night. But for various reasons I don’t get a lot of normal workdays. On Monday this week, for instance, I stopped at 3:30 to pick up the 10-year-old and take him to the pediatrician. Then he really wanted to go to his ninja class, so I drove him out there to meet B (nanny), who was there with the 5-year-old for an earlier class. I got home at 5:30. Those would have been work hours — I had childcare — but with 5 kids there is often something. It is what it is, but I need to be careful about protecting longer stretches of deep work time when I can get it. I averaged about 32 hours/week for the year. For what it’s worth, Tuesday was my longest average workday, but I think this is skewed by Monday being more likely to be a holiday.
My sleep was absolutely consistent with what it has been for the last decade. 7.33 hours/day. Every year I’ve tracked has been 7.3-7.4. Guess this is my set point! No surprise that I slept more on weekends than weekdays, but curiously Sat and Sun were both 7.68 hours apiece. (Tuesday was my lowest — 7.08.)
Choir, as a hobby, turns out to be very seasonal. I was in choir practices, or practicing music on my own, for 31.5 hours in December, and did about 6 hours of performances that month. My total for July was 0!
I spent 128.25 hours on puzzles. I worked out with my trainer 44 times. I ran 122 times. That feels a little low, but my logs reminded me that there were 7 weeks of 0s there after my back incident. I biked 9 times as an actual bike ride (there were a lot of other “bikes with kids in driveway” kind of rides). I did yoga exactly once — on the beach as part of BLP live. That may be all I do it in 2025 too. Oh well!
Most people don’t work as much as they think they do. I try to keep that in mind when someone tells me that they work 70 hours per week. 32 hours per week seems perfectly respectable.
@omdg – I do feel, on some level, like it’s “enough.” I wrote most of a book. I ran/co-ran two podcasts (including a daily one). I gave multiple speeches, did a daily newsletter, did a lot of general promotional stuff. But I have lots of ideas and they do take time to execute. And sometimes I come up with better ideas when I don’t just go with the first one because I have a little more time to think about it. My goal for the next year is not necessarily to work >32 hours/week, but to make sure that more of those hours are done in good solid chunks, so I don’t feel quite so fragmented. And yes, outside certain circumstances, most people claiming to work 70 hours a week…do not. Or they did once. But it isn’t typical.
I also observed that you wasted little time between the week between Jan 13 and Jan 19 from your previous blog posts, Ms. Laura Vanderkam.
@Yukun – oh, there was definitely a lot of scrolling. But I did fit a fair amount in too. A week can contain a lot.
I enjoy reading these observations. So fascinating how we spend our time. I completed my 2024 reflection (not as granular) but typically very helpful when planning and looking ahead.