Working, not working

In an attempt to be more productive, I’ve been tracking how I spend every 30 minutes of my time for several of the past few weeks—splicing it up between all manner of things: sleeping, cooking, eating, socializing, walking, watching tv, checking email, playing games, working on X, Y, or Z.

Not only is this strategy dizzyingly complex. But it’s also hard to manage, or to really learn from.

Recently, I adopted a better approach. To simply record how many hours I'm working.

Since the only thing that really matters is how much time I spend working—on everything from upskilling to finding work to actually doing the work that makes me money—simply tracking how much time I spend doing it is sufficient.

And since—if I get the work I need done, done—it doesn’t matter how much time I devote to any other thing—sleeping, socializing, having fun, or, for that matter, writing—I can rest easy conflating all those things into whatever time I spend not working.

More importantly, I know when I’ve worked 8 hours a day and when I haven’t. And, I know that--when I’m not being as productive as I’d like--what I need to fix.

It turns out tracking your billable hours isn't only great for payroll. It keeps you accountable too.