Time Tracking - The Best Personal Optimization Tool

Start yesterday, my life changed...

I was conversing with my wife on the upcoming changes in our lives and how I wanted to be better at organizing my time and making use of the time that we had together.  With a child on the way, we knew the both of us would have to re-evaluate how we spent our individual time.

We're both very independent people who have fairly busy lives. 

And that's when she said it... that's when she made the suggestion... "You should track your time to see where you're spending it..."

Ahhhh... I wanted to scream.  I thought I knew how I was spending my time already.  And it's not optimal.  I spend way too many hours on the computer typing away at this blog, or programming my game.  At night, I watch YouTube videos on my phone or play Clash Royale (let's face it, it really is one of the best games out there). 

Anyways, tracking the time spent on my devices would force me to face the facts... I've been spending way too much time on devices lately.  For me to have a healthier balance, I'd need to face reality and see the real numbers.

Enter - Rescue Time.

If you don't know about Rescue Time, check them out.  It's a free service that you can download which tracks the usage of your phone or computer or websites your visit.  It gives you a breakdown of how you're using your time and classifies it into different buckets, from entertainment and social media, to reference and work. 

It's the real deal and captures just about everything you can do on a digital device. 

I bit the bullet and installed it on my desktop, my phone and soon laptop as well. 

Why? 

Because at the end of the day, I do want a more balanced lifestyle and make sure that I'm making the best use of my time.  Maybe I'm distracted when I'm doing my daily programming and I can really focus in on making my programming time last only 20-30 minutes.  Maybe, I should cut back on YouTube time in the evening and having a tracker on my phone makes me more aware of my behaviors.

The idea is that having instant feedback on your behaviors or at the very least the awareness of it being tracked can change you.  And I'm hoping for the better. 

This will definitely help me understand how I spend my time.  But I hope that it will also help me shape my behavior into the person I want to become. 

The moral of the story... my wife was right again.  I need to be more mindful of how I spend the precious little hours in day we have and spend them where it counts.

Cheers!
Alex