{"id":14972,"date":"2023-03-09T07:07:00","date_gmt":"2023-03-09T15:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/?p=14972"},"modified":"2023-03-20T01:52:01","modified_gmt":"2023-03-20T09:52:01","slug":"time-log","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2023\/03\/09\/time-log\/","title":{"rendered":"The Underrated Usefulness of Taking a Time Log"},"content":{"rendered":"

Peter Drucker<\/a>, the eminent management theorist who coined the term “knowledge worker,\u201d made a compelling case for figuring out where your time goes:<\/p>\n

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Effective executives, in my observation, do not start with their tasks. They start with their time. And they do not start out with planning. They start by finding out where their time actually goes.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

One difficulty of gaining focus is that we rarely know where our attention goes. How much time do we spend on email versus doing our most valuable work? How much time do we spend scrolling social media versus seeing our friends in real life? We feel overwhelmed studying for a big exam, but how many hours went to actual studying, and how many were spent just worrying about it?<\/p>\n

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For most of us, we don\u2019t know. Without knowing where our time goes, how can we possibly improve it?<\/p>\n

Over fifty years ago, Drucker identified the first step: take a detailed log of all your activities, with the start and stop time for each. This will let you know where your time is going.<\/p>\n

Complete vs. Cursory Time Logs<\/h2>\n
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