Time Tracking for Personal Transformation

One of the first questions positive psychologist Dr. Samantha Boardman asks clients when they visit her practice is: “What are the three things that you value most in your life?” It’s a task that’s more challenging than one might expect in a world where we’re constantly told by society, authority figures, and even our own family members what our values should be. We’re given so little room to reflect on what we value that it’s not surprising that many of us don’t even know where to begin when faced with that question.

It’s a common problem, and Dr. Boardman has prompts designed to help suss out your unique values—not your mom’s, not your boss’s, not that influencer you follow on social media’s, but yours. After clients write down their answer, she has them think about how they’re spending their time, and especially their free time. What do they do on a Saturday or Sunday? What about after work?

I’m personally guilty of often feeling like my values aren’t reflected in my days. In my interview with famed psychologist Dr. Rick Hanson about how to be happier, he invited me to spend one week tracking how I used my time. He suggested creating a spreadsheet or document (there are also apps that serve the same function, if you prefer!) with columns for each type of activity that makes up my day: sleeping, personal hygiene, getting dressed, eating, exercising, working, scrolling social media, reading the news, watching TV. Every fifteen minutes, for one week, I was to notate how I’d used the previous fifteen minutes.

“Don’t change what you do,” Dr. Hanson said. “Just tell the truth about how you spend your time.”

Everyone he knows who has done this exercise, he shared, has had their mind blown. Tracking their activity revealed a lot of stuff they already knew, and it reassured them about some things they were worried about—maybe they get more done in a day than they thought, or had more social connection than they thought.

“But also, they always flag something really big,” he said. “They realize, ‘Wow! I’m spending about three and a half hours a day on absolute bullshit.’ And you start to realize that your life could be so much better if you took at least some of that wasted time and applied it to doing the things that matter to you.”

The exercise invites us not only to confront how we’re using our time, but to reflect on the way we’d like to spend our days, and consider the factors getting in the way of those desires.

After realizing I spent far more time than I’d like on social media, I started keeping my phone out of the bedroom at night (see here) and setting app limits. I also started adding the things I did value to my calendar. When we put things into our calendar, we give them priority in our lives. And when we consistently add nothing but work tasks to our calendar—well, it’s not a surprise that the work tasks get accomplished, often at the expense of our relationships with others, and with ourselves. My entire life changed when I started to add my personal goals to my calendar. I’ll put a recurring meeting on my calendar to call my mom, or pencil in a five-minute block to text a friend to check in. I have date nights with Zack on my calendar, blocks to drink a smoothie with him outside before a long day, and quarterly finance check-ins.

Beyond that, I also schedule in my commitments to myself. Meditation goes in the calendar, along with daily workouts. My beloved circ walk (see here)? In the calendar. My workouts? In the calendar. Even time to relax, to read a book and just chill—it goes on the calendar and not just in the leftover space from my many to-dos. My rest is a priority, key to my mental health and enjoyment of life, and as necessary to my productivity as my moments of go-go-go. If I can take a break another time, great. But putting it in the calendar ensures that it will happen at least at the minimum of what I’m okay with. The way we spend our hours turns into the way we spend our days, which turns into the way we spend our years. While some shifts toward your ideal life will take longer to make than others, they need to come from a place of being informed, and spending a week (or even a few days!) tracking your time is the first step toward creating that self-awareness. That way, you can make decisions rooted in evidence rather than speculation. Once you figure out how you’re spending your time, you begin to shift your schedule to align it with your values.