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Psychology Of Money

Are You Really as Busy as You Think?

Laura Shin
Laura Shin
Posted on Jan 28, 2013

1. Get Honest With Yourself

Your Task: Start logging your time.

What I Did: I didn’t do an exhaustive search of time-logging apps, but I chose two that did the trick. One was Toggl, which allows you to state what you’re doing, and hit “start” and “stop” buttons to log how much time you spend on each activity. I also used RescueTime, an app that logs your activity on your computer, so if I forgot to note what I was doing in Toggl, RescueTime could always watch what I was doing. Whatever apps you choose, make sure that they help you analyze how you’re spending your time.

What I Found: Just asking myself to log how I was spending my time made me much more conscious of not wasting it. By telling Toggl that I was going to clean up, I stayed focused on the task, instead of getting distracted with checking email. And I was happy to discover through RescueTime that, when I’m at work, I spent the vast majority of my time on what the app calls “very productive” activities.

As for my biggest problem–wasting time on my iPhone–I decided that I’d tell my Toggl timer that I was working on “sleep” at bedtime, and then kept my iPhone away from my bed. If I had insomnia, I could read the magazines that I never seemed to have time to read!

2. Outsource What You Dislike Doing

Your Task: Draft a list of what Vanderkam calls your “core competencies.” These are things that you want to spend your life doing because you’re good at them.

What I Did: She suggests jotting down the following:

  • a bucket list of the 100 things you’d still like to do in your life
  • the things you do best that other people can’t do as well
  • the things you spend time on that other people could do–or do better

From these lists, you can gather what you’d like to be doing, what you should stick with and what you should ditch outsource, ignore or minimize.

RELATED: What’s Your Time Worth?

What I Found: The good news is that I’m already doing a lot of what I want to be doing, like making my living writing and editing. And I already outsource the heavy-duty cleaning in my home. What I’m missing? Exercise and meditation, which are two things that I keep wanting to do but put off.

I realized that I could find more time in my schedule by cooking less–if I could cut out two hours of cooking each week, that would allow me to do a 15-minute meditation every day. Since I don’t want to double or triple my grocery costs by hiring a private chef, I decided to invest in a slow cooker that would allow me to prepare big dishes beforehand, and freeze meal-sized portions.

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  • http://twitter.com/lacypierce Lacy Pierce

    Fantastic article!  I recently found myself doing the exactly this. Wasting time in bed in the morning going through the many applications on my phone, or in between meetings.  I recently deleted all of the applications I found were using most of my time, which has been a great help.  I enjoyed the additional tips and will definitely be checking out the books you mentioned.

  • http://twitter.com/SenseofCents Michelle

    I do think I’m pretty busy. I have a full-time job and a blog (which I spend so much time on that is equivalent to another full-time job and also earns more than my job!), and I also have a house to take care of. However, I do waste a ton of time watching TV!

  • JackieAU5

    Thank you for posting this! It’s a giant pet peeve of mine listening to so many people saying how busy they are but in reality they are terrible with time management.

  • Britt

    This is something I started thinking about a lot in the fall and I stopped saying “I don’t have time for that” and started saying “That is not a priority”  I’ve realized that if something is really important to me then I can MAKE time for it!  By saying something is or isn’t a priority it forces me to really evaluate how I spend my time. Granted I still haven’t made exercising a priority, but I’ve now found time to volunteer 30 hours a month and have become much more productive in my precious hours outside of work.

    • Silverpanic

      What irked me about this article was that it seems to convey the message,
      “If you aren’t doing something productive every minute of every waking
      hour, you are wasting time. Only lazy and unmotivated people watch tv or surf
      Facebook.”

       

      Britt clarifies the message that it should be about self-evaluation and priorities, but I would
      also like to add that allowing yourself to do “nothing” for short
      periods of time during the day can be positive, both mentally and
      physically. 

      Don’t feel guilty about not running at
      a marathon pace every day. 

  • Kelly

    Thanks for this useful article! Some days, I feel like I’m pretty organized but other days I’m just totally overwhelmed. My trick is to use a “to do” list to schedule tasks for the upcoming week. It usually shifts around as the week goes on, but having the tasks “planned” for a specific day is really helpful and fulfilling since I’m able to cross off maybe 1 or 2 a day. I usually take 5 minutes on Monday mornings to do the list.

    I’m always looking for more ways to maximize my time and this article had some helpful strategies!

  • MaraDS

    If, like me, you are interested in using a time tracking app, but horrible at remembering to actually use it I’d recommend Last 5 (http://last5.co).  I have it set to automatically start when I turn on my computer and it runs in the background. It pops up at specified intervals (i.e. 15min) and asks what you’ve been)working on for the last # minutes.

    It has definitely helped me become more aware of how I use my time.

  • sjdemo

    precisely why I don’t have a “smart” phone/tablet, or cable tv for that matter. Avoid the time-sucks altogether and save money to boot.

  • C.

    This article is *exactly* what I needed.  I just tried Toggl to track my time on a particular project yesterday, and while I worked on it throughout day, the amount of time spent in total was a lot smaller than expected.  I knew I needed help with time management, but these tools are what I needed to get me there.  Thank you!

  • http://twitter.com/ShaneNR Shane Richardson

    Great article! I thought I was busy until about 2 years ago. Someone pointed out that the average american watches 25 hours of TV per week. That was me a few hours each night adds up.