Over the last couple of days I've been trying out a technique that I once read about where you log every minute of your day to see how you're spending your time. I'll not bore you with the full minute by minute breakdown...it's my life and even I'm not that interested in it. I will share certain trends that I discovered, though. Granted, with only two days worth of data, we're in small sample size territory here, but putting out the preliminary results gives us a baseline, right?
And hey, if it lets me knock out one more of my blog deficit with a quick and cheap post, so much the better, eh?
One thing that was mildly surprising was how little time I spend on email. "Email addiction" was one of those terms that I've started hearing a lot lately, but it doesn't seem to be a big deal in my world. I spent all of 21 minutes reading email throughout the day on Thursday, and 18 minutes reading it yesterday.
Likewise, I wasn't spending all that much time on Dominions 3, a turn based fantasy game that I've been playing for the last year and a half. Even with three games going on, I only spent 18 minutes total on it over both days. Granted, that's in part because I've made a conscious effort to reduce the number of Dominions 3 games I'm in...I once was in over a dozen simultaneously. Further, all three are in the early stages where there isn't much to do yet. Even so, I'd have thought that Dominions would be taking up more of my time.
What is eating my hours, however, is webcomics. I spent 93 minutes reading webcomics on Thursday, and another 53 minutes on Friday. I'd like to think that those numbers are atypical, in that I spent a lot of time on Thursday on a new comic that I was reading from scratch and a bunch of time on Friday re-reading some Order of the Stick. Still, it's a trend I'll be keeping my eye on.
Another big time burner is the War of the Clans Play-by-Email game I've gotten into. Between corresponding with other players on Thursday and actually completing my turn on Friday, I spent a good 144 minutes, or nearly two and a half hours, over both days! By comparison, Words With Friends only took up 27 minutes over both days that I logged.
These trends are interesting, but what was even more so was the effect that observational bias had on my actions. The fact that I knew that I was logging the time I was spending made me more aware of it. It helped me be more productive, as I rarely found myself glossing over and losing myself in any one thing for too long. I have to imagine it's helped my ability to get my blog posts in. And, once I'm caught up with the blog, it should also help me get my fiction writing back on track.
So I'll keep posting occasional Time Management updates to highlight new trends and to help keep myself accountable for my time, if only to myself.
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