This 3-minute habit changed my life cover image

This 3-minute habit changed my life

How time tracking can help each of us to visualize where we are spending our life and help to make those "down" times become productive.

Profile image of Laura Vanderkam
Jun 18, 2018 • 4 min read
4.56 (9)
Work-Life Balance
Time Management
Personal Productivity
Human Capital
Quality of Life
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Summary

How tracking time spent improved the authors' understanding of life and helped create more time for essential activities. Laura Vanderkam notes that the process only took 3 minutes per day and amazingly ended up yielding great results. She started recording her time to know exactly how she spent it. Later, she realized there was more time in her schedule than anticipated that could be utilized for meaningful activities, and that she had enough time for her kids despite being a working parent.

Takeaways

  • Time tracking can help ease parenting guilt for working parents after realizing how to balance the time spent at work with time spent with the kids.
  • Tracking time may help discover space for other essential activities in life.
  • Your daily life is not as squeezed as you see it, there are vast swaths of hours that you don't know exist. You just need to track them.

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