I’ve met a lot of new people in the last 12 months and, despite my best attempts to avoid it, I often get asked some version of: “So, what do you do?”, which leaves me rambling about a “second retirement” or “sabbatical” or “the 40 hour work week is a social construct we’d be well rid of” before acknowledging that I don’t really know what it is that I do (but it does bring a lot of Joy).
Well, now, after a year of painstakingly (ok it was actually fairly easy by design) tracking how I’m spending my time every minute of every day, I have the raw data on how I spend my time, and I can tell you,
drumroll
I still don’t really know what it is I do…
I don’t know what I was expecting, maybe some sort of realisation like “Oh, I’ve been spending 40 hours a week digging a hole in the backyard, that’s where all my time is going.” But no, turns out that I spend a fair amount of time on a lot of different things, without any particularly huge time-sucks.
The pie chart above (and the data I’ll be looking at for this post) is based on the last 365 days at the time of first draft1. This is not a typical year, I spent nearly 6 months travelling around Europe2, but also I don’t really have typical years3 so [shrug emoji].
So what do those percentages actually mean for answering “what I do”? Looking at percentages doesn’t tug on particularly meaningful parts of my brain, so instead we’ll take my entire last year, throw it in a blender, and pour it back out as my average4 day!5
My Average Day consists of:
Sleep - 8 hours 29 minutes
00:00 - 08:29
Looks super reasonable at first glance, but I think the average is helping me out here. Some nights were under 4 hours6, and some approaching 12.
This total includes a bit over a minute each of “Not Really Sleeping”7 and sleeping on trains, 2.5 minutes of sleeping on planes8, and 11 minutes of Podcast / Nap time.
Connection - 5 hours 1 minute
08:29 - 13:30
Nearly half of this time on Holiday9, with a bit over an hour on 1:1 Connection, and a bit under an hour on Group Connection. I’m a little surprised that Online Connection is only 14 minutes, and Connection Planning / Co-Ordination, which feels like it takes up a lot of mental space, is only 5 minutes a day
Expansion / Wellbeing - 2 hours 47 minutes
13:30 - 16:17
Reading makes up just over an hour of my average day, which I’m pretty happy with considering this doesn’t include time reading on Holiday, on planes/trains/busses, or in the Bath.
Walk and Meditation round out the top three at 17 and 12 minutes respectively.
Life Admin - 1 hour 55 minutes
16:17 - 18:12
Messages, probably one of my broadest categories10, takes up 20 minutes, as does Cooking. AM/PM Routine, Eating, Shower, and Misc Life Admin sit between 10 and 20 minutes each.
I spend <2 minutes of my average day on Emails! I can maybe credit being intentional with what I let in a little, but also a lot of time spent in my inbox ends up recorded under Messages, Article Reading, or a Life/Project Area11.
Chill - 1 hour 38 minutes
18:12 - 19:50
1 hour 10 of Short Form Video (mostly youtube). Ooof.
Effective Altruism - 1 hour 12 minutes
19:50 - 21:02
One of my Project/Life Areas that covers all sorts of different tasks/activities/events.12
Over half of this time is spent at events, including three retreats and two conferences13. The rest is made up of paid and volunteer work (with a handful of projects and clients14), attending weekly meet-ups, reading articles and forum posts, and probably a bunch of other things that were filed under General.
Scouts - 53 minutes 0 seconds
21:02 - 21:55
We’re into the tail end, where seconds are becoming relevant. Scouts is a noticeably smaller part of my life than it used to be15 and nearly 50 of those 53 minutes are spent in the Swiss Alps as a Climbing Guide for the Kander10016 event.
Travel - 50 minutes 10 seconds
21:55 - 22:45
20 minutes of my average day17 is spent in airports and on planes, with 15 minutes behind the wheel of a car.
RYLA - 24 minutes 50 seconds
22:45 - 23:10
Even this far down the list I find it wild how much a single event can creep into the average. I spend about 16 minutes of my average day on site running the RYLA 9940 event.
The rest of my RYLA time is spent on planning leading up to the January event. Split surprisingly evenly over Meetings and Mahi.
Everything Else - 48 minutes 56 seconds
23:10 - 23:59
And we’re onto the last hour of the day. Here’s some highlights:
9m 20s on planning and logistics for my 5.5 months overseas.
14m 1s on State Changes.
3m 33s Tramping (or overnight hiking for the non-Kiwis). This is only solo time, group trips are tracked under Connection (Holiday).
1m 52s Unintentional Time. A day where I only lose track of what I’m doing for 2 minutes seems like a pretty good day!
Conclusion
So yeah, I still don’t have a good answer to what it is I do. But now at least I have this post to refer people to..
I’m pretty thrilled with how much time I’ve spent on Connection and Expansion / Wellbeing over the last year, and while there’s a few things I’d like to be more mindful about going forward18 , they’re mostly things I’m already aware of and working on.
Writing this up was a useful reminder that I’m changing and growing in the right Direction, and that I actually rather like the life I’m leading!
I appreciate all the messages and questions, and the discussions I’ve been able to have about this three-part series so far.
Thanks to my time tracking I know that (including setting up Substack) it took me over 13 hours to pull together (not to mention the year of lived experience). If you found it interesting or useful and want to support me to write more words about Other Things, you can subscribe (free or paid), share this post with a friend, or leave a comment telling me what your biggest takeaway was or what you want to hear more about in future posts.
Until next time.
Ngā Mihi Nui,
Tom
Appendix #1 - My Clients:
This is the same list as in part two, minus the footnotes. So if you’ve already read that…
Chill
Down time / relaxing, mostly things I don’t want to spend time on, but some intentional time in this space is fine. Within this client I find the distinction between Short Form Video and Long Form Video to be a useful one, and Digital Wheelspinning to be a useful category to capture the process of opening a bunch of tabs scrolling for a bit, and repeating.
Connection
Spending time with people - Holiday, 1:1 Connection, and Group Connection are the largest categories in here, for each of these I’ll have who I’m spending time with, or what the event is in the description. This also includes time spent planning and co-ordinating Connection time.
Expansion / Wellbeing
Learning, growing, flourishing, practicing self care. This big umbrella Client came about because things like Yoga and Reading didn’t fit neatly into just Expansion or just Wellbeing.
General Mahi (work)
Includes paid work, volunteering, and other work-like tasks that don’t fit into one of my Life/Project Areas. In writing this description I realised I had no clear distinction between Misc-Personal Mahi and General Mahi so combined the two (Tip #4 at work!)
Life Admin
All the ongoing maintenance that comes with being alive. Cooking, Cleaning, laundry, Shopping, replying to Messages etc.
Life/Project Areas
I have three big umbrella areas of my life where I’m doing a some combination of paid and unpaid work, having meetings, and attending events. Each area is set up with slightly different categories depending on my role/s. I find having a distinction between Meeting time and Mahi time to be useful.
Non-Personal Admin
This client only has one category. It’s a place for time spent on admin that is for other people rather than myself. E.g. reviewing a friend’s CV, meetings for a volunteer committee (that’s not in one of my Life/Project Areas), looking after other people’s pets while house-sitting.
Sleep
Does what it says on the tin. I have a Podcast/Nap category for when I put on a podcast with the intention of potentially falling asleep. Sometimes I’ll update the description to “Not Actually Sleeping” if I’m struggling to get to sleep for several hours.
State Change
As mentioned above this is the time between more clearly defined things. It started out as just State Change before I decided to split into Physical and Digital, mostly to wean myself off starting a State Change timer then continuing to sit at my computer.
Tramping (Hiking)
Split into Hut Time and Moving Time. This Client was born in November 2022 when I was spending 16 days solo hiking on Rakiura and didn’t want misleading Connection data from tracking this as Holiday time.
Travel
Moving from place to place. Historically I’ve been somewhat inconsistent about how I track driving to a single event and back (i.e. if I’m just driving to hockey and back is the whole thing Hockey time or do I track Driving separately).
I very quickly gave up on tracking flying time vs airport time, so Flying+ was created, this includes travel to/from the airport, in the same way Long Haul Bus/Train includes travelling to the station/depot.
Unintentional Time
Technically this is a project without a Client. As mentioned above I find it useful to know how much time I spend not doing the thing I intended to do.
Appendix #2 - My Projects
Projects are fairly person-specific. For inspiration though, here’s a list of all 80-something Projects I’ve tracked, grouped by Client:
Chill
Short Form Video
Misc Chill
Digital Wheel Spinning
Long Form Video
Social Media
News
Connection
Holiday
1:1 Connection
Group Connection
Entertainment
Online Connection
Family
Connection Planning / Co-Ordination
2023 Global Travel Planning
Expansion / Wellbeing
Reading
Walk
Meditation
Bath
Guitar
Mnestics
Sudoku
Misc Expansion / Wellbeing
Practicing Openness
Yoga
Te Reo Coursework
Monthly Review
Hockey
Chess
Cycling
Article Reading
Educational Videos
Podcast
Weekly Journal
Physio
DnD Prep
End of Year Reflections
[Te Reo Course] Call
Writing
General Mahi (work)
2023 Global Travel Planning
Client 1
Volunteering
Client 2
General Mahi
Planning
Life Admin
Cooking
AM/PM Routine
Messages
Eating
Misc Life Admin
Shower
Shopping
Packing
Cleaning
Emails
Flat Stuff
Medical
Life/Project Area 1
Attending Longform Events
[Area] General
Attending Local Group
Client 3
Client 4
Organising Local Group
Client 5
Pre/Post Conference Logistics
Client 6
Life/Project Area 2
[Area] Event
[Area] Mahi
[Area] Meetings
Life/Project Area 3
[Area] Event
[Specific Team] Mahi
Misc [Area] Mahi
[Specific Team] Meeting
Non-personal Admin
Misc Non-Personal Admin
Sleep
Sleep
Podcast/nap
State Change
Physical State Change
State Change
Digital State Change
Tramping (Hiking)
Hut Time
Moving Time
Travel
Flying+
Driving Solo
Long Haul Bus/Train
Driving Group
Public Transport
Misc Travel
(No Client)
Uncategorised Time
4th of December 2023 for the curious
Catching up with friends, attending festivals, volunteering, being Present, etc
If I was looking at data a month earlier it would include nearly a full month (mostly Tramping) spent on Rakiura
This is my mean day. I have no idea what my median day looks like other than not like that
Categorised by Client, the highest level of categorisation in my Toggl set up. For more on what that means check out part two of this series.
At events and festivals
A description I sometimes add when I’ve been lying awake in bed trying to sleep for a while
Or, trying to…
Events away
I’ve recently started using Misc Connection - ‘Messages with Meaning’ to distinguish between replying to a few different messages and spending 30 minutes back and forth with one person (or editing a wall of text response to get it perfect)
Scouts, RYLA, Effective Altruism
Teleportation would be essential to actually live my average day…
The literal type, not the Toggl categorisations
My first attempt at time tracking in 2020 had me averaging 30 hours/week, or 4:15/day on Scouts. At the time I had 5 different (and large) roles, now I’m down to just two small ones.
*Clap Clap* IYKYK
121 real life hours….
Less time on youtube and more time exercising are the obvious ones
Awesome, I reckon I'm in there somewhere, for about .0005 of a second under 'Group Connection' and possibly 'Guitar'