Budgeting time

[cjsmith]

I wish it were simple and easy to create a Quicken-like view of how I spend my time. I have the feeling I'd be shocked by the relative sizes of some of the categories. LiveJournal, for example.

Comments

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

LiveJournal, for example.

But if it wasn't for you (and a select few others), some of my sillier posts would go - *gasp* - uncommented upon. ;-)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

The horror!

[layer.livejournal.com]

man, i'm with you on that. i'm sure it would be totally shocking what i actually spend my time on. of course it would have to allow for multi-tasking... i can't count how often i'm engaged in three or more activities at once.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

True. I guess that's also true with budgeting money, where some expenditures have multiple purposes. It's more obvious with time.

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

*fingers-in-ears-eyes-closed*
na na na I'm not listening

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't mind if I felt I were using my time effectively -- I got the chores done that were important to me, got my bills mailed on time, and didn't fall behind at work, for example. But when some of those things start showing problems I begin to wonder about my goofing-off "budget."

[platypus]

Yeah, I need to do some analysis of where all my time is going... as well as the money. I don't know why it seems so hard to budget fifteen minutes or half an hour for cleaning or chores.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I'm working on the money -- Quicken's only as good as what you put into it, so that'll be a challenge for me -- but the time, that's harder for me to know how to track.

[rfrench.livejournal.com]

I did this at Silicon Spice for a while. Many of the higher-ups did. Scott Taylor probably suggested it. I walked around with a notepad and every 15 minutes made a quick note of what I had been doing, then parsed it all down into a few categories after a week or two. It was very informative.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

How'd you remember to do it? Did you have any kind of automated reminder, or did you just look at the notepad and say "Uh oh, haven't written for the past hour, what have I been doing?"?

[rfrench.livejournal.com]

Well, most of my life was walking around talking to people or sitting in meetings, so it really wasn't so hard to look down at what I was carrying. I would just put it in a prominent place that you will glance at every now and then.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I can go hours without looking away from the screen. I suppose I could have MeetingMaker beep every fifteen minutes. :)

[abenn.livejournal.com]

But do we really want to know how much time we spend on LJ?

Speaking of spending time, I'd love to visit with you again, in a more normal environment next time. What do you like to do with friends? Go out for food?

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Giving it a number might jolt me into more awareness of my choices. Or else it'd just depress me ;-)

Food is a wonderful thing to do with friends, yes! Remind me, where do you live/work? I'm in the South(west) Bay.

[abenn.livejournal.com]

I'm in the East Bay, potentially about to start work in SF. So getting together would have to be planned. But I'm sure we can come up with something.