I Timed Everything for 30 Days

[00:00] from brushing my teeth, to folding laundry, I'm timing every task down to the minute, I've always been terrible at planning projects

[00:15] I have an idea, I put together a timeline, and yet the deadline flies by. why we're often so terrible at planning,

[00:29] and why that might involve picking up a stopwatch. why I think they're so great later on in the video. I wanna find an app that will help

[00:44] and that can also give me weekly reports So I tried a dozen of the best rated time management apps that would work perfectly for this experiment.

[00:56] but I found that it can work equally well I simply hit the little play button here. and then I stop the timer when I'm done.

[01:11] and the last tab shows me a breakdown of exactly how I'm spending my time. where all my time goes these days,

[01:24] to make a single YouTube video. after making videos for 20 years, but I don't, After a couple days of tracking,

[01:40] I thought that creating hundreds of unique tasks so instead of separate tasks for reading, meditating, I created one category of tasks called personal,

[01:53] preparing and eating food, quality time with family, doing chores, weightlifting, playing baseball, hygiene, So right when you open up Toggle,

[02:07] If I want to start a new one up again, and the task gets started, super simple. and useful view of how I spend my time.

[02:24] which is definitely way more than zero minutes. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by." so many of us have issues with deadlines

[02:40] It's called the planning fallacy. first proposed by Nobel Laureates, and refers to the tendency for individuals

[02:52] associated with future actions or put another way, we suck at setting deadlines. It could be that we're overly optimistic

[03:07] so this one will be a breeze There is loud construction next door, or we lack relevant information.

[03:19] from making one about productivity, the list goes on. One in particular is called reference class forecasting,

[03:31] Basically the next time that you go about setting a deadline Look at similar projects Analyze how long it typically takes you

[03:44] that you might encounter along the way. in real world data and experiences, to timing every task.

[03:57] what one full week of tracking looks like. So this is a snapshot here of all of my tasks You can see here, family, work, family,

[04:12] I did notice something interesting the moment and it's that I became much more aware of Let's just say that when you start a timer

[04:24] you're less likely to spend 20 minutes browsing Instagram. The very act of tracking was starting to change my behavior. and workout logs are so effective,

[04:38] As extreme as it is to start and stop a timer all day long, to how I spend my time each day. after my first week.

[04:52] is the amount that I've been working. I logged 20 hours of work last week, Honestly, I knew that I wasn't working a lot,

[05:06] than I possibly thought it could be. If I had a boss, I'd probably be fired by now. I've been struggling with my role as a parent

[05:20] and so I haven't been doing as good of a job and so I'm trying to get back on track.

[05:32] and the good news is now I have this like baseline of 20 hours that hopefully I don't go below how can I change my behavior in the coming weeks

[05:45] to improve the amount of time that I'm spending working? one area that I knew I could improve was task switching. I'd get back to work, but then take a quick snack break.

[05:59] and have no clue where I left off. and committing myself to working I knew from past experience this was a really good way

[06:14] and usually you don't stop at 30 minutes. This kind of tracking is incredibly tedious and it adds a layer of friction to everything that I do,

[06:27] I started to work more. and I was more accountable to myself but the biggest lessons were still to come

[06:39] Since I'm timing everything this month, I thought, and see if I can fit it into 45 seconds, starting now.

[06:51] and after a long search and lemme tell you, and effortless to customize.

[07:03] You can easily add new content, pages, and blog posts. It's so intuitive a baby could do it. and set up your G Suite email accounts

[07:17] and I can update it whenever I want to. Squarespace is the all-in-one platform and when you're ready to launch,

[07:29] to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Thanks to Squarespace for supporting my channel. the next time that you wanna build a website.

[07:43] Alright, so I timed every task for a month and I've really learned a lot from it. to a 24 hour day

[07:55] because I didn't do a perfect job of timing every task. 22 minutes and 28 seconds over the course of the month, which means that there were around 33 hours unaccounted for.

[08:09] All righty, so over the past 30 days, I have dedicated 39% of my time I should say attempted sleep

[08:21] that I woke up to rock my son back to sleep, I'm dedicated to sleeping each day.

[08:33] That ended up being about seven hours per day. This is really anything that I would qualify as quality time this was the area that I was most interested in improving

[08:50] I spent 14% of my time working. That ends up being five hours and 13 minutes per weekday. and the added accountability of tracking my time

[09:03] of course, I was still disappointed that I wasn't hitting the 40 hours I wanted to, It's because I'm spending more time with my son

[09:15] I think when I first started to see my low numbers I thought like, oh man, I'm only working 20 hours a week,

[09:27] I'm only working 20 hours a week? Like how cool is it that I've built this life I know that I wouldn't be able to slow down

[09:39] throughout my twenties and early thirties. and working really hard for this moment right now

[09:51] where I can have a slower season of my life. I spent 36 hours weightlifting. since I'm power lifting now

[10:05] but weightlifting in general has always been nearly 18 hours of preparing and eating food. because I am subscribed to a boxed meal prep service.

[10:21] with the additional responsibilities of being a parent. 18 hours of hygiene, six and a half hours of personal time,

[10:34] this is another harsh reality of being a parent. and finally, four hours on the toilet all month. and account for my imperfect tracking I mentioned earlier.

[10:50] how my time gets divided up any given month these days. how long does it take me And the one video that I tracked over the past month

[11:05] was about how much sleep I'm currently getting as a new dad, it took me a total of 54 hours to make it. and 26 hours editing.

[11:18] in the future, how to set deadlines going forward, and my videos in the months to come,

[11:32] I'll have a much more clear idea of the average and I can hopefully better plan my projects going forward

[11:45] That's the hope, at least. I have a few important takeaways that might help, My experiment was needlessly extreme.

[11:57] but the reality is that I only needed to track the things I might just track my work tasks and personal tasks. isn't exactly useful information.

[12:11] and allow for interruptions, This is really productivity 101, but sometimes you need to relearn these lessons

[12:24] especially when you have a significant change in your life doesn't mean it will be quick. Making videos isn't really that difficult anymore,

[12:37] It still takes time to sort through No matter what your area of expertise, or building a YouTube channel with integrity,

[12:51] because I talk about that stuff there. Thanks for watching.