Lately I've been using [Toggl](https://toggl.com/) to track how I spend my time. It's mainly targeted at Freelancers, which I'm not, but it's pretty easy to slip into my regular routine. Toggl as a software is pretty damn easy to use. It's available literally everywhere, including my smartwatch, so I can start tracking what I'm doing pretty much whenever and wherever. I don't track *everything* of course - I don't need to log when I'm sleeping or eating - but I have the following categories: ![[Tracking Time-20241112132237334.png]] It's a mix of my personal responsibilities and stuff I enjoy, but none of the mundane aspects of life. Basically things I do with intent. This has actually been super helpful for me these past few weeks, for a few reasons. ## Time Blindness I've [[The Time Blocking Experiment|talked about being time blind before]]. A third way it affects me that I didn't bring up in that post, however, is that I am *very* bad at estimating how long a task will take, which makes me procrastinate on it hard. Something I need to do for work might only take 20 minutes, but my brain will anticipate it'd take all day - so why not put it off? This is not very great! After about a month of time tracking, I've gotten a better idea of how long tasks I need to do, take. I do things about half an hour to forty minutes faster than I anticipate, which is extremely funny to realize. But I can't argue with the data! Seeing that sort of thing has helped me plan things out better. ## Time Sinks When I see huge gaps in my day on Toggl, I think back on the day and realize that I spent it pretty aimlessly. That in and of itself is fine - I'm actually writing another piece right now on learning how to be bored again. But I also realized that my empty blocks of time were spent scrolling on my phone for *way* too long. That sort of insight is pretty helpful in getting me more diligent about how I spend my time. ## Time Spent I have a lot of stuff that I want to do, but I find that I can be pretty lop-sided in my hobbies. Again, MMMV here. I am absolutely in love with **Romancing SaGa 2: Remake** and [[Mario and Luigi Brothership]] - but once I roll back on those games, I'd like to see a more balanced divide in the way I spend my time. ![[Tracking Time-20241112132254540.png]] So yeah, this is def weirdo behavior, but it's weirdo behavior that's helped me! It also has led to all kinds of interesting tidbits I'm learning about myself: - I can't play a game for longer than two hours - Unless I'm alone in the apartment, in which case I'll go ham because of the lack of social stimulation - It takes me about 25 minutes to write 500 words - I spend an awful 20 hours a month in meetings at work - I put most of my creative time into my Saturdays, unsurprisingly That's about the long and short of it! Feel free to let me know how weird I am for doing this.