Too much! Is a popular answer to the question How much time do you spend at work? Too little! tends to be the answer when it comes to all other domains of life. Health and fitness, managing finances, or self improvement often gets squeezed in between other tasks. Before we can improve anything, we must understand first what's going on. Task Tracking is the first step towards such improvement.

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Why It Matters

Only if we’re aware of the activities we engage in are we able to identify suitable areas for improvement. Task Tracking makes our daily activities visible. And the best part? It only takes about five minutes per day to gain a clearer picture of where you spend your time.

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How To - Task Tracking

There are different ways to do Task Tracking. Experimenting and adapting the technique to fit your needs is highly recommended. Today, I’d like to highlight two extremes - the Minimalist and Maximalist approach to task tracking.

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Step 1: Prepare

• The minimalist approach: Have a pen and a few sheets of paper at hand
• The maximalist approach: Create a 24-hour timetable for each day of the week with 15-minute increments, similar to the one shown below. Or use an app.

Twoimages side by side here – minimalist preparation/maximalist preparation

Imageof tracking my day – empty excel list plus photo of handwritten list

 Caption: The Minimalist approach requires a few sheets ofpaper and a pen for the following data collection phase. For the Maximalist approachit’s necessary to build a timetable for the full week. The days are split in15-minute blocks to get a higher resolution of your data.

Step 2: Collect data

• Write down tasks and activities for at least one week - either on paper (Minimalist) or in your spreadsheet/app. To get a more reliable dataset track your tasks for three or more weeks.
• Detailed descriptions matter. Noting down 8 hours of leisure time is far too general and thus unhelpful. Describe the leisure activity (e.g., watching YouTube/TV, gardening, reading…) and how long you did each activity.
• Note: This is not the time to judge or analyze how much time you spend on your activities. That part comes later. Needless to say, it’s also important to be honest in the data collection phase.

Twoimages side by side here – minimalist preparation/maximalist preparation

Imageof tracking my day – full but uncolored excel list plus photo of handwrittenlists Monday-Sunday (in Fächerform auf Foto)

Caption: This is an example of the data collection. Theminimalist approach is made up of individual sheets for each day of the week,highlighting tasks and durations. The maximalist approach features a neattimetable for a full week with 15-minute increments.

Step 3: Categorize

Once you have tracked your tasks and activities for at least one week, you may notice that many tasks occur repeatedly. Examples are everyday lunchtimes, commutes, or chores such as buying groceries.

It makes sense to group similar activities into categories. You can choose categories that fit your lifestyle or use some of the categories listed below.

• Work/career - this category includes all work-related tasks, such as meetings, time spent in the office, side hustles, or trainings you do on company time.
• Life management - includes tasks such as getting dressed in the morning, doing the dishes, laundry, and other house-related chores.
• Family/friends/partnership - times spent with family members, friends, and partners fall into this category
• Personal Improvement - includes all tasks related to your personal growth like morning/evening rituals, or meditation
• Leisure - free time activities such as watching TV, reading, gardening.
• Health/fitness - times you spend working out in the gym, performing other sports, do yoga.
• Hygiene/nutrition - this category can include times spent in the bathroom or meal times including food preparation
• Sleep - it’s useful to track sleep times to give you a rough idea if you are getting enough rest

Pitfalls

Some tasks may be difficult to categorize. Take commuting to work, for instance. It can be part of the work/career category because it's closely related to your job. It could also fall into the personal improvement category, if you use public transport and read a book while going to work. Use your own judgment in such cases.

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Caption: I found coloring a good technique to visualize thecategories.

 Caption: Once all tasks have been categorized, the last stepis to sum up the amount of time spent on tasks/categories per day. Note: Thekeen observer will notice that the daily sum doesn’t hit 24 hours and theweekly hours should indeed be 168 h. It stands to reason that I haven’trecorded some increments accurately.

Step 4: Analyze

As soon as your data is categorized, you should see two things:

1. How much time you really spend on certain activities (e.g., total hours of TV watching per week)
2. There are recurring patterns and routines (e.g. same time spent in bathroom every morning)

Task tracking is a fantastic exercise to visualize patterns in our daily behavior. Do you wake up at the same time every day? Are you productive right after your lunch break, or do you end up for a few hours on YouTube like I often did?

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The Bottom Line

Task Tracking is a purely analytical technique. It helps you visualize how you really spend your time - based on data you collected, not instinct and assumptions. The purpose of Task Tracking is to generate this data in the first place. Additional tools such as prioritizing techniques will use this data in a next step to help you spend time more wisely (if that's what you want).