Life Chart

This post has been archived. It's probably out of date or shameful in some other way.

I seem to be on a permanent quest to reduce time wastage, and I was curious where my time was actually being spent. So, I recorded a week of my life in 5 minute intervals, rounded numbers to the nearest hour, grouped similar activities and popped it in a spreadsheet.

It turned out, fortunately, to be a fairly typical week. Work was hectic, and I spent a few extra hours at the office buried in code. I had Open University work to do, though no more so than usual. I didn't do enough cooking or reading, watched too much TV and definitely didn't get enough sleep. Running is conspicuously absent, though I did have a couple of squash matches.

Unfortunately, this didn't really tell me much I didn't already know. There were no giant time-sinks that I was blissfully unaware of. I need to spend a little less time at the office, in the pub or watching TV and a little more time reading, exercising and sleeping.

By the way, I have no way of knowing how much of an impact, if any, the Observer Effect will have had on the data, but this is fairly unscientific anyway, so I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

25 September 2009