Humans are terrible at estimating how long something is going to take. And we’re not good at estimating how long it took us to do something.

There are really only two ways to know how much time you spend in any given week doing the myriad tasks that make up your life.

• Hire someone to follow you every minute you’re awake (or just during your work hours).
• Keep a time log on yourself.

Since most people won’t choose the former (although it *is* an option), let’s explore ten tips for you to do the latter.

1. If you use an electronic calendar, make sure you have recorded all of your appointments and meetings. Then, print it out so you have it as a base to work on.
2. If you don’t use an electronic calendar, print blank pages from your computer’s calendar program (for example, Outlook) or create a calendar showing the hours for which you want to keep a time record.
3. Regardless of which of the above you use, you must have a schedule in which you record your various tasks, activities and appointments.
4. Get ready to keep track of time for a whole week. Nobody has “typical” days or “average” days. You need a 5-7 day spectrum to get a clear picture of where and how you spend your time.
5. Starting at the beginning of your work day (or when you get up in the morning), take note of what you are doing. Although great detail is not necessary, it is useful to record adequate information to allow for later analysis.
6. Every time you change activities, record the time and make a note of the new activity. The assumption will be that you continued with the previous activity until you register the change.
7. Consider everything you do, including every shift in mental focus, as a change to record. For example, if you’re working on a budget analysis and you stop to think about another project you’re working on, that’s a change and time should be recorded. If you aggregate or group what you’re doing, you’ll have a less clear and less useful picture of how you’re actually spending your time. This obviously defeats the purpose of keeping a time graph.
8. When you leave your office or wherever you are keeping your time record, take it with youif feasible.
9. If you don’t take your log with you, do your best to accurately record what you did. during the time you were gone.
10. At the end of each day, review what you have written downdeveloping any details that you have not captured during the day.

Keeping track of time, using these 10 guidelines, will give you a picture of your day. As I always say, to find out what we value, look at our time record.