Time Tracking / Timeboxing activities after work hours

Tracking activities per day isn’t a strange practice in the planning and journaling community. Some planners actually have templates to support this format.

For templated planners, time tracking is usually bound from sunrise to sunset (usually from 6am to 6pm). The Hobonichi Cousin being an exception – its daily tracker starts from 6am to 3am.

I’ve tried tracking my activities during the day a few months back. It worked out great for me for a while but then I started to stop tracking them. That’s because most of what I do in a day were work-related and were either reoccurring meetings or were things that are part of my day-to-day activities anyway.

Read: Analog Time Management in a Bullet Journal

🤨 Why do I track activities AFTER work?

I have a full-time job and most of my day-to-day activities involve sitting in and/or conducting meetings. My schedule is tracked digitally because it’s sourced from my emails. This makes me highly dependent on my digital calendar and therefore, writing my entire schedule on paper would be redundant.

Read: Hybrid Analog and Digital Planning and Productivity System

I typically work on my passion projects after my day job and also on weekends. Then last August, I noticed that I had been spending so much time playing video games or watching YouTube videos. While I enjoy relaxing after work and taking long brain breaks, I felt guilty about taking a backseat with my passion projects. I knew that I had to cut down on my leisure time to focus on other responsibilities and also journaling. Managing another “job” on top of your day job is tough so time management is truly the key to succeed.

The purpose of time tracking isn’t to track every single thing that I do. The exercise of tracking keeps me disciplined (to an extent) because it reminds me that I have a goals to complete.

I also use this as a reference for whenever I review my week or my day. I can see if I did something productive or if I have too much idle time (endlessly watching YouTube/TikTok/Instagram videos). Once I have that data, I try to motivate myself to do something more mindful or productive.

On weekdays

I try to “leave” work at 6pm or 9 hours after I start working in the morning. When the pandemic started, I worked for nearly 12 hours everyday. I realized how unhealthy that was so I made sure I only worked (for my day job) for 8 hours (including break).

My after work time block starts at 6pm and ends at 12am (which is an hour after my supposed bedtime). I incorporate the tracker with how I use the Bullet Journal Method.

This takes a little bit more time to “setup” rather than the more straightforward Bullet Journal Method. However, that time I spend drawing a few lines gives me a little bit of headspace to think before I start planning or reflecting.

On weekends

My weekend trackers are different. I had to think twice about doing this because my activities vary during the weekend. Before I started time boxing on weekends, I observed my routines first.

First – identify your core hours. It doesn’t have to be for an 6 or 8 hour period, this is entirely up to you. I personally “start” at 2pm to 7pm (dinner time). My activities on weekends vary, sometimes it’s just purely playing games with my friends or I do chores.

💡Tip: Use your goals as a north star

One pitfall of tracking is that some people might have the tendency to track too much. Sometimes, they track the things that don’t matter or don’t contribute to their mindfulness practice.

If you have goals, try to fit in activities that will help you attain those goals. In my case, tracking my activities after work pushes me to clock out on time at work (not going beyond the 8 hour work day). Other goals that I aim to achieve are publishing more content on Rediscover Analog and journaling for 30 minutes every day. I use the tracker to remind me and encourage me to do something even just for a little while to achieve these goals.