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31 Day Reset: Day 15 – Time Audit

I’m participating in the 31 Days to Reset Your Life program at Happy Black Woman. The program is designed to help you evaluate your goals and priorities and think of them in the context of your life today and how you might be able to refocus on what’s important. Read on to learn about my experience with the challenge!

Today’s exercise was pretty simple: do a time audit of a 24 hour period. Select a day (or average day) and write out everything you did during that period. This will theoretically allow you to evaluate how you really spend your time and if you really “don’t have time” to work on personal development.

I’m going to be upfront and tell you I didn’t find value in this exercise. I work full time, am getting my masters, have all my family around, and many of my close friends here. I just moved back home so the hype is still there (although not as bad when we first came up). We don’t have any TV (we subscribe to Netflix but it’s not like we watch all the time). And finally – I have a health condition that essentially mandates I have some rest time. Although I don’t even get as much as I should.

So, needless to say, I have been mindful of how I spend my time before this exercise. Getting rid of TV was really when the switch happened (which was almost a year ago – it was part of my new years life change last year). Yes, I spend some time on Facebook, but I argue that keeps me sane – without a little bit of that, anyone would go crazy!

Anyway, I still did the exercise. I don’t really have a typical day so I just chose yesterday. Mind you, this is very different because I am not in school right now so I don’t have reading/studying built in. But I do have the addition of the 31 Day Reset, so perhaps it balances out a bit.

6:00am-7:00am: sleep
7:00am-8:00am: shower, breakfast, drive to work
8:00am-9:00am: work: gift entry
9:00am-10:00am: work: gift entry
10:00am-11:000am: work: gift entry
11:00am-12:00pm: work: set up for development committee meeting
12:00pm:1:00pm: work: development committee meeting (participate & take minutes)
1:00pm-2:00pm: development committee meeting (participate & take minutes, clean up)
2:00pm-3:00pm: work: gift entry
3:00pm-4:00pm: work: gift entry
4:00pm-5:00pm: work: gift entry
5:00pm-6:00pm: drive home, email, Facebook, Twitter
6:00pm-7:00pm: email, Facebook, Twitter
7:00pm-8:00pm: get Christmas tree
8:00pm-9:00pm: pick up and eat dinner
9:00pm-10:00pm: work on 31 Day Reset
10:00pm-11:00pm: pay bills
11:00pm-12:00am: unwind, one episode of Modern Family
12:00am-1:00am: sleep
1:00am-2:00am: sleep
2:00am-3:00am: sleep
3:00am-4:00am: sleep
4:00am-5:00am: sleep
5:00am-6:00am: sleep

I’d love your feedback if you can identify pockets of time that are unnecessary or that I could do differently. Maybe I’m too close to my schedule and am not thinking objectively enough. Let me know if you disagree!! Because I could use another hour in the day!!!

-N.C.