Time and Energy Audit

Any activity where the expenditure outweighs the benefits is a drain on our resources. The last several posts have been about finances. In this post, I would like to delve into things that drain our time and energy.  

We all have the same 24 hours in a day, but we all choose to spend these hours in different ways. Most of us would agree that we could be more efficient and intentional in how we expend our time and energy.

Most evenings I drift off to sleep wondering: Where did all the time go? Why am I so exhausted? I decided to do a time/energy audit. I set an hourly alarm. Every hour, I wrote down what I had done in the last hour. I also monitored my energy levels. I noticed that keeping track of my day made me more conscious.

Knowing that I was going to have to write down how I spent each precious hour made me reluctant to engage in many of my usual distractions: online surfing, worrying about things I have no control over, eating high calorie foods that would take me hours of exercise to burn off, etc. By holding myself accountable, I realized that several hours of my day were wasted on busywork without much long-term purpose.

Try this experiment: pick one day when you have some discretionary time and do a time and energy audit. It will help you decide if your expenditures of time and energy are beneficial or just merely draining.