It’s a question we are constantly asking ourselves: How can we manage our time more effectively? For many people, dealing with time or “time management” is simply about trying to figure out how to get more done in the day. Unfortunately, while that approach may bring some short-term results, it does not address the issue of our time consciousness in general, or that focusing on quantity is often at the expense of quality.

How We Look at Time

Time consciousness, beyond just how we divide our days or focus on our tasks, is about how we perceive the nature of time itself. Our perception of time can have a far-reaching impact on how we approach our personal productivity—which is why it makes sense to evaluate our own level of time consciousness.

How we perceive time is influenced by many factors and no two people will have the same perception, regardless of us all having a 24-hour-day. The amount of work we have, the demands of our job, the demands of our home and social life, our own personalities, and even where we live all contribute to how we view time. If we feel constantly hassled, that our tasks at work need longer hours—if we can feel our blood pressure rise as we wait in line at the grocery store—this points to a perception of time as the enemy—or as a precious and valuable commodity that is constantly being stolen from us by our environment, circumstances, or even our own procrastination. If that mindset sounds familiar, you may want to take an objective view on how you are dealing with time.

The Time Log

The problem with evaluating how we use our own time is with the blinkers and spin we put on each passing minute. When we are doing something that is potentially trivial, we have a tendency to diminish it in hindsight. An hour spent surfing on the Internet, when recalled at the end of the day, can quickly take on the dimensions of ten innocent minutes. Conversely, our brain tends to trick us into thinking we have spent much more time than we actually did on the tasks we should have been doing. Say we had an important report to go over—an actual hour spent may later be remembered as an entire afternoon, inflated by the action’s importance.

What this means is that it’s not enough to do a quick head-scan on how we spend our days, if we want to improve and maintain our time consciousness. We need to regularly keep a time log at three to six months intervals. A time log is where we track our usage of time every 15 minutes for about a week. With the help of a portable timer and a notebook, if we honestly write down what we were doing at each fifteen minute interval; at the end of the week, we will have a very good idea of where, when and how we are being productive—or not.

A time log is a great way to catch all the traps…

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