Hey, the crew it's Mark from Mark Your Pages. Today I’m going to share with you a daily log that I use when I’m trying to understand how and where I am spending my time at work. This concept could also be used for home if you wanted to understand and capture how you spend your time. We are going to use color coding to fill in our weekly schedule to identify the topic or category of the event. Our goal here is to track the types of meetings and events we are having to identify where we are spending most of our time or where most of our time is being spent. 

Supplies:

• Archer & Olive Notebook
• Archer & Olive Deskpad
• Pencil
• Pen
• Fineliner
• Calliograph Markers
• Ruler

This layout should be sized appropriately for different-sized notebooks. This example is set up using a B5 notepad. The main setup of this page breaks the page into 2 main parts. The left side of the page is where you have your daily schedule. My work day usually starts before 9 am and ends around 5 - so I use this as my timeline for the day. Each hour takes up 2 squares because my meetings and time blocks tend to range from 30 minutes to 1 hour or more. Using this layout, I can easily block off my time into those chunks. On the right-hand side of the row, this is where you can take down your daily notes and tasks, similar to how you keep a daily log in a Bullet Journal. 

The next thing we need to do is create our color code for our categories. For this example, I want to see where my time is going over the next few weeks to identify my overall capacity. Also, I have noticed that my time is being pulled into distractions that are taking me away from my focused work, and I want to see if I can figure out if there is a pattern. I am going to choose 3 colors to represent each topic. I am going to use blue to represent meetings, yellow for my focused workblocks, and green for distractions. 

I am going to use these colors both in advance and after the fact because some things, like meetings, I know are booked, while the distractions and even workblocks sometimes are random, happening at any time. Be sure that if you are keeping this type of weekly, to have your colors with you in your pen or pencil holder or work bag. 

Now that we have everything we need, our layout and color coding, you are going to go into your week as usual. As you progress through your week, but sure to keep up with your color coding. Even if you take care of it at the end of the day, that’s okay. But you want to make sure to capture as much information as you can. 

At the end of your week, this is where you start to gather the data that you tracked in your journal using this spread. I create a tally sheet that has the color, topic, and days of the week and I go back and add up all the time I spend on those certain topics. This week, I spent 13 hours in meetings and an additional 5 hours on distractions. If this continues to be an issue and takes away from my work week, I may need to come back and examine these closer. This week I spent most of my distraction hours helping people out with tool access. If this is a part of my job, it is time that I need to account for in my schedule. If my time starts to increase, this might be something I talk with my manager about, letting them know that part of my capacity each week will need to be allocated to this type of work. 

The overall goal here is to better understand where you are spending your time. First, to make sure that you are getting the time you need to get your work done. And second, for better communication with your manager and peers. If there comes a time when you are over capacity or late on a project, and someone asks you why, you can come back to these metrics and share where your time is spent and work with them on how you can decrease some areas to allow you to increase others.

I created a printable that you can use for yourself to help with tracking and measurement. You can use the printable to paste the schedule into your journal or planner - or to keep as an idea or inspiration. I also included a tracking sheet for your hours and color codes. I hope that you find this helpful and useful in your daily and weekly journaling and tracking.