---
title: Dude, Where's My Time?!
date: 2011-02-03
techne: :done
episteme: :believed
---

A few days ago, I got up at 6:00 and went to bed around 22:00. During the day, I felt I worked rather well. Maybe not optimally so, but still pretty well. When I was about to fall asleep, I thought about what I had accomplished and couldn't help but feel disappointed. I could remember about 2 hours of work or so. But I was awake for over 18 hours! Where did all my time go?

Months ago, I kept logs about my activities (via [ashuku][]) and noticed that I would massively over-estimate how productive I really was. I would think I studied all day for an upcoming exam, but logged about 3 hours, max.

The highest I ever got was almost 11 hours of productivity. Right after I got up, I would take a little notebook and write down my exact activity I would try to do for the next 20 minutes, say learn some vocabulary or read a book. I would set an alarm and do only this activity. When the time was up, I would go back to the notebook and repeat this process. After about 4 hours, I would take a nap. But note that I did this while I was still polyphasic! I was awake 20 hours a day! I got barely more than 50% productivity!

# So where *does* all my fucking time go?!

Yesterday, I set up a webcam and did a complete [profile][Profiling]. Almost 18 hours of video, plus screenshots every 5 minutes. I tried to work typically and not let the recording affect me much. I was slightly tired and maybe below-average productive. Regardless, at the end of the day I thought I had gotten useful stuff done and there wasn't much I could've done better. Maybe 1-2 hours more work if I wasn't tired, and I played a few hours of Civ4 at the end, but that itself wouldn't have been such a huge problem, right? I mean, 3 out of 18 hours spent on games is totally fine.

Today, I opened a spreadsheet, watched the video and wrote down all activities plus time spent on them. *All* of them, including toilet visits. Here are all the interesting observations:

- Out of 18 hours, **34 minutes** where spent on stuff on my (comprehensive) todo, mostly Anki reps and reading a biology textbook. Not even one hour!
- **45 minutes** went into selecting which out of 3 biology textbooks I would use for studying. I spent more time deciding what to read than actually reading!
- **1.8 hours** went into reading [LessWrong][]. This didn't feel particularly much, so I expect that I typically spent more than 2 hours or so a day on that site. I can't say I don't learn a lot, but is this really efficient? I could read at least 3 books a week just in the time I'm on LessWrong! Very questionable priorities.
- **1.3 hours** I was on Reddit, plus **1.4 hours** on various blogs and comics in my RSS reader. And I thought that's "just some news and a lolcat"!
- **1.6 hours** I fiddled with my [XMonad][] config. I encountered [a little bug][Xmonad Bug], tried (and failed) to read the documentation, asked for help and got it fixed. I thought that took maybe 15 minutes. And I thought "To get an accurate time estimate for a software project, take the best guess you can, double the number and step up one unit. So if you guess '1 hour', it'll really take 2 days." was a joke!
- **1.2 hours** I spent only on eating and pooping. Srsly!
- Finally, that "3 hours of Civ4"? Really **5.8 hours**.

# Conclusions

I totally suck at estimating time. My priorities are fucked up. I waste much more time on things than I ever thought, even when I try to pay attention. I have almost no fucking clue what I'm doing, focus only on trivial details, rationalize when I really should be experimenting. If I were my own employee, I would be fired.

Admitting that you have a problem is the first step. Now the important part: don't stop there. *Fix* the problem.

Knowing how incompetent I am gives me strong motivation to try new techniques. Before, I thought that explicit schedules were a waste of time. Now I see how poorly I perform without them. I have several ideas how to proceed. I will experiment and set up the webcam again in a few days. Let's see if I can't get my time back!
