Use the 168-Hour Method to Track Your Weekly Productivity
Years ago, I saw a tweet that said something like, “You have as many hours in a day as Beyoncé.” On the one hand, it was annoying because, although it’s true, I don’t have that many resources . However, yes, everyone has the same number of hours in a day – that’s understandable. But as it turns out, what may be more important is that we all have the same number of hours in the week . This is the basis of Method 168, which encourages you to expand your understanding of how much time you actually need to get things done and act accordingly.
What is Method 168?
This idea comes from Laura Vanderkam, author of 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think . (Simply put!) The whole idea of the book is that when you think about your time in longer periods, like a week, you realize that you have a lot of it and can get things done quite easily. If you compare a typical day, you may come to the conclusion that you don’t have enough time to do everything you need to do, so you’ll either make excuses or sacrifice yourself, neither of which will help you achieve it all. taken into custody.
When you start thinking about your time on a larger scale, you’ll be able to stop letting the daily grind get you down and breathe a little easier knowing that you actually have a ton of hours to work with.
How to use Method 168 to get more done
Your first task here is to start tracking your time, and I mean militantly. You can use time tracking software , calendar or scheduling software, a planner , or a plain old spreadsheet, but you have to be diligent and honest. For at least a week, write down everything you did and the time it took you to do it for a full 24 hours on each of the seven days. This includes sleeping, lounging, working, showering, commuting, everything. Be detailed as well. Don’t just check off “work” from 9am to 5pm. List the tasks you worked on and for how long, the breaks you took and what you did, and any additional work you did outside of those hours.
At the end of the week (or two to three weeks if you’re serious), evaluate the data. Did you have to spend two hours answering emails on Tuesday, or could it be done in half an hour? What distractions delayed this? Did you spend as much time on your hobby as you wanted? If not, when would it be useful? Maybe on a Thursday night while you were scrolling through social media? And how did this scrolling make you feel? Was this a necessary moment to relax, or would you feel more accomplished if you hit the gym?
Your answers will be subjective. There’s nothing wrong with relaxing and doing nothing, sleeping, or procrastinating on work, especially if you feel like you need it. But by creating a clear, visual chart showing everything you did (and didn’t do), you can see exactly where during those 168 hours you could have done something more. You can then use this data to better plan your future to-do lists and activities. If you know you have extra time on Wednesday evenings, maybe that’s when you should practice your piano or clean up your kitchen. If you know that taking inventory at work takes longer than necessary, cut it down and use the extra minutes for another task. The value of this method is not to be ashamed of how you allocate your time, but to expand your understanding of that time into a full week, where you will almost certainly find that you have unaccounted for hours that can be spent on getting things done. you didn’t think you had time to do.
I’m not saying you’ll come out of this journey on the same level as Beyoncé, but you’ll come out on a higher level than you were before, and that’s a start.