5. They Never Guess Where Their Time Goes
If I asked you how much time you spent last week in meetings, checking email, or scrolling social media, you would probably give me a confident answer. And you would probably be wrong. Research consistently shows that humans are terrible at estimating how they spend their time. We overestimate time spent on productive tasks and dramatically underestimate time lost to distractions and low-value activities.
Operating on guesswork is like trying to manage a company’s budget without looking at the financial statements. You’re making critical decisions based on feelings and flawed perceptions, not on data. You might feel like you “don’t have time” for a new project or a personal goal, when in reality, your time is being silently consumed by a dozen invisible leaks.
Productive people don’t guess. They know. They don’t trust their feelings about their time; they track the data, because what gets measured gets managed.
What They Do Instead: They Conduct a Simple Time Audit.
They periodically perform a time audit. This isn’t a permanent, lifelong activity. It’s a short-term diagnostic tool used to gain clarity. For three to five days, you simply track what you’re doing in 15 or 30-minute increments. That’s it. There’s no immediate goal to change anything, only to observe and record.
You can do this with a simple notebook, a spreadsheet, or a tracking app. The log might look something like this:
8:30 – 8:45 AM: Checked and replied to urgent emails.
8:45 – 9:00 AM: Scrolled news headlines and social media.
9:00 – 9:15 AM: Got coffee, chatted with a colleague.
9:15 – 10:00 AM: Attended the daily stand-up meeting.
10:00 – 10:30 AM: Tried to start the project proposal, but was distracted by notifications.
The goal is ruthless honesty without judgment. You are a scientist observing your own behavior. At the end of the audit period, you review the data. The results are often shocking. You might discover that “a quick check of email” is actually a 45-minute black hole. Or that you spend two hours a day in meetings that have no clear agenda or outcome. Or that small, five-minute interruptions are adding up to nearly a third of your workday.
This data is gold. It shows you exactly where the leaks are. Armed with this knowledge, you can make informed decisions. You can see where batching tasks would be most effective, which meetings to decline, and when you need to timebox deep work to protect it from an onslaught of distractions. You stop guessing and start designing your day based on reality.
