Hi Sebastian,
I’m working on my time tracking and It’s really great. I’ve been doing it for several weeks now and I’m in the middle of extending it.

My question is:

How do you use the following item in your time tracking?
“Key habit today”

I’m not sure what do you mean by this in practice. Perhaps few examples would help. What do you write there and how do you act on it during day.

Thanks
Simon

Hi Simon,

Glad you’re enjoying time tracking. I’ve gotten a ton out of it.

“Key habit today:” is the newest addition to my daily time tracking template, and it works fantastic. Here, here’s the whole template for new readers who might not have seen it yet:

——————————————-
START OF DAY ROUTINE:
Time awake:
Total sleep (hours/minutes):
Appointments today:
Other time-sensitive things:
Key habit today:
What assets could I build/improve/acquire today:
Planning:
——————————————-
DO BEFORE GOING ONLINE:
Vitamins (C, Fish oil, Calcium/D):
Drink Water:
Stretching:
Situps:
Brush/floss:
Breathe:
Borderlands (+Solo):
Gratitude:
Review Life Goals:
Review “Current Targets”:
Reach out:
——————————————-
DO SOMETIME DURING THE DAY:
Exercise (walk/run/other):
Listen to audio:
Blog post:
Email in box, start:
Empty inbox completely:
Organize/cleanup/etc:
Look at to-do List:
Do one thing on to-do list:
Help someone:
——————————————-
TIME TRACKING:

MINUTES:

A-task:
Exercise:
Thinking/planning:
Writing:
–> Subtotal Excellent:

Maintenance:
Reading:
Social:
Relaxing:
–> Subtotal Good:

Semi-productive:
Daydreaming:
General-life:
–> Subtotal Okay:

Surfing/wasting time:
Transit/dead time:
–> Subtotal Bad:
——————————————-
FOOD/CALORIES/TRAINING

Calories:
——————————————-
CHALLENGES:
Did I start the day in my planner instead of online?
Did I only check email when I was ready to write back immediately?
Did I only check a site once, then done with it?
Did I check “Current Targets” if I caught myself wasting time?
Did I prioritize books/good learning instead of mindless surfing?
Did I keep surfing under 60 minutes for the day?
Did I make war on procrastination?
Did I act on my key habit for the day?
——————————————-
END OF DAY:
What are my key life goals? Spend 5 minutes on this.
Expenses for the day (estimate)?
Cash gotten or worked towards today:
What did I do right to move me towards my goals?
What would I do differently if I had the day to live over?
Plan tomorrow:
Make a request of my subconscious:
Set alarm:

Key habit is my newest addition, and it filled a little hole I had in my template. Before, I had something like “Most important thing to be achieved today” or “Most important objective,” but those frequently fell short. Some days I didn’t have any key thing to be achieved – I just had to deal with a lot of little loose ends and work to have a good day.

On the other hand, sometimes I had a tremendous amount of work to do on one specific thing, and that dominated and was more important than anything else.

“Key habit” is a nice compromise between those two extremes. In it, I could list spending time working on some large project, I could list a new habit I’m trying to adopt, or to something I’m trying to scale down and quit. If my surfing the internet time was too high for a while, the key habit for a few days in a row might be “Keep internet surfing under 60 minutes.”

If I’ve been eating poorly, it might be, “Make every meal healthy today.” If I’m drinking too much coffee, it might be, “Drink three coffees or less today.” (I pretty consistently drink way too much coffee. I’m working on it.)

But on other days, I care very little about general habits like internet use, food, and coffee – perhaps because I’ve got massively critical deliverable or deadline on a project coming up. For instance, I’ve been super busy since I got to Beijing, and I haven’t found time to do some writing that I’ve meant to do for a week. Today I’ve got, “Find some writing time” as my key habit. I got invited to a breakfast with two good guys I like a lot, but I had a two-hour call back to the USA around the time breakfast was happening. I could have dropped in for the tail end of breakfast maybe, but I’ve really got to get this writing down – so I managed to carve out 30 minutes for writing, even though I would have liked going to the breakfast. I’d like to find another 30 minutes later in the day for writing at least, which I think I’ll be able to do.

My key habit four days ago was, “Get a good blend of social and work today” – I had a lot of work to do, but I also wanted to see three or four people I know. Trying to do both was my focus that day (I did it – it just meant I couldn’t screw around at all and couldn’t have any real downtime that day).

My first day in Beijing was, “No key habit – in Beijing.” I was just adjusting and going with it that day.

I got a huge influx of email last week and my inbox built up pretty quickly while I had other things going on. So I set, “Empty inbox” as my key habit, and I spent five hours answering my email that day.

Some days I forget to set a key habit – which isn’t desirable. It’s something I’d like to do every day since I get a lot of gains from it, but it’s still fairly new and I’m not doing it every single day. But overall, it’s a very nice flexible item for me to fill out to plan the start of my day. It could be anything from quitting or cutting back something bad, to some work I have to do, to prioritizing to accomplish two different things, to carving a little time out for some creativity despite being busy, or kickstarting a new initiative, or finishing something that was almost complete.

At the end of the day, in the “Challenges” section of my template, I have “Did I act on my key habit for the day?” which is a simple yes/no question that I can use to analyze.

It’s very flexible and has delivered a lot of value to me so far – I’d highly recommend trying it out.