On the one hand, creating time sheets in ManicTime is very gratifying. All those pretty colors, and I can mush stuff around until my time sheets reflect the day I wish I was having. It helps keep me more focused than if I’m not using time sheets.
The problem is that I am way too obsessed with these time sheets. I am documenting every waking minute of my day.
It all started when the Yoda of Super 9 Studios, Gerry LaChance, suggested that I spend 20 hours a week marketing our business. I swear he can see right through me because he said, “I know you. You’ll say you’re gonna spend 20 hours doing marketing, and you’ll have all the good intentions of doing it, but you won’t. You need to have accountability. In fact, I want you to start creating time sheets and showing them to Irene every week.”
I laughed my head off because I was nailed. Irene doesn’t care. She doesn’t even want to see my time sheets. But I care. What kills me is that Gerry doesn’t even know who Yoda is.
So, in my efforts to find a system of creating time sheets that was easy, I found this program called ManicTime. The name of it even screams for me to use it. You install it on your computer, and it keeps track of every program you open and even what documents you have open and for how long, down to the second. Very useful!
But then I decided so many other areas of my life needed to be reigned in in this way. In fact, let’s just document EVERYTHING. This is another weak point of my character. I can’t do anything in a small or mediocre way. Everything must be done in the most systematic and organized fashion possible. Nothing gets finished, but it does all become very systematic and organized toward the goal of having the most fun possible. Fun is the bottom line goal of almost everything in my life. Even laundry can be fun if you do it in a certain way.
Here is a summary of last week from Monday to Saturday (Sundays, I often fall off the grid due to the “no screens” rule I enforce with my children.):
[table id=1 /]
Now that I’m creating these beautiful time sheets, I need to figure out what they mean. One thing that is bothering me about this is that it doesn’t add up to a perfect 96 hours of awake time. I’m missing .3 of an hour somewhere.