Time Mapping: Charting Our Life's Course

Suppose you were to map how you use each hour of each day. And suppose you were to rate each mapped hour on the basis of the quality of the time you spent. So if you spent the time in rest, you would rate the quality of the rest. If you spent the time socializing, you'd rate the quality of your social experience. If you spent the time researching markets, you'd rate the quality of your research effort.

What you'd learn from such a time mapping is at least two things:

1) Are you truly acting on your priorities? Are you utilizing your time the way you truly want to?

2) Are you using your time effectively? Are you doing well the things you're trying to do?

The right kind of time map would be a tool for staying mindful, for ensuring that we don't merely live life on autopilot.

The right kind of time map would also be a tool for becoming better at living our values--making sure that we are living the life that defines who we wish to be.

Without a time map, we live too much of life on autopilot. We spend time on low priorities and we spend low quality time on our priorities.

Whatever kind of life we choose, we should live that life consciously: with purpose and direction. We would not take a cross-country trip without consulting a map; why approach our lives that way?

Further Reading: The Purpose of a Purposeful Life

Addendum: Here is a simple version of a time map. The activities are color coded and organized in time from left to right. The time blocks represent the relative amount of time spent in each activity. The shading of each block represents whether the activity was performed very well (darker shading) or not very well (lighter shading). Each map represents one day. Comparing the maps from day to day illustrates how we're spending our time and how well we're spending it.

Comments

Austerity-A Fancy Word for Destitute.

The reason for this post is not for the folks who have been caught in the first wave of personal economic hard reality, but the next wave. Regardless of the optimism espoused by grinning leaders and sycophant press, we are entering the final stage of global economic collapse. It began in 2008 and was forestalled for five years with fudge putty, but the weight of global indebtedness cannot be propped any longer and the final crunch is imminent. Austerity measures herald the final throes. Indications of coming austerity. Austerity measures are the final last ditch effort, futile or not! Back in the day many of us old-timers went through periods of "hard-times". In retrospect I realize there is no comparison to yesteryear hard times and today's version. Back then, expectations were never very high for the working class, there were no sophisticated systems or conveniences anyway. In fact the difference between being "set" or not was about having treats or not. Si...

Terrifying Arctic methane levels

A peak methane level of 3026 ppb was recorded by the MetOp-B satellite at 469 mb on December 11, 2021 am. This follows a peak methane level of 3644 ppb recorded by the MetOp-B satellite at 367 mb on November 21, 2021, pm. A peak methane level of 2716 ppb was recorded by the MetOp-B satellite at 586 mb on December 11, 2021, pm, as above image shows. This image is possibly even more terrifying than the image at the top, as above image shows that at 586 mb, i.e. much closer to sea level, almost all methane shows up over sea, rather than over land, supporting the possibility of large methane eruptions from the seafloor, especially in the Arctic. Also, the image was recorded later than the image at the top with the 3026 ppb peak, indicating that even more methane may be on the way. This appears to be confirmed by the Copernicus forecast for December 12, 2021, 03 UTC, as illustrated by the image below, which shows methane at 500 hPa (equivalent to 500 mb). Furthermore, ...

Women and children overboard

It's the Catch-22 of clinical trials: to protect pregnant women and children from the risks of untested drugs....we don't test drugs adequately for them. In the last few decades , we've been more concerned about the harms of research than of inadequately tested treatments for everyone, in fact. But for "vulnerable populations," like pregnant women and children, the default was to exclude them. And just in case any women might be, or might become, pregnant, it was often easier just to exclude us all from trials. It got so bad, that by the late 1990s, the FDA realized regulations and more for pregnant women - and women generally - had to change. The NIH (National Institutes of Health) took action too. And so few drugs had enough safety and efficacy information for children that, even in official circles, children were being called "therapeutic orphans." Action began on that, too. There is still a long way to go. But this month there was a sign that ...

Humor4u

Search This Blog