Tori Uncensored

Why I Decided to Track My Time

After embracing 168 Hours as a mindset shift, I wanted to see if the theory held up in practice. Laura Vanderkam emphasises that people often think they don’t have enough time, but in reality, they’re not seeing the full picture.

So, following her advice, I committed to tracking my time for a full 168 hours an entire week.

I went in expecting to confirm my biggest assumption that I wasn’t spending enough time with my daughter.

At the time, she was in nursery three days a week and with my parents one day. That left only three full days where I had uninterrupted time with her. I felt the familiar working-parent guilt, convinced that I wasn’t giving her enough attention.

But when I broke my time down, the reality was completely different.

📌 Breaking Down My Week – The Wake-Up Call

Here’s a structured breakdown of how I allocated my time when I tracked every hour, I organised time into key categories as Laura suggested.

✔ Work: 32 hours (per my contract). After my maternity leave, I successfully reduced my working hours a change I managed to stick to. I’ll dive deeper into this in future posts.

✔ Sleep: 56 hours, at the time, I was averaging 8 hours per night.

✔ Household tasks, eating, hygiene, etc.: 21 hours.

✔ Personal & Family Time: 59 hours.

I had nearly 60 hours each week for personal life, family time, and leisure—far more than I had assumed.

Suddenly, the guilt shifted. I wasn’t absent I just wasn’t acknowledging the time I actually had.

Instead of only looking at my work schedule, I saw the full balance of my time, including the moments I spent with her outside of those strict windows.

✔ Mornings before nursery.

✔ Evenings at home.

✔ Weekends together.

This reframed everything:

✔ Instead of feeling restricted by time, I saw flexibility in how I spent it.

✔ I stopped saying “I don’t have time” and started asking, “How do I want to spend my time?”

✔ I focused more on quality time, rather than fixating on quantity.

📌 What I Learned from Time Tracking

Tracking my time for 168 hours gave me two major insights:

✔ We have more time than we think we just don’t always spend it consciously.

✔ How we frame time matters language like “I don’t have time” reinforces a scarcity mindset, but “I choose how to spend my time” shifts control back to us.

This realisation changed how I approached my days—not just in parenting, but in work, personal projects, and rest.

📌 Applying This Knowledge Moving Forward

Once I understood my 168 hours, the next question became:

💡 “Now that I see my time clearly, how do I actively plan it better?”

I’ll explore this further in a future post diving into how I structure my 168 hours for balance and productivity, ensuring each week aligns with what matters most.

💬 Have you ever tracked your time for a full week? Did the results surprise you? I’d love to hear your experience in the comments!