Can You Really Create Time?
As always, it all starts with tracking
How did the dinosaurs die?
Is there life after death?
How long should you wait after lunch before you swim?
And last but not least… how can we make time for everything?
These are all universal questions (well, maybe not all of them) that humans have tried to answer for centuries.
I’ll leave you to figure out the first three. Today, I’ll take a bit of your time to think about the last one.
I want to say up front that many of the ideas I’ll mention come from a creator I genuinely admire — Ali Abdaal, who is truly an expert in this field. At the end of this article, I’ll link to a template he developed, which I think is absolutely brilliant.
Back to the topic.
Do we really have time to do anything we want? Well, probably not — and I’m quite sure you didn’t need me to break that news. So the real question becomes:
“How can we actually make time to do the stuff we need — and the stuff we love?”
Time is a recurring topic in my short writings, and because of its complexity, it would be impossible to cover every aspect of it in a single piece. That’s why today I’ll focus on just one part of this much broader question.
Let me start with a simple quote:
What gets tracked, gets managed
This is usually applied to personal finance, but I believe it applies beautifully to time management too.
For example —
Would you be able to tell me how much time you spend each week on “food-related stuff”? Cooking, cleaning, shopping, ordering?
Or how much time you spend on social media? (Yes, I know smartphones can track your screen time, but let’s be honest: how often do you actually check that?)
If you already have a clear answer, you’re ahead of the average — feel free to skip to the next article.
If not, it might be worth taking a moment to think about how you actually use the 168 hours you have each week.
This can be tricky, which is why I'm sharing this wonderful template (no ads, no affiliation, just deep admiration for the creator—I'll share the original link to respect the marketing structured by him):
With this simple spreadsheet, you can log how much time you spend on each activity in an average week. It will show you what’s left. Then you can use the second sheet to design your ideal week, and see what is blocking you from achieving it.
My goal this week was to highlight how tracking applies to every aspect of life — including time.
Try to track your time. Get a rough sense of how you’re using it. Then ask yourself whether there is room for improvement.
Ask yourself whether the way you’re spending time lines up with your dreams.
And if, by filling out the template, you discover you’re “in the red” with no free time left, try to reflect on what parts of your life you’re sacrificing to make that happen.
Very often, the first things to suffer from a lack of time are food and sleep, two absolutely vital foundations of a balanced life. But that’s a topic I’ll explore in another post.
For now, I just wanted to share these reflections with you — I hope you found them interesting.
Leave a comment, react, reply, or do whatever feels right to share your thoughts on this.
Thanks for reading.
And remember:
What gets tracked, gets managed
See you soon,
Davide