The Time Audit

Most of us can't say where our week actually went. We can say where we meant it to go. This closes that gap.

"I thought I was spending my mornings on growth. I was spending them on email."

I run two businesses in Lake Placid and lead a team of eight. A few years ago I was working constantly and still felt behind, so I tracked every fifteen minutes for a month. What I found was uncomfortable and completely fixable: a third of my week was work somebody else could have done, and almost none of it was the work only I could do.

This is the tracker I built to find that out. It's free. Put your email in below and it lands in your inbox.

What's in it

A Google Sheet with four weekly tabs, 15-minute blocks from early morning to night, and a summary that does the math for you. You log what you did and tag it three ways. The sheet tells you the rest.

FOCUS — Me · Family · Work Which part of your life that block belonged to.

VALUE — Energizing · Draining · Neutral How you felt doing it. Nobody grades this, so be honest.

NEXT STEP — Keep · Hand off · Simplify · Let go What you're going to do about it.

At the end of the week the summary shows your hours by category, how many were draining, and how many are sitting in Hand off or Simplify waiting for you to act. That last number is the one that changes things.

Get the tracker

Enter your email and I'll send you your own copy. No cost, and you can unsubscribe any time.

How to actually use it

Pick a normal week. Not your busiest, not your quietest. A week that looks like most weeks.

Fill it in as you go. Three times a day beats trying to remember on Friday. You will not remember on Friday.

Talk to it instead of typing. This is the one that made it stick for me. If the AI assistant you use connects to Google Drive, link this sheet to it. Then you can log a block out loud from your phone — "customer service email, nine to ten thirty, draining, hand off" — and it fills the row in for you. Faster than thumbing it in, and more accurate, because you're catching the block as it ends instead of reconstructing your day at bedtime.

Don't clean it up. The scroll, the re-reading of the same email, the forty minutes looking for a file. Those are the hours worth finding.

Change one thing. One. Hand off the biggest draining block, or write a checklist for the thing you do over and over. Then run it again in a month and see if the number moved.

Made by hand in Lake Placid I make candles and body care for people who want to change how they feel. Same idea as this tracker, different tool. → Visit Pure Placid

— Marcy Miller, Lake Placid, NY