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Amy Suto's avatar

Loved this piece! The toggl time tracker is my best friend, and I find it's so helpful in the writing and work realm to really stay accountable. It's crazy how time just disappears if you don't really keep track of where it goes!

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Lane Scott Jones's avatar

Thank you! I am officially a Toggl convert. 🫡

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Chelsea Caffey's avatar

I loved reading of your journey as inspired by Four Thousand Weeks. I read that book back in February and loved its message. Becoming hyper-aware of our time, like tracking does for us, tends to quickly remind us of the things we don’t want to do very quickly—like when you open instagram on impulse and close it again super fast because you know you are not in the mood for a time suck! Thank you for writing this beautiful essay, Lane! So relatable and well written.

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Lane Scott Jones's avatar

So happy to hear from another Four Thousand Weeks fan 🫡 because that book changed my life. Thank you, Chelsea!

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Chelsea Caffey's avatar

It’ll be a book I need to revisit often for the reminders!

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McKenzie's avatar

I love this! Sometimes when I start to feel like my days are "junky", or I look back at a week and feel like I languished a lot in a way that feels yucky, I'll do a mini time audit where I track where I spend my time on my Google Cal. It's always SO illuminating! I'm so impressed at how small your piddling number is. Also, I just part of June and July in Madeira at the Outsite as well - small world!

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Lane Scott Jones's avatar

WAIT, I just met Amy and Kyle in the kitchen and they mentioned they had just been in Edinburgh with someone named McKenzie, who had also stayed at this Outsite — is that you? Truly such a small world, I love it. 🥹

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McKenzie's avatar

LOL that makes total sense because I came across your Substack from a comment on Amy's most recent post. Yes! I'm sad my Madeira trip didn't overlap with theirs, but I'm fleeing back to the States to the fall after a couple of years fully international, so it's great we crossed paths in Edinburgh. I hope you're enjoying the island!

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Brenna's avatar

Nice! I occasionally time track to make sure I’m living my values. What I’ve found on sabbatical is I’m actually capable of A LOT LESS than I thought. In other words when I was working full time everything else was rushed and busy too. Now that I have unscheduled days if I do one or two things I feel so great. It’s crazy how much more rest I need than I thought I needed.

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Lane Scott Jones's avatar

Yes! That rest thing was a revelation for me too. And realizing that when you take out the fluff, I'm also only able to do a couple things per day. And instead of trying to squeeze more in, I'm trying to just focus on doing those things well.

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Brenna's avatar

Brava Lane 👏🏻

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Moritz Wallawitsch's avatar

> The average human lifespan is absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short... the ultimate point of all our frenetic doing might be to experience more of that wonder.

What a beautiful quote! I have a similar quote by Seneca (the Stoic philosopher) in my room.

> While I won’t continue time tracking at this level of detail, I loved how this experiment took me off auto-pilot

I built a desktop app automate detailed 24/7 (or work-) time tracking: https://CronusHQ.com. It is the first non-rule based ai time tracking software. I.e., it constantly re-assess what you are looking at given your job, projects, and context. For ex. watching a Youtube tutorial can be productive but watching an entertaining video can be distracting.

If you read this and end up trying it I'd love your feedback!

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Jessica Bates's avatar

Piddling is such a great word. Fun read!

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Lane Scott Jones's avatar

Credit to Libby for that one. Thank you!

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