Where My Day Went
Where My Day Went
Answer each question about your day and watch your schedule get cut into smaller pieces.
You get twenty-four hours. Everybody does. Take out about seven for sleep and, on paper, there are still seventeen hours left in your day.
Seventeen hours. That is more than two full working days stacked end to end. So why does it never feel like you have seventeen hours? Why does the day feel like it happens to you and then it's dark again?
Let's find out where it goes. Tell me about your day, one honest answer at a time, and I'll draw what's left of it.
Start with the big three. Roughly how many hours go to work or school, how many to being at home, and how many to sleeping? Don't overthink it — the day rarely does.
There. That's the shape of a day before real life gets its hands on it.
Now the edges start to nibble. Before you're any use to anyone, there's the morning: the shower, the staring, the search for the other sock. How long, honestly, from open eyes to out the door?
Gone already, and you haven't even done anything yet.
And it isn't only the phone. The day is full of small ambushes — none of them a decision, all of them time. A partial list, in no particular order of guilt:
- Checking email
- Snacks
- A co-worker interrupting
- Marketing calls
- Video spirals
- Aimless pacing
- A pet
- An existential crisis
Here's the quiet thief. You don't lose the day in big chunks — you lose it in glances. A notification, a quick check, thirty seconds that were never thirty seconds. Be honest: how many times a day do you pick up the phone? Drag it up. Don't be shy.