So I have been attending a leadership class through Campus House for three weeks now. Well, during the second class Rob briefly mentioned logging the minutes of your day as a self-reflection exercise. There are 24 hours or 1440 minutes or 86,400 seconds in every day. How we spend these precious moments is a demonstration of how we prioritize our lives. Each of us have limited time on this world, and what we make of that time is important.
Personally, I wish to make the best use of my time as possible so I decided to take on the task of logging my minutes in a ledger, as Rob suggested. My days vary and tend of be diverse so instead of logging a day, I decided to log an entire week to account for abnormalities that might show up. That's a total of 604,800 seconds from which I was able to budget my time for the week. From Tuesday, February 24th to Monday, March 1st I recorded how I spent the minutes of my day in my phone. At the end of it, I gathered all of the minutes in an excel spreadsheet and generated the following pie chart.
I think a few things have been made apparent by the little exercise. I definitely am too tethered to the internet. The number of hours I spent using my computer to check facebook, browse the internet, blog, talk to people, etc was slightly overwhelming. Additionally, I don't have a lot of homework this semester. I knew going into this semester that it would be an "easy" semester compared to what I am use to with my typical double major course load, but I didn't expect to clock is so few hours for homework. Also I really do feel that the chart has shown me how much I love the work God is using me for through the lab I am working for. This is the first time I have ever counted the time spent in lab for a week. The minimum requirement for research is ~4 hours a week. Well, I spent over 12 hours working in the lab. I didn't spend all that time in the lab because I have to. I spend that time in lab because I love what I am doing, and I feel like it is what God is calling me to do. In someways I feel that it is a form of worship and that I have been given a spiritual gift in a way.
At first I hesitated to clock in hours spend "praying/worshiping" because it is such an ambiguous thing to measure. We have all heard "pray continuously" before, and I feel like that really does hold true to me since I hardly commit my thought process to a single topic due to "cloud thinking." I really do pray continually. What I logged in the graph was the hours spent par taking in intentional prayer/worship. Yet, somehow I wish the slice of the pie was larger.
Clearly, I have a few things to focus on. I really do wish to reduce the role that the internet plays in my life. Perhaps I can enlarge the portion of pie, which prayer occupies in its place!
Clearly, I have a few things to focus on. I really do wish to reduce the role that the internet plays in my life. Perhaps I can enlarge the portion of pie, which prayer occupies in its place!
I'm a bit afraid to make a chart of how I spend my time... mostly because I know my devotional time is very lacking. Lessening your internet time is a good idea but don't forget that devotional time can be spent in countless ways. I don't think that spending an hour listening to worship music from the computer is a waste of time.
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