I’m sure some of you have used time-tracking methods to see how you use your time. I’ve never done that, personally. Sure, I’ve tracked time spent on projects at work my entire professional life, since a designer essentially rents out billable time. But I’ve never done it at home or in my personal life.

A few weeks ago, I read in Matthew Cornell’s newsletter about the concept of big chunks and little chunks. The main thing I got from it was that some days you feel like you got nothing done because you never did any of the big tasks you wanted to do. But you got a lot of little things done.

Now that my life has changed and I’ve had the biggest role-change ever: I lost my job 2 months ago, my wife went back to work, and I am now a stay-at-home dad who is hunting for freelance design work to do when the baby is sleeping or when the wife is at home. At the end of the day I feel discouraged because I haven’t tackled any of the big projects I’ve been meaning to tackle.

So what I want to do is start keeping a simple log of what I do every day. Just jot down what time I started doing something, whether it’s big or small. It can be something business-related like making follow-up phone calls, or it could be a household chore like sweeping the kitchen.

Have you ever done anything like this? How did it help? What did you find out? Share in this thread in the WLC forums.