In the past when I would evaluate my schedule in an effort to optimize my time, I would consider only the working hours of the day.

For me, pre-pandemic, this has always been roughly between 7:30a-5:30p. During those hours, I time block my calendar (though I also use Todosit for my actual tasks), to the best of my abilities, including reading/research time, time to process email, and any other items that I did not have time to accomplish the night before.

Though I thought about what I wanted or needed to get done outside of those hours, I rarely scheduled it, with the exception of personal appointments.

As someone who strives to remain aware of my routines and processes, it occurred to me that I wasn’t taking into account everything else that was taking up my time. This realization struck me when I noticed how aware our pets, Darren and Bentley, knew my routine (and especially Sasha when she was around).

I began to observe how they move on to the next step of my routine just based on a sound or movement. Sounds or movements that I repeated every day without thinking about it. They even understand the difference between my weekday and weekend routines. These were parts of my routine that I had never evaluated.

Recently I was spending time adjusting my schedule as it has changed a lot since the pandemic hit and began noting every moment of my day from when I woke up to when I went to sleep. If they understood it, then I wanted to as well.

Individually the various parts of my day, outside of my actual work time, don’t consume a lot of time but added up they I was able to notice that they did add more time to my schedule every week than I was previously accounting for.

Of course this has changed because previous aspects of my routine such as driving to/from the gym and my office have been greatly affected during the pandemic but it has been interesting to analyze even currently.

My goal wasn’t to find a way to optimize these parts of my day but simply to be aware of them. By adding them to my schedule, it brought even more clarity to my day.

I’m not suggesting that every single minute of your day must be scheduled. You need margin and you need to have time to relax, but there are inevitably areas of your daily life that may be cutting into your day that may actually provide that additional margin. We can’t always be focused on remaining productive at all times.

Since I went through this process I am more aware of all aspects of my day, not just my work schedule and, as a result, have been more productive and added margin in all areas of my life.