STEP 6

In STEP 6, you will analyze how you spend your time. You will calculate how much time you spend daily on choice activities in the following categories: exercise, relationships, paid work, unpaid helpfulness (or volunteer work), leisure activities, screen time, and all other choice activities.

STEP 1: To start, you will need to gather the following worksheets:

• your filled out Daily ACTIVITIES Journals from WEEK 2,

• your Weekly SLEEP Journals from WEEKS 1 & 2,

• one copy of the CHOICE ACTIVITIES Counting Sheet,

• and finally, one copy of the Time Spent on CHOICE ACTIVITIES worksheet.

STEP 2: Then, you will transcribe your functional capacity scores (how well you functioned mentally & physically each day) from your Weekly SLEEP Journal from WEEK 2 onto your Time Spent on CHOICE ACTIVITIES worksheet in its two (2) bottom rows entitled “Today, mentally I was” and “Today, physically I was”.

STEP 3: Next, you will consult with your Daily ACTIVITIES Journals from WEEK 2, and one activity at a time, you will write the number of minutes the activity took you to perform in the correct box on your CHOICE ACTIVITIES Counting Sheet. You will continue this until you have transcribed all of your activity minutes for the week onto your CHOICE ACTIVITIES Counting Sheet.

STEP 4: All the boxes on your CHOICE ACTIVITIES Counting Sheet correspond to one box on your Time Spent on CHOICE ACTIVITIES worksheet. To fill out your Time Spent on CHOICE ACTIVITIES worksheet, you will use the following formula: # of hours spent = total # of minutes ÷ 60. Once you have filled out all the boxes in the first 7 rows of your worksheet, one day of the week at a time, you will add up your time spent on all choice activities to give you your daily totals.

STEP 5: Now, you will take a few minutes to compare the amount of time you spend daily on all of your choice activities (STEP 6 - from your filled out Time Spent on CHOICE ACTIVITIES worksheet) with the amount of time you need per day for all of your essentials (STEP 5 - from your filled out Time Needed Daily for ESSENTIALS worksheet).

Do you have enough hours in the day?

If not, what are you sacrificing to get everything done? Sleep? Breaks? Any other essentials? Any other very important things?

STEP 6: Finally, you will consult with your filled out Time Spent on CHOICE ACTIVITIES worksheet to see how much time you spent, throughout WEEK 2, in each activity category…

• Are you satisfied with the way you spend your time?

• Do you spend most of your time proactively living your life, or do you spend way too much of your time in distraction or avoidance mode?

• Do all of your activities fill a real need (one of the needs as per Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: physiological, safety, social, esteem, and self-actualization)?

• Are you more often than not the master of your own schedule, or do you way too often succumb to outside pressures?

Food for thought!!!