Track your 168 hours
A week has 168 hours (24 × 7). Tracking them means writing down what you did, as you go, for seven days, then adding it up. This page gives the method, a sheet you can print, and a way to read the totals.
Updated 8 October 2026
What a time diary is
A time diary is a record of activities with the time each one took. Government time-use surveys are built on it. The U.S. Census Bureau conducts the American Time Use Survey for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. One person aged 15 or older in a sampled household is asked about the day before the interview, from 4 a.m. to 4 a.m. (BLS technical note).
That survey relies on memory of one day. Writing entries during the day and covering a full week is a different setup: it takes more effort, and it catches entries that memory loses.
Set up in five minutes
- Pick a start. Midnight on a day you can follow for seven days in a row. Midnight-to-midnight days make each day add up to 24 hours.
- Pick five to ten categories. Use the same ones as your plan if you made one on the plan your 168 hours page. Typical ones are Sleep, Work or school, Commute, Meals and cooking, Chores and errands, Family and friends, Exercise, and Leisure. Add a category called Not sure for hours you cannot place.
- Pick a block size. Thirty minutes gives a general picture. Fifteen minutes gives more detail and more writing. Laura Vanderkam, who wrote a book about the 168-hour week, describes logging in 30-minute blocks (her time tracking FAQ).
- Pick a tool. Paper, a spreadsheet, a note on your phone, or a timer app all work. Use the one you will open without thinking about it.
- Set check-ins. Writing every few hours is enough for most people, for example mid-morning, mid-afternoon, and before bed. An alarm helps until it becomes a habit.
During the week
- Record the main activity of each block. If a block holds two or three things, list them or give the block to the one that took most of it.
- Track weekends as well. A week without them leaves out the days that differ most from the others.
- Decide once how to count sleep, such as time in bed or time asleep, and use that rule all week.
- If you forget a stretch, rebuild it from something with a time on it, such as a calendar, messages, or a receipt. Mark rebuilt entries so you know which are estimates.
- If you miss a day, carry on. Interruptions happen, and a week with a gap can still be worth adding up.
Weekly sheet
| Category | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sleep | ||||||||
| Work or school | ||||||||
| Commute | ||||||||
| Meals and cooking | ||||||||
| Chores and errands | ||||||||
| Family and friends | ||||||||
| Exercise | ||||||||
| Leisure | ||||||||
| Other | ||||||||
| Not sure | ||||||||
| Day total | 24 | 24 | 24 | 24 | 24 | 24 | 24 | 168 |
The bottom row is the target for each column. Your own sums should land on it. On the day clocks go back the target is 25 hours and the week is 169. On the day clocks go forward it is 23 and the week is 167.
Adding it up
- Total each category for each day, and each day across the categories.
- If a day is under its target, put the missing hours in Not sure. The target is 24, or 23 or 25 on a day the clocks change. If a day is over its target, you counted an overlap. Move the shared time to one category.
- Round to the nearest half hour so the sums stay readable.
- A week that includes a clock change does not have 168 hours. Where clocks change by an hour, that week has 167 or 169. Where the United States turns the clocks back on 1 November 2026, the week that includes that date has 169 hours. Hawaii, most of Arizona, and several U.S. territories do not change clocks.
Reading the totals
- Put the totals next to your plan, if you have one. Look at the categories that differ most in either direction.
- Look at the Not sure row. A large one often means the check-ins were far apart. Those hours were not placed, which is different from the time disappearing.
- Look at which days differ from the others. A weekday that looks like a weekend, or the reverse, is worth a note.
- Treat one week as one sample. Vanderkam writes that there are no typical weeks (her time tracking FAQ). A second week, or a week with a different load, shows how much the numbers move.
Change one thing at a time and track another week. Compare the two sets of totals, keeping in mind that the weeks will differ for other reasons too.
Track it in 24 Hours
24 Hours is a phone app that splits one day into hours per goal. You start a timer on the goal you are doing, and one timer runs at a time. Each day is saved with the hours spent on every goal, and Trends shows how many days each goal was completed over 7, 14 or 30 days. The optional one-time Supporter purchase extends history to 90 days.
The app records the time you run timers for, so time you do not time shows up as hours left in the day. That fits the daily half of a 168-hour log: each day ends with the hours spent per goal and the hours left. Add the days up for the week.
Get 24 Hours on the App StoreGet 24 Hours on Google Play
Sources and further reading
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, American Time Use Survey: overview, methods, and the technical note.
- NIST, Daylight Saving Time, for the 2026 clock-change dates.
- Laura Vanderkam, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think (Portfolio, 2010), and her time tracking FAQ, which describes her way of logging a week. Scrolling Is Evil is not connected to her, and she has not reviewed this page.