Work, Honestly

About this journal

Busy all week, and by Friday you cannot say what you finished.

Everybody knows where their money goes. Almost nobody knows where their hours go, and the hours are the part you cannot get more of.

This is twenty-six weeks of finding out. Shade in where the week actually went, rate it before you start justifying it, and answer the two questions your calendar will never ask you.

Twenty-six weeks, one spread each

On the left a grid you shade in: deep work, meetings, admin and email, other people's problems, nothing in particular. On the right a scale from wasted to worth it, a short list of what the week felt like, and space for what you want to hand over and to whom.

Two questions come back every week. What did I actually finish. What did I say yes to while thinking no. Those two, answered twenty-six times, are a more useful record of a career than any appraisal.

What is inside

• 26 weekly spreads, half a year, undated
• A time grid you shade in rather than a timer you forget to start
• A weekly rating filled in before the justifying begins
• The handover question: what should not be yours any more
• Quarterly reviews and a six-month read-back
• Three short pages on doing this without it becoming another job
• Six lined pages at the back

Who it is for

• Professionals who are busy without being sure it is adding up to anything
• Women in careers where the invisible work never lands on a job description
• Managers deciding what to delegate and needing evidence rather than a feeling
• Freelancers pricing their time who have never measured it
• Anyone watching burnout coming and wanting it on paper before it arrives

Shading beats tracking

Time tracking apps fail for one reason: they need you to remember at the start. Shading in a grid on Friday takes ninety seconds and you can do it from memory, which is the only version anybody keeps up.

It is not precise to the minute. It does not need to be. Six months of roughly right is what shows you that the thing you call your job takes four hours a week and the rest is other people.

Questions people ask

Is it dated? No. Week one is the week you start, so a holiday or a quiet fortnight costs you nothing.

Do I need to track time during the day? No, and that is the point. You shade the grid from memory on Friday in about ninety seconds.

Is it for employees or for the self-employed? Both. Employees use the handover question, freelancers use it to find out what an hour of their work actually costs them.

Will my employer see it? Only if you show them. The cover is plain and the pages say nothing that identifies a company.

The details

• 6 x 9 inches, 94 pages, matte cover
• Undated: start in the middle of a quarter without wasting anything
• Printed in colour on white paper
• Discreet enough to leave on a desk at the office

Twenty-six weeks of finding out where your working life is going, while there is still time to point it somewhere else.

Also from Mara Linde

Ninety Days of Small Goals, twelve weeks of one goal at a time, and The Stress Log, ninety days of finding out what actually sets you off.