Time logging and lifelogging

A time log is a record of what you actually did, hour by hour. A lifelog is the same idea stretched wider: time, sleep, energy, places and small facts, kept every day so a pattern shows up over weeks. This doc covers the paper versions: Laura Vanderkam's 168-hour log, the Day Reconstruction Method, Jibun Techo-style 24-hour columns, hour grids, plan versus actual, shift-work logs, and the Quantified Self movement with its critiques.

Uncertain points are marked (unverified) or (uncertain). All sources were checked on 2026-09-28.

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1. At a glance

2. Summary

Time logging is writing down, in short words, what you did in each block of the day, then looking back to see the shape of your week. The best-known paper version is Laura Vanderkam's 168-hour log: one sheet, seven columns, half-hour rows, kept for a week. Researchers use a close cousin, the Day Reconstruction Method, where you rebuild yesterday as a string of "episodes" and rate how each felt. Japanese planners like the Kokuyo Jibun Techo turned the idea into a daily habit with a 24-hour column for each day of the week, often used to show plan on one side and what actually happened on the other. The Quantified Self movement pushed logging into devices and data, and drew real critiques about surveillance, shame and who owns the numbers. On paper, done gently, a time log is one of the most useful and least demanding records a journal can hold. It is also one of the easiest to turn into a stick to beat yourself with, so this doc spends as much time on the review as on the log.

3. History and origin

Timeline

Who's who

• Laura Vanderkam is an American writer on time management. Her method is plain: log one week of 168 hours in half-hour blocks, then decide what to change. She has tracked her own time since 2015 and argues that even one week a year teaches something.
• Daniel Kahneman (psychologist, Nobel in economics) and colleagues built the DRM to get close to the accuracy of beeper studies without the beeper. Norbert Schwarz, a co-author, works on how memory distorts reports of feeling.
• Hideaki Sakuma was a creative director at a large advertising agency who refined his own planner format over many years before Kokuyo made it a product. The idea: "Everything about me is contained within this."
• Gary Wolf and Kevin Kelly: Wolf was a Wired contributing editor; Kelly is widely described as Wired's founding executive editor (from search summaries, not a page opened here). They set QS up as a users' group, modelled on the Homebrew Computer Club.

Cultural context

Time logs sit in two traditions. One is research: time-budget diaries, beeper studies and national surveys, where the log is data about a population. The other is self-help: productivity writers who say "track it to change it". Japanese planner culture adds a third: the techo as a keepsake that holds a year of your life, where the 24-hour column is as much memory as management. The Quantified Self took the self-help strand into sensors and apps around 2007–2012, just as smartphones arrived.

Key quotes

• Vanderkam: "Time passes whether we think about how we're spending it or not."
• Vanderkam, on imperfect logs: describing time "doesn't have to be perfect." And: "consistency is better than being thorough."
• The DRM instruction to participants: "Think of your day as a continuous series of scenes or episodes in a film. Give each episode a brief name that will help you remember it."
• Quantified Self's tagline: "self-knowledge through numbers."
• Kokuyo on the Jibun Techo: "Everything about me is contained within this."

4. Philosophy and principles

Stated goals

• See where time actually goes, not where you think it goes. Vanderkam notes people often overestimate their work hours.
• Find the hidden time: pockets that feel like nothing but add up.
• Link time to feeling. The DRM's point is that the same activity feels different on different days, and specific episodes are more honest than general beliefs ("I enjoy my kids" versus "but they were a pain last night").
• Keep a record of a life. The Jibun Techo sells itself as a lifetime keepsake, not a one-year tool.

Core beliefs

1. Memory is a bad witness. Reports made close to the moment beat reports made from belief.
2. Rough is fine. Half-hour blocks and a few words beat a perfect log you quit on Wednesday.
3. The log is for noticing, not judging. It describes; you decide.
4. A week is the useful unit. Days vary too much; a week holds the whole cycle of work, rest and chores.

The problem it solves: "I'm always busy and I don't know where the time goes," "I'm always tired and I don't know why," and "my schedule changes so much I can't see a pattern."

5. Core components

Hour grid

Vanderkam's printable worksheet runs from 5:00 a.m. across seven day columns (Monday to Sunday) in 15-minute rows over several pages; her spreadsheet uses 336 half-hour cells for the 168-hour week. She says 15-minute rows suit tight schedules, but half-hours are enough for most people.

Episode list (DRM)

Rebuild yesterday as 10–20 scenes. The DRM study found an average of 14.1 episodes a day, averaging 61 minutes each; episodes usually last 15 minutes to 2 hours. An episode ends when you change place, change activity, or change who you're with. For each one, the study asked when, what (from 16 activities), where, with whom, and how you felt on 12 feelings from 0 (not at all) to 6 (very much). The full form took 45–75 minutes. A journal version needs one line per episode and one or two ratings.

24-hour column

The Jibun Techo's weekly spread has a central 24-hour timeline for each day. Keepers use it to plan and log at once. It is a lifelog because it holds everything, not just appointments: sleep, meals, moods, the bus.

Plan vs actual

Two narrow strips per day. Plan in pencil on the left before the day; fill the right as it happens or at night. The gap between them is information, not failure.

Codes and hatching

In black-and-white print, colour coding doesn't work. Use letters, or hatch patterns: solid for sleep, diagonal for work, dots for rest, blank for unknown. Keep it to 5–7 codes.

Ratings

One rating per episode is plenty: energy (1–5) or a circled word. DRM summary: positive feeling is common and negative feeling mostly mild. Most time is okay; the log shows where it isn't.

Sleep window

The Consensus Sleep Diary (Carney et al., 2012) came from a panel of sleep experts and six focus groups of good sleepers, people with insomnia and people with sleep apnea. It has a core diary and an expanded one, and the core was written to a third-grade reading level. Core items cover time to bed, time trying to sleep, how long to fall asleep, wakings, final wake time, time out of bed, and how rested you feel (item list from general knowledge of the published diary; the abstract page confirms core/expanded structure and reading level only).

Anchor points

Rather than logging every half-hour live, pick 3–4 moments a day when you fill in everything since the last one. Vanderkam logs "what I generally did", not every sip of water.

Weekly totals and review

Count cells per code and write the totals. Then answer 3 questions (see section 8). The totals are only as useful as the review.

6. Setting it up

First setup (15 minutes)

1. Pick your window: a full week, Monday to Sunday, or a work cycle if you rotate (for example 4 on, 4 off = 8 days).
2. Print or rule an hour grid. If your day starts late, start the grid at your wake time, not midnight. Vanderkam starts at 5 a.m.; night workers may want noon.
3. Choose 5–7 codes and write the key at the top. Suggested: S sleep, W work, T travel, C care (meals, meds, hygiene), H home tasks, R rest and fun, P people.
4. Choose 3–4 anchor times and put them in your phone as plain alarms, or tie them to things you already do (break, bus, dinner).
5. Decide on one rating only: energy 1–5 is the most useful.
6. Write one question you want answered: "Where does my evening go?" or "Do I sleep less before early shifts?"

First day

• Log from waking. At each anchor, fill in back to the last one. Use two or three words per block.
• If you miss an anchor, reconstruct DRM-style at night: name the scenes, then place them.
• Leave gaps blank rather than guessing. Blank is honest.

First week

• Day 2–3 is where most people drift. Lower the bar: half-hours, not quarters; codes, not words.
• Day 7: total the codes. Don't change anything yet. Just read it.
• Write one sentence: "This week I noticed..."

7. Daily practice

Order of operations (about 5 minutes total)

1. Morning (30 seconds): shade last night's sleep. Note wake time. Optional: write the plan in the left strip.
2. Anchor 1, midday (1 minute): fill in morning blocks. Circle energy.
3. Anchor 2, end of work or shift (1 minute): fill in the afternoon.
4. Evening (2 minutes): fill in the rest. If anything is blank, reconstruct episodes. Add one line: "Best block today" or "Hardest block today".

Prompts that help reconstruction

• Where was I? Who was I with? What changed next?
• What did I eat, and when? (Meals are good landmarks.)
• What did my phone show me? (Photos and messages have times.)

Rules of thumb

• Record the main thing in a block. Use a slash for two things at once ("bus/podcast"), a comma for two in a row, as Vanderkam does.
• Don't log bathroom trips, sips, or single emails.
• Don't rate every block. Rate episodes, or rate 3 times a day.

8. Rhythms

Weekly (15–30 minutes)

• Total each code. Hours of sleep per night: write them in a row and look at the lowest.
• Three review questions, asked without verdicts:
  1. What surprised me?
  2. When did I feel best, and what was around it?
  3. What is one thing I'd like to have more of next week, and where might it fit?
• Move nothing yet if this is your first week.

Monthly

• If you log every day, pick one "sample week" to total, rather than totalling all four.
• Compare sleep totals week to week. Note shifts that changed.

Quarterly

• Do a full one-week log again, even if you've stopped daily logging. Vanderkam's view is that one week a year already helps; a week each quarter shows seasons.

Yearly

• Keep one sample week per season in the back of the book. Lay them side by side at year's end.
• Archive: a time log has private detail (where you were, when). Treat it like the rest of the journal: it stays with you.

9. Page anatomy

A. Weekly 168-hour sheet (letter, landscape or portrait)

+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| WEEK OF ____________      KEY: S sleep  W work  T travel      |
|                                C care   H home  R rest  P ppl |
+------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
|      |  MON  |  TUE  |  WED  |  THU  |  FRI  |  SAT  |  SUN  |
+------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
| 5:00 |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |
| 5:30 |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |
| 6:00 |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |
|  ... |  (48 half-hour rows, 5:00 a.m. to 4:30 a.m.)          |
| 4:30 |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |
+------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
| TOTALS  S __  W __  T __  C __  H __  R __  P __  ?? __      |
| Surprised me: _______________________________________________ |
| Felt best:    _______________________________________________ |
| More of:      _______________________________________________ |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+

Proportions: time column about 10% of width, seven equal day columns. Rows at least 4 mm tall on letter, which fits 48 rows on one page only in a very compact layout; two pages (day and night halves) is kinder on the eyes.

B. Jibun Techo-style weekly spread with 24-hour columns

+-------------------------------+-------------------------------+
| MON  | TUE  | WED  | THU      | FRI  | SAT  | SUN  | NOTES    |
| 0 -- | 0 -- | 0 -- | 0 --     | 0 -- | 0 -- | 0 -- |          |
| 3 -- | 3 -- | 3 -- | 3 --     | 3 -- | 3 -- | 3 -- |          |
| 6 -- | 6 -- | 6 -- | 6 --     | 6 -- | 6 -- | 6 -- |          |
| 9 -- | 9 -- | 9 -- | 9 --     | 9 -- | 9 -- | 9 -- |          |
| 12-- | 12-- | 12-- | 12--     | 12-- | 12-- | 12-- |          |
| 15-- | 15-- | 15-- | 15--     | 15-- | 15-- | 15-- |          |
| 18-- | 18-- | 18-- | 18--     | 18-- | 18-- | 18-- |          |
| 21-- | 21-- | 21-- | 21--     | 21-- | 21-- | 21-- |          |
| 24-- | 24-- | 24-- | 24--     | 24-- | 24-- | 24-- |          |
|------+------+------+----------+------+------+------|          |
| mood | mood | mood | mood     | mood | mood | mood |          |
+-------------------------------+-------------------------------+

Each day column: a narrow hour ruler on the left, open space on the right for words. The bottom band holds one small daily fact (mood, steps, weather).

C. Plan vs actual strip (day page)

+---------------------------------------+
| PLAN      | HOUR | ACTUAL      | E    |
|-----------+------+-------------+------|
| bus       |  6   | bus/podcast | 3    |
| shift     |  7   | shift       |      |
|  "        |  8   |  "          |      |
|  ...      | ...  |  ...        |      |
| walk      | 18   | nap         | 1    |
+---------------------------------------+

E = energy 1–5, filled at anchors only.

D. DRM episode list (evening, half page)

+---------------------------------------------------+
| YESTERDAY IN SCENES                               |
| #  start  end   scene             with   feel 0-6 |
| 1  6:10   6:40  getting ready     -      2        |
| 2  6:40   7:20  bus to site       -      3        |
| 3  7:20   11:30 shift, part 1     crew   4        |
| ...                                               |
| Best scene: ___   Hardest scene: ___              |
+---------------------------------------------------+

E. 24-hour ring (circle) for one day

            12a
       11p   |    1a
    10p  .--------.  2a
   9p   /  SSSSSS  \  3a
  8p   | R      SSS |  4a
  7p   | R       SS |  5a
  6p   | T       T  |  6a
   5p   \ WWWWWWWW /  7a
    4p   '--------'  8a
       3p    |    9a
            12p

A ring is pretty, but hard to fill neatly by hand and hard to scan. The strip is better for print; keep the ring as an option only.

F. Hour ribbon (one line per day)

0    3    6    9    12   15   18   21   24
|####|####|##..|WWWW|WWWW|WWT.|RRRR|R###|

One line per day, 24 cells, shaded by code. Seven stacked ribbons make a week; thirty make a month you can read at a glance. This is the densest and calmest form.

10. Worked examples

Sample day (outdoor shift worker, early shift)

PLAN            HOUR  ACTUAL                 E
sleep            0    sleep (S)
sleep            4    S
up, meds         5    up 5:15, meds, coffee  2
bus              6    bus/podcast (T)        3
shift            7    W                      3
"                9    W, break 9:30          3
"               11    W, lunch 11:30         4
"               13    W, hot, heavy lift     2
home             15   bus (T), nap on bus    1
walk            16    nap at home (R)        1
dinner, call Mom 18   dinner (C), texted Mom 3
read            19    phone/tv (R)           2
bed 9:30        21    bed 10:15 (S)
Best block: lunch with crew. Hardest: 1-3 p.m. heat.

Sample week totals (same person)

        MON  TUE  WED  THU  FRI  SAT  SUN  TOTAL
Sleep   6.5  6.0  7.0  5.5  6.5  9.0  8.5  49.0
Work    8.5  8.5  8.5  8.5  0    0    0    34.0
Travel  2.0  2.0  2.0  2.0  0.5  1.0  0    9.5
Care    2.0  2.0  2.0  1.5  3.0  3.0  3.0  16.5
Home    0.5  0.5  1.0  0    2.5  2.0  1.5  8.0
Rest    3.5  4.0  2.5  5.5  8.0  6.0  7.0  36.5
People  1.0  1.0  1.0  1.0  1.5  3.0  4.0  12.5
Unknown 0    0    0    0    2.0  0    0    2.0   <- Friday gaps
                                          ------
                                          168.0 (check: rows sum to 24 per day)

Surprised me: 9.5 hours on buses. Thursday sleep lowest (5.5) before the
  heaviest day.
Felt best: Saturday late morning, after 9 hours sleep, outside.
More of: an earlier bed on Wed night. Could the bus hour be reading?

(Totals check: each day column sums to 24.)

Sample month (hour ribbons, one line per day)

KEY  # sleep   W work   T travel   R rest   . unknown

     0    3    6    9    12   15   18   21   24
 1   |####|###.|TWWW|WWWW|WWTR|RRRR|RRR#|####|
 2   |####|###.|TWWW|WWWW|WWTR|RRRR|RR##|####|
 3   |####|####|#...|RRRR|RRRR|RRRR|RRRR|R###|
 ...
14   |####|##..|TWWW|WWWW|WWTR|R...|RRRR|R###|  <- late night after shift change
...
30   |####|####|####|RRRR|RRRR|RRRR|RRR#|####|

Month notes: sleep shorter on nights before shift starts (days 1, 8, 15, 22).
Rest blocks after 3 p.m. are mostly naps, not the walks I planned.

11. Variations and offshoots

12. Community practice

What people actually do (from Vanderkam's challenge comments, planner blogs and forums; general observation, not a survey):

• One week a year. Many people log during a public challenge week, like Vanderkam's January challenges, then stop. That's the method working as designed.
• Weekly verticals. Hobonichi and Jibun Techo users often use vertical weeklies as lifelogs: small drawings, stickers for meals, a shaded sleep bar.
• Colour coding. Highlighter per category is the most common customisation. In black-and-white print, hatching or letter codes replace it.
• Plan in pencil, log in pen.
• Sleep bar only. A large group only shades sleep, which is the most useful single thing to log.

Aesthetic versus minimalist camps

• Aesthetic: coloured blocks, stickers, small doodles in each hour. Pretty, slower, easy to fall behind.
• Minimalist: letter codes and a totals row. Fast; ugly; lasts.

Journalwright Studio sits with the minimalist camp in print and lets the aesthetic happen in the Sketch box or margins.

13. Official products and formats

Other planners with vertical 24-hour or time-axis weeklies exist (Hobonichi Weeks, various Japanese brands). Not covered in depth here.

14. Tools and supplies

• Pen: fine (0.3–0.5 mm) so words fit in half-hour rows. A pencil for plans.
• Paper: 4 mm or 5 mm grid works well: each square is 15 or 30 minutes. Any 70–90 gsm paper is fine; nothing wet is needed.
• Ruler: for the first grid only; after that, print it.
• Hatching: four patterns you can draw fast: solid, diagonal, dots, blank.
• Clock landmarks: your phone's photo times and message times help reconstruction.
• Optional: a small timer or plain alarm for anchor points. (Plain alarms only, no app notifications.)

15. Digital and hybrid versions

Apps and templates

• Spreadsheets (Vanderkam's own method), time-tracking apps (Toggl, ATracker, and many others), and passive screen-time or sleep trackers.
• Passive trackers log without effort but miss what matters: how it felt, who you were with, why.

E-ink

• Printable 24-hour weekly PDFs work on reMarkable, Kindle Scribe and Boox. Hour grids are simple line art, ideal for e-ink.
• The X4 companion is an e-ink reader with buttons, not a writing tablet. It can hold a minimal log: tap to mark sleep start and end, or pick "what now" from a short list at anchors.

Scanning

• A shaded ribbon or strip scans well: it's high-contrast and in fixed positions, so a scan can be read by position without handwriting recognition.

What's lost and gained on paper

• Lost: automatic totals, charts, reminders.
• Gained: no data leaves you; the act of writing makes you notice; you log what matters, not what a sensor can see; no streaks or badges.

16. Evidence and research

Claimed versus supported

17. Benefits

• Better goal progress when progress is written down. Evidenced (Harkin 2016)
• A more accurate picture of feelings across the day than general memory. Evidenced (DRM 2004)
• A shared record to bring to a doctor about sleep. Evidenced as standard practice (Consensus Sleep Diary)
• Finding hidden free time. Claimed
• Seeing links between sleep, shifts and energy. Claimed, and very plausible
• Less time blindness for ADHD. Claimed (common community report; no trial found)
• A calm memory of ordinary days (lifelog as keepsake). Claimed
• Less guilt ("I did more than I thought"). Claimed

18. Pitfalls

19. Accessibility and adaptations

• ADHD: Time logs help with time blindness because they make time visible after the fact. Use anchors tied to things that already happen (meds, break, bus). Allow "?" blocks. Don't aim for streaks.
• Autism and sensory needs: Add a sensory load rating to episodes; log recovery time after loud blocks. Fixed codes and a fixed layout lower decision load.
• Chronic illness and low spoons: Log energy, not activity. Two things per day: "up" blocks and "down" blocks. Use the log for pacing: notice what came before a crash.
• Depression and anxiety: Time logs can show more happened than it felt like. But totals can feed the inner critic; skip totals in hard weeks and just shade sleep. The DRM finding that most time is at least okay can be comforting, but don't force it.
• Trauma: Episode reconstruction asks "who were you with"; skip that column if it's unsafe to write. Keep logs private; location and timing data can be sensitive.
• Dyslexia and dysgraphia: Codes and shading instead of words. Big rows.
• Low vision: Hour ribbon at large size; thick hour ticks every 3 hours; high contrast.
• Motor or hand pain: Shade with a wide marker; one tick per anchor instead of words; or log on the X4 with buttons.
• Trans and gender-diverse people: Useful for tracking HRT timing, dysphoria-heavy blocks, and energy through the cycle of dose days. Keep it private.
• Shift workers: Start the grid at wake, not midnight. Log by rotation. Track anchor sleep (NIOSH): the hours you sleep on both work and off days. Note which way the rotation goes; forward rotation (day to evening to night) is easier than backward.
• Low income: Free. Any notebook, or one printed page a week.

20. Comparison

21. Combining

• With a planner: plan vs actual is the bridge. Plan in the planner, log in the strip next to it.
• With the Dutch door method: its columned layout can hold a narrow actual strip.
• With getting things done on paper or the Eisenhower matrix: the log shows whether planned work happened.
• With a DBT diary card or a CBT thought record: find the hour, then do the record for that hour.
• With expressive writing: use the hardest block as the writing prompt.
• With a dream journal: the sleep bar tells you which nights to expect recall.
• With art and junk journaling: a ribbon is a tidy base layer; stickers and sketches can sit on top.
• With a care check-in (Journalwright Studio): the log adds when, the check-in adds how.

22. Ready-to-use bank

Codes (pick 5–7)

1. S sleep
2. W work
3. T travel / bus
4. C care (meals, meds, washing)
5. H home tasks
6. R rest and fun
7. P people
8. O outside
9. M medical (appointments, calls)
10. ? unknown

Anchor questions

1. What have I been doing since the last check?
2. Where was I, and who with?
3. Energy right now, 1–5?

Reconstruction prompts (DRM style)

1. Name yesterday's scenes as if they were a film.
2. When did the place change? When did the people change?
3. What was the best scene? The hardest?

Weekly review questions

1. What surprised me?
2. When did I feel best, and what was around it?
3. What is one thing I'd like more of, and where might it fit?
4. Which night had the least sleep, and what was the day before?
5. Where did "?" blocks cluster?
6. What did I do that I didn't give myself credit for?

Trackers and collections

1. Hour ribbon month (one line per day).
2. Sleep bar only.
3. Plan vs actual for one week each quarter.
4. Bus time log (minutes per trip, per week).
5. Energy at wake, midday, end of shift, bed.
6. Recovery time after high-sensory blocks.
7. Shift rotation calendar with anchor sleep shaded.
8. "Hidden time" list: pockets of 15+ minutes you found.

23. Glossary

• 168 hours: the hours in a week (7 × 24).
• Anchor point: a set moment when you fill in everything since the last one.
• Anchor sleep: hours you sleep on both work and off days to keep your body clock steady (NIOSH).
• Day Reconstruction Method (DRM): rebuilding yesterday as episodes and rating each.
• Episode: a scene of the day with a clear start and end (place, activity or company changes).
• Experience sampling (ESM), ecological momentary assessment (EMA): answering short questions when prompted during the day.
• Hatching: line or dot patterns used instead of colour.
• Hour grid: a table of hours by days.
• Hour ribbon: one line of 24 cells per day, shaded by code.
• Jibun Techo: Kokuyo's three-part planner with a 24-hour weekly.
• Lifelog: an ongoing record of daily life, broader than time alone.
• Plan vs actual: planning and logging side by side.
• Quantified Self (QS): the self-tracking movement and community founded in 2007.
• Soft resistance: Nafus and Sherman's term for how QS members reshape their own data practices.
• Techo: Japanese for planner or notebook.
• Time makeover: Vanderkam's step after logging: deciding what to change.
• Time-use survey: a national survey of how people spend time, like the ATUS.

24. FAQ

1. How long should I log? One week is enough to learn something. Vanderkam logs continuously but recommends one week a year as a minimum. Quarterly is a good middle.

2. 15 minutes or 30? 30 for most people. 15 if your days are chopped up. Consistency beats detail.

3. What if I forget for half a day? Reconstruct it at night by scenes. If you can't, leave it blank.

4. Should I rate every block? No. Rate episodes, or rate 3–4 times a day.

5. My shifts rotate. How do I make a week work? Log by work cycle, start the grid at your wake time, and shade anchor sleep.

6. Isn't this just surveillance of myself? It can become that. Keep it on paper, log in bursts, review without verdicts, and stop if it makes things worse.

7. Does tracking make you happier? There's no strong evidence it does on its own. Recording progress toward a specific goal does help reach that goal.

8. Can I show my log to a doctor? Yes, especially a sleep log. Standard sleep diaries exist for this.

9. What about apps that track automatically? They're accurate for screen time and steps, but miss feelings and context. Paper keeps the data with you.

10. How do I total without a calculator? Count shaded cells in half-hours and divide by 2. Check each day adds to 24.

25. For Journalwright Studio

Journalwright Studio designs printed journals in a block editor, with an optional e-ink companion (the X4 companion). The "Built?" columns say what exists today; anything else is planned.

a. Printed book

b. X4 companion

c. Proposed editor blocks

d. Proposed method layout: "Time log"

(Planned: the method layouts in the editor today are the original page, Bullet Journal daily, Hobonichi, Five Minute and Theme System day.)

1. sky (moon, sun, season)
2. events
3. sleeptimes (quality on)
4. ribbon (from 5, 24 hours, energy on)
5. timeline (actual on) — optional, off by default
6. care
7. episodes (n 6) — off by default; on for a reconstruction week
8. review (went well, was hard, tomorrow)
9. body (lines)

e. Don't adopt

• Streaks, scores, percentages of "productive" time. Feed shame; against the calm design.
• Reminders every 15 or 30 minutes. Notifications are out of scope for the companion, and they make logging feel like surveillance.
• Colour coding. Print is black and white; use hatches and letters.
• Food amounts or calories in the log. Eating-disorder risk; keep meals as landmarks only.
• Location logging on the device. Privacy; nothing leaves the device except over its own hotspot, and location isn't needed.
• The 24-hour ring. Hard to fill and scan; the ribbon does the same job.
• Totals in the Keeper. Different purpose; Keeper holds hints and handoffs.

26. Open questions

• Does keeping a time log, by itself, improve wellbeing? No trial found. Harkin 2016 is about goal progress, not open-ended logs.
• The Jibun Techo's first release year: Kokuyo says 2014; a retailer says 2013. Likely both are right (released late 2013 for the 2014 year) but not confirmed.
• Best block size for people with ADHD: community says coarser is better; no study found.
• Whether a shaded ribbon can be read reliably by the scan pipeline at 5.5×8.5 without handwriting recognition. Needs a test print.
• How much the DRM's findings (909 employed women in Texas, 2004) generalise to shift workers and disabled people.
• Gary Wolf's 2009 Wired article and a forthcoming 2026 book could not be opened.

27. Further reading

• Laura Vanderkam, 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think (2010): the practical case for one-week logs.
• Laura Vanderkam's blog time-tracking challenge posts (2021, 2025): real logs and reader questions.
• Kahneman et al., "A Survey Method for Characterizing Daily Life Experience: The Day Reconstruction Method," Science (2004): the DRM paper; short and readable.
• Deborah Lupton, The Quantified Self (Polity, 2016): the sociology of self-tracking and its politics.
• Dawn Nafus and Jamie Sherman, "This One Does Not Go Up to 11" (2014): an ethnography of QS meetups, open access.
• Gary Wolf, "The Quantified Self," TED@Cannes (2010): the movement's pitch in five minutes.
• Carney et al., "The Consensus Sleep Diary" (2012): the standard sleep log and how it was built.
• NIOSH Training for Nurses on Shift Work and Long Work Hours: clear shift-work sleep advice.

28. Sources

All checked 2026-09-28.

1. Kahneman D, Krueger AB, Schkade D, Schwarz N, Stone AA. "A Survey Method for Characterizing Daily Life Experience: The Day Reconstruction Method." Science 306 (2004): 1776–1780. PDF copy: https://pdodds.w3.uvm.edu/files/papers/others/everything/kahneman2004a.pdf
2. Norbert Schwarz (USC Dornsife). "Day Reconstruction Method, Time Use, and Well-Being." https://dornsife.usc.edu/norbert-schwarz/day-reconstruction-method-time-use-and-well-being/
3. Harkin B, Webb TL, Chang BPI, et al. "Does Monitoring Goal Progress Promote Goal Attainment? A Meta-Analysis of the Experimental Evidence." Psychological Bulletin 142 (2016): 198–229. American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/bul-bul0000025.pdf
4. Carney CE, Buysse DJ, Ancoli-Israel S, et al. "The Consensus Sleep Diary: Standardizing Prospective Sleep Self-Monitoring." Sleep 35(2) (2012): 287–302. Oxford Academic. https://academic.oup.com/sleep/article-abstract/35/2/287/2558899
5. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. "American Time Use Survey: Overview." https://www.bls.gov/tus/overview.htm
6. NIOSH / CDC. "Module 9. Coping with the Night and Evening Shifts, Sleep (Continued)." NIOSH Training for Nurses on Shift Work and Long Work Hours. https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/work-hour-training-for-nurses/longhours/mod9/06.html
7. Laura Vanderkam. "168 Hours" (book page). https://lauravanderkam.com/books/168-hours/
8. Laura Vanderkam. "168 Hours Time Management Worksheet" (PDF). https://lauravanderkam.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/168-hours-v2.pdf
9. Laura Vanderkam. "Tracking time — care to join?" (2021). https://lauravanderkam.com/2021/01/tracking-time-care-to-join/
10. Laura Vanderkam. "Welcome to the 2025 Time Tracking Challenge." https://lauravanderkam.com/2025/01/welcome-to-the-2025-time-tracking-challenge/
11. Kokuyo. "Jibun Techo" (series page). https://www.kokuyo.com/en/stationery/series/jibun-techo/
12. Kokuyo Official Store. "Jibun Techo 2027 guide." https://www.kokuyostore.com/en_US/jibun-techo-guide.html
13. Quantified Self. "What is the Quantified Self?" https://quantifiedself.com/about/what-is-quantified-self/
14. Quantified Self (blog). "What is The Quantified Self?" https://quantifiedself.com/blog/what-is-the-quantified-self/
15. Gary Wolf. "The Quantified Self." TED@Cannes, June 2010. https://www.ted.com/talks/gary_wolf_the_quantified_self
16. Wikipedia. "Gary Wolf (journalist)." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Wolf_(journalist)
17. Nafus D, Sherman J. "This One Does Not Go Up to 11: The Quantified Self Movement as an Alternative Big Data Practice." International Journal of Communication 8 (2014): 1784–1794. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/download/2170/1157/11839
18. Lupton D. The Quantified Self. Polity / Wiley, 2016. https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Quantified+Self-p-9781509500598
19. Wikipedia. "Experience sampling method." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_sampling_method