The Time Audit: Where Your Hours Actually Go
The Story You Tell Yourself
You think you know where your time goes. Clinic takes up most of it. Then research. Then all the admin stuff no one warns you about.
But you're guessing. Everyone guesses.
I ask every physician I coach to track their time for one week before we start working together. Not with a fancy app. Just a notebook or a spreadsheet. Write down what you did and how long it took. Every hour, every day, for seven days.
What the Data Actually Shows
The results are almost never what people expect. Here's what I see over and over.
Email eats more than you think. You'll swear you spend 30 minutes a day on it. The audit says two hours. Sometimes three.
Meetings expand to fill every gap. That "light committee load" turns out to be eight hours a week. Hours you didn't account for because each meeting felt small on its own.
Your protected time isn't protected. You have research time on the calendar. But the audit reveals it gets interrupted, shortened, or borrowed against almost every week.
Why the Gap Matters
The gap between where you think your time goes and where it actually goes is not a small thing. It's the reason your goals feel out of reach even when you're working constantly.
You can't fix a schedule you haven't honestly examined. And you can't set better boundaries until you see exactly where the current ones are failing.
How to Do It
Keep it simple. For one week, log every block of 30 minutes or more. At the end, group your hours into categories: clinical, research, teaching, admin, email, meetings, personal. Then compare those totals to what you would have guessed before you started.
That comparison is the whole point. The surprise is the data.
If the numbers don't match the story you've been telling yourself and you want help doing something about it, let's talk.
