I used 11 categories to track every hour of my life for 5 years.
Trevor Sweet/Reddit
The categories I use are sleep, family, friends, dating/partner, school, work, productive, hobbies & skills, relaxation & leisure, waste, health & travel. Each category has a number and color designation.
Initially, keeping track of what I was doing every hour was challenging. I would occasionally forget to keep track for a few days, and I’d have to backtrack to fill in the data by looking at texts, phone calls, and even my bank statement to jog my memory.
Naturally, a lot of people thought the project was a little weird, and people would sometimes jokingly ask what category I was putting them into.
But overall, my friends and family were supportive and just curious about where it would go.
It’s really interesting to look at the data and think about how each of these colored cells represents a moment in my life, some of which are pivotal moments. The project captured an important period of my life: my late teens and my entire college studies. One of my favorite parts is looking through all of it and getting some memories to come up that I wouldn’t have otherwise been able to remember. It’s sort of an engine for nostalgia:
