Michael Gonzalez 1
Time Log Analysis
GAP Analysis
Before this assignment, I had the assumption that I was evenly balancing my time between each type
of task but just looking at the data I could see how that assumption was wrong. The data showed me
that my time is not spent how I thought it was nor how I want to be spending it. As I do have the
understanding that some tasks are more important and take more time, my desire would be for there
to be a much lower difference between the time I spend on the day-to–day tasks and the “fun time”
tasks. Ideally, I would be spending 35% of my time sleeping, 25% on important, urgent tasks, 15%
on important, not urgent tasks, 10% on not important, urgent tasks and finally 15% on not important,
not urgent tasks.
There are many factors that I think could contribute to this misalignment of how my time is spent but
a factor that has heavily affected my time more recently would be starting my graduate program.
Having been out of school for 5 years I have been heavily prioritizing getting back into the student
mentality and as a result of this is I have been spending a lot of my time prioritizing school
assignments and class.
Time & Energy Assessment (Schwartz Framework)
As Tony Schwartz states, “time is a finite resource” and after looking at my time log, I can see I am
not making the best use of this resource, which is creating, as Schwartz calls it, an energy
management crisis. In terms of the body, I may be getting a sufficient amount of sleep, but I am not
regularly working out or even taking routine breaks from my work to be able to renew that source of
energy. I struggle to eat breakfast and my diet has become a mess as I am just eating what I can for
meals instead of making any conscious decisions of fueling my body.
When it comes to the mind, I am not able to truly focus on tasks at hand specifically in terms of
school and work. I find myself acknowledging everything that needs to be done but as I am working
on one task, I can become distracted if anything else urgent comes up which prolongs how much
time it takes me to complete just one task.
As for emotions, I undoubtedly get very anxious and insecure when any task is assigned to me that I
feel I cannot perform well at, which creates unnecessary additional stress. This results in me
spending more time and energy trying to overcome my emotions and not tending to the task at hand.
Finally, in terms of spirit, I should be spending more time and energy on tasks that truly make me
happy and allocating my time to things I deem the most important. My time and energy are being
depleted because I focus so much of my attention on urgent school and work tasks that truly aren’t
important to me. For example, I excel at what I do professionally, but my work isn’t what I want to
be spending all my time and energy on and doesn’t align with my purpose.
Emotions
Looking at the emotion criteria in Schwartz’s energy audit I am successfully allowing myself the
time to spend with my family and loved ones as well as frequently allowing myself to express my
appreciation to others and savor my accomplishments. Areas that I need to work on include
feeling irritable, impatient, and anxious when my work is demanding and spending more of my
Michael Gonzalez 2
time on tasks that I deeply enjoy. I work best when I am in a positive, happy mindset. The minute
my perspective changes and I become anxious, stressed, or irritable about something I find my job
performance not as strong. On average I would say that this typically happens about 2-3 times a
week, especially when deadlines are approaching, and more work is added to my list of projects.
This is specifically evident when I work on tasks that I do not enjoy. So much of my time is just
dreading doing something or working up the motivation in myself to get the job done. This affects
my work as a designer because I need to approach my work with a fresh creative mind but when I
am stressed or annoyed about working on a project, I am not fully allowing creativity to be
expressed.
These negative, or fight-for-flight, emotions I begin to develop about a task result in falling into
the Christensen trap of “I will do it tomorrow.” An example of this would be in my current role
where I am responsible for updating technical documents, such as warranties and manuals, for our
customers. Other departments send me emails when there is an update necessary and on average, I
receive about 4 emails a week. These types of updates do not take a large amount of time to
complete and become a nuisance because they are not important as working on marketing
campaigns. Because these tasks take away time for me to work on marketing campaigns, I have
developed a strong distaste for them. These tasks are easily completed with little difficulty but the
irritable, negative emotion I have developed towards doing the updates has repeatedly made me
fall into the thinking of just “I will do it tomorrow.” By pushing off completing the task more
urgently I typically end up having to do several updates at once and spending half of my day
doing the necessary updates that I could have done more quickly had I did them when I was first
