Time Codes for Life

At my job, we have to log time for every single task we do, whether it’s billable to a customer or not. We have to account for how we spent every minute of our day. With the hectic, fast-paced nature of the business, this can often be an arduous and laborious task. The logging of time itself usually takes quite a bit of time, which we of course have to also account for. After having done this for six and a a half years now, my mind is wired to automatically tie everything I do to a time task and to register how much time I spent on that task.

I have become to hate this aspect of me, because I have started to do it for non-work things too. For example, this morning, I found myself trying to reason out where I should log the 20 minutes I just spent making baby bottles. Is it billable or not? Is there an appropriate internal work rate task I can tie it to, so I still get credit in my quarterly bonus? What non-billable task would I record it against...“Manager Assigned Tasks,” since basically my spousal unit assigned it to me?

It’s gotten ridiculous, and I can’t seem to stop it or turn it off. I measure everything against time now. Which makes me constantly aware of time, and also constantly aware of how quickly it slips by without me being able to stop it or slow it down. I can’t ever just enjoy the moments in my life, because I’m internally storing them to log to my time sheet later.

I really think I desperately need a vacation, but then I’m worried I’ll spend the whole time doing the same thing. Maybe I just need a new job, a place where this isn’t required, and I can break the cycle. Whatever the solution, I need to change something, because life can’t go on like this.