In 2019, I went through an experiment: tracking my time in 5-minute increments during work hours for a whole week. I wanted to understand where my time was really going.
A year later, I shifted that approach. Instead of tracking everything, I focused only on what I wanted to track. I love reading, but I was also playing video games at the time. I wanted to make sure I was spending more time reading than gaming, so I tracked both. That visibility helped me make better choices—if I wasn’t sure whether I had earned my gaming time, I had to read more first. I kept that up for about two years, and it helped me maintain a healthy balance.
Eventually, I noticed months had gone by without playing games. My focus had naturally shifted. I didn’t need to track that anymore. But I kept tracking my reading. I looked at 30-day rolling averages rather than daily numbers. I set a goal to read an average of 30 minutes per day—and I hit it consistently. Over time, that average rose: 40 minutes, then 50 minutes, and finally about an hour a day.
I didn’t worry about hitting exactly 30 minutes every day. Some days I read 10 minutes; others, over an hour. What mattered most was keeping the daily streak alive. Even five minutes counted. That simple habit has held steady for years now.
From Consuming to Creating
By mid-2024, I realized I was consuming a lot—books, articles, podcasts, YouTube videos, audiobooks. But I wanted to understand my balance between consuming and creating. I had been blogging, preparing talks, and experimenting with new formats, but I didn’t know the ratio.
So I tracked it. In Q3 of 2024, I found that for every hour I spent reading, I spent two hours creating. I liked that balance. In Q4, I maintained the same approach as I learned Final Cut Pro and made YouTube videos to complement my blog posts. It was a new creative channel, and it became part of my system.
Creating, Then Shipping
Now, a year later in Q4 2025, I’ve created more content than ever. By the end of the year, it will likely be my highest number of blog posts in 20 years of blogging. I’ve also created numerous YouTube videos, launched a podcast, and started a weekly newsletter. I even shipped a short e-book this year.
But there’s a new question: am I shipping everything I create?
AI tools have made it easier to create faster and better, but not everything I start gets finished or published. I have notes for book ideas, drafts of blog posts, outlines for videos—many things in progress, but not yet shipped. So maybe it’s time to track that, too: time spent creating vs. time spent shipping.
I’m not sure yet how I’ll measure that, but I want to make sure that I keep shipping. As long as I’m putting things out into the world—publishing, sharing, completing— and, hopefully, making a positive impact, I’m fine with the balance.
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