Firstly, the reason I created the sample time cost table was to use it as an example of myself coming home from work. Because of work being left out in this table, anything before 7 pm was not logged. So from 7 pm, the 30 minute break was cooking and eating, which are both necessary expenditures for the day and labeled as ‘Ate Dinner’ on the chart. What was good from this example table is that, if I get home at 7 pm, and I use the 3 hours of the 3.5 hours you have before you sleep (say at 11 pm after a shower in my case), I would call that a very productive day. Think of the other ways you could have used the time: napping, watching TV, checking email, writing on the blog… In this case, I had a goal I was working towards, which was to do well on the GMAT. I helped get closer to that goal by using the free time wisely on this particular evening. Say you are doing a time cost table for a Saturday, you should fill it out completely by beginning the log when you wake up. Track everything you do down to the minute and see how much time you use on tasks not associated with achieving your goals. Hopefully, you will notice a pattern by being attentive to how you spend your time, which should subsequently allow you to alter your behavior to better accomplish your goals. Lately, like I mentioned in the post, I’ve started to use it as a challenge for the day by seeing how many hours I can get of productive time. By doing this, it helps me stay on top of my time rather than watching the television and literally watching the time fly by. Of course, everyone needs downtime or their brains would explode. So be rational about it, but take it seriously, and you should start to see your productivity soar.