Do you struggle to know where all the time goes? It seems like there are less and less hours in the day as each year rolls bye.

Years past I had tried to use my phone calendar but it really only captured my digital meetings. In person meetings rarely got added.

Last year I tried to commit to a paper planner. I got a basic Moleskine planner, I have always used their notebooks. I assumed that if I had plans mapped out days, weeks, and even occasionally months in advance on paper that I would be able to keep better track of time.

But even this planner failed to capture the little moments throughout the day. The unplanned meetings, the diversions, the distractions. The planner captured the essence of a day or week, but what was happening in all of the blank spaces?

I needed to commit to another type of accountability so that I could better track where my time was going and where I could find space to be more attentive to God, to the Church, and to my family.

A few weeks ago I got another Moleskine paper planner for the year 2026 and got to work. I still will put events on my calendar that will happen in the future, as well as plans for projects to be finished. But this time I will also be writing the things I did or that happened after they happened. I will do so so I will be accountable to those gaps in time where I do not have something specifically planned.

For example, my Wednesday is largely spoken for. From eight in the morning to noon I am involved with Likewise and the schools. Then I have bells practice at the church at five in the evening followed by kids church until eight p.m.

But what happens between the schools and evening church? Typically it has been a hodgepodge of workouts, family, and other ministry tasks. Not usually specific enough to make it on the schedule, but important nonetheless. Usually, when I make it to the end of the week, I look back at these gaps of time and wonder where the time went?

To leave the time blank in my memory means I am not able to attend to it. I was there and I did the thing, but I was not present enough to make the moment meaningful.

Is it not our goal to make the most of every moment? To be present?

It is hard to improve our use of time if we have no awareness of where it is going. If I realize that I spent two hours plunking around eating and messing around on my phone, I can improve upon it the next day or week.

A perfect example of wasting time. I needed to go on an hour long run (is “needed” the right word here?). But when I looked back on the day, I realized it took me roughly forty five minutes to get ready for an hour run! Add a shower and shave after the run and this venture took two hours of my day. Something good and productive became a time waster, and something I can tighten up next time. I became accountable to my calendar, whereas it would have simply gone missing otherwise.

Most people I know do not have enough time in the day, and yet it is hard to comprehend where the time goes until we write it down, filling in the gaps of our lives, and become accountable to the life we are building on the moments in between.

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