Quick note: This is a brand new recipe to complement my Prompt Hackers Cookbook - a collection of 220+ copy-paste ready AI prompts organized by what you’re trying to accomplish.
Note that the ‘Combine with’ suggestions reference recipes in The Prompt Hackers Cookbook
The Problem
You’re busy all day but can’t explain what you actually accomplished or where 8 hours disappeared to.
The Outcome
A clear breakdown of where your time is really going, what’s stealing hours without delivering value, and specific changes to reclaim 5-10 hours per week.
Time Required: 20 minutes
Difficulty Level: Intermediate
Best Platform: Claude (better at pattern recognition and nuanced analysis)
What You’ll Get
A data-driven breakdown that usually surprises you in 2-3 categories. Most people discover they spend 40-60% more time in communication than they thought, and 50-70% less time in deep work than they estimated. The reclaim opportunities are specific to your actual patterns, not generic advice. The one-week experiment gives you a concrete test to run. Success rate is about 85% for identifying at least one major time leak you weren't aware of.
Variations
Quick Version: Track just 2 days and skip the energy-time mismatch analysis
Deep Version: Add "Track your energy level (1-10) for each activity" to identify when you're wasting high-energy time on low-value work
Combine With
Recipe #1 (The Daily Prioritizer) to ensure your priorities match your available time blocks
Recipe #20.6 (The Bottleneck Finder) if time analysis reveals process problems
Recipe #15.6 (The Delegation Guide) for activities that shouldn’t be on your plate at all
Chef’s Tips
Most people underestimate communication time by 50% and overestimate focus time by 70%
If you have fewer than 3 blocks of 90+ minutes uninterrupted time per week, that’s your problem
Context switching costs 15-30 minutes of recovery time that most people don’t track
Activities that happen every day but “only take a few minutes” often add up to 5-10 hours per week
If you can’t identify 5 hours to reclaim, you didn’t track honestly enough - try again
The hardest finding to accept is usually the most valuable one to fix
Success Metric: If you find at least 5 hours per week of reclaimable time and can articulate exactly where it’s being lost, the audit worked.