keeping track of time

A married couple I know was once having strange problems running out of money every month, even though their income was OK and their expenses apparently not that high at first glance. They went to a financial advisor, who said “keep track of everything you buy for one month, and then we’ll talk about the results.”

They followed this instruction, and it turned out they were losing lots of money because they were doing most of their shopping at convenience stores, where prices are heavily inflated compared with supermarkets and grocery stores. Problem solved.

If I did a similar exercise with time, I suspect it would reveal that the internet is eating up too much of my time. I may try to move to a system of only three email checks per day, something like that, rather than having it on most of the time during the day.