Pleasure-Purpose Time Audit
Score every activity for present pleasure and future purpose, then redesign your week.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 97%
Use your calendar as a behavioural record rather than relying on memory. After each activity, mark whether it was pleasurable in the moment and whether it served a meaningful future purpose. Work that provides either quality can remain valuable, while activities providing neither become candidates for removal, delegation, reduction, or redesign. At the end of each day, notice wins and energy drains. Then conduct a brief weekly review: compare strong and weak days, identify patterns, remove commitments that added little value, and deliberately shape the following week. The objective is not automatically to produce more. If the previous week was exhausting, the correct adjustment may be additional free time. Keeping the review to roughly 15–20 minutes and completing it on a phone makes the practice easier to sustain.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal, where Dr Grace Lordan described the calendar-based time audit and Sunday review she uses to balance fun, purpose, output, and recovery.
Core principles
- 01Good work should provide pleasure now, purpose later, or both.
- 02Calendar evidence is more useful than vague impressions about time.
- 03Activities providing neither pleasure nor purpose deserve scrutiny.
- 04A better week may contain more recovery rather than more work.
- 05Small reviews are easier to sustain than elaborate journaling.
How to run it
- 1
Capture the Calendar
Record the activities you actually perform rather than the schedule you intended to follow. Include meetings, focused work, administration, rest, and recurring distractions.
Pro tip Use your existing digital calendar to avoid creating a separate tracking system.
Watch out Retrospective memory alone tends to miss brief drains and overstate productive time.
- 2
Score Pleasure
After each activity, mark whether it was enjoyable or energising in the moment. Use a simple binary mark or short rating.
Pro tip Record the score immediately after the event when possible.
Watch out Do not assume an activity was enjoyable merely because it looked prestigious or productive.
- 3
Score Purpose
Mark whether the activity built skills, relationships, health, income, or progress that should benefit your future self. Distinguish genuine purpose from busyness.
Pro tip Ask what concrete future value the activity could create.
Watch out Purpose does not excuse an indefinitely miserable schedule.
- 4
Find the Empty Quadrant
Identify activities that offered neither pleasure nor purpose. Look for repeated meetings, obligations, and habits concentrated in this quadrant.
Pro tip Start with recurring activities because changing one can reclaim time every week.
Watch out Some unavoidable maintenance work will remain and may need redesign rather than deletion.
- 5
Craft the Job
Remove, delegate, shorten, automate, or alter low-value activities. Replace reclaimed time with work that offers pleasure, purpose, or both.
Pro tip Pair necessary but unpleasant work with a more enjoyable environment or reward.
Watch out Do not fill every recovered hour with additional work.
- 6
Run the Weekly Review
Spend 15–20 minutes reviewing the week's scores and planning the next week. Account for energy, not only output, when changing the calendar.
Pro tip Attach the review to an existing Sunday routine or commute.
Watch out An elaborate journaling ritual can create enough friction to end the habit.
In the wild
A university employee marks recurring meetings as neither enjoyable nor useful because participants repeatedly discuss issues without resolving them. She stops attending the meetings that do not require her contribution and reallocates the recovered hours to research and conversations that provide purpose or enjoyment.
→ Her calendar contains less low-value work and more time for meaningful output.
A team leader's weekly audit shows that necessary client sessions consumed more energy than expected. Instead of setting a larger output target, he preserves the essential sessions but schedules two recovery blocks and removes an optional meeting from the next week.
→ He improves his ability to show up well without treating every review as a demand for more productivity.
Common mistakes
Auditing Only Productivity
Counting completed tasks without recording pleasure, purpose, or energy can optimise a schedule that produces burnout.
Keeping Low-Value Recurrences
A meeting that repeatedly provides neither pleasure nor purpose should not survive merely because it is customary.
Making the Review Too Elaborate
Long-form journaling and specialised equipment add friction. A short phone-based review is more likely to continue.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for busy people who feel drained, directionless, or unsure which commitments to change.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal when someone lacks any discretion over their schedule and cannot yet alter or negotiate activities.
From the transcript
“Did you feel firstly a sense of purpose that it was kind of leading you to a better place in five years time? Or did…”
“my entire journaling on a Sunday evening is 15 to 20 minutes.”
From the episode
How To Build The Career You Want - Professor Of Behavioural Science Dr Grace Lordan