There are bros out there who make pacts to delete one another’s browser history (and porn collection) in the case of a sudden, untimely death. But, today I want to talk about a different browser history shame: one we can turn to our advantage.  

For many of us, the time we spend working at our desk is largely chronicled by our browser history. The emails we have written and read, the time we spent in a google spreadsheet, and our time on facebook can all be reconstructed through the time stamps in our browser history.  

Most of us face the question of “where did the time go”, and self-serving cognitive bias means we tend to be generous with our answers. In order for most of us to successfully make it through the day, we need to be the hero of the story we tell ourselves about the world–and our brains rely on the malleability of our memory to support that effort. Browser history helps me circumvent this bias and get more concrete about where my time is going. If I want real reasons for why I didn’t finish the items on my “now list”, my browser history gives an exact amount of time that I spent reading about eighties hair metal bands instead of my ego downplaying that time sink. 

I have a long history of having to track my time. After grad school I started in an engineering design consultancy and our revenue model was based on billable hours. Every day, I would have to reconstruct how much time I spent on each project vs. internal work like figuring out an IT issue or going to a sales meeting. When I was younger and had fewer things going on, I could pretty easily reconstruct from memory where my time went. Now that I’m officially in my fifties and my life is more complex, with more shades of gray on which activities fit into which time buckets, browser history is a great tool for sharpening up my time accounting. 

An occasional Ctrl-H has been a sobering tool for looking at how quickly and how far off topic I get. As I look at this example, I can see 

• Goal-related items I spent a reasonable amount of time on: like the distraction of other email when I went looking for files I needed from email
• Goal-related items I spent an unreasonable amount of time on: like ideas for a different piece of writing
• Things that need to just wait: like text messages

Sometimes I can also see places in my browser history where I thought I was just answering a quick email, but my self-image of “thoughtful, intelligent person” meant twenty minutes of research before I hit send. My browser history can help me remember to cut off my detours from my goal at the first hint of an obstacle like required research. My biased memory would have discounted that research effort had I not had the browser history to give me perspective. 

I do put significant time into engineering applications ,Microsoft desktop products, and sometimes in person meetings. My browser history doesn’t help as much with these, although I can sometimes see where I googled a term or a problem I encountered in an app outside the browser. For a time (pun intended) I used an app, www.rescuetime.com, tailored towards tracking hours at the computer. It gives a better rollup of time spent than just browser history, if you’re interested in being more rigorous.

And sometimes real rigor takes additional steps. Occasionally I use my calendar and create project codes for things in my personal life to track where all of my time went for a week or three. It’s super useful for getting perspective: kind of an accountant’s version of journaling. That level of time tracking gets exhausting, so I only go full-out a few weeks of the year. But, I can’t get further in life along the path I want unless I first understand how I’m spending my time.  

If you’re also feeling some shame and confusion about where your time is actually going, try hitting Ctrl-H in your browser a few times a day. It just might help you get real about prioritizing where you want to put life’s most precious commodity.