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That advice to track every hour just made things worse

My buddy Tom kept telling me to log every single minute of my day to stay productive and avoid burnout. I tried it for three weeks straight in my graphic design work, timing everything from emails to client calls. All it did was make me obsess over the clock and feel guilty about taking 15 minutes to eat lunch. Has anyone else found that strict time tracking just adds more stress instead of helping?
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oliviabutler
Yeah the "feel guilty about taking 15 minutes to eat lunch" part hits hard. That's just diet culture for your schedule.
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mason.drew
Hold on a second with the diet culture comparison. That's not what's happening here. Tracking your time is about measuring work output against effort, not about restricting something natural. Eating lunch isn't a failure or a cheat day. You need to eat. The guilt comes from realizing the system you set up doesn't leave room for basic human needs. It's a broken system problem, not a diet mentality problem. People who track time properly build in breaks and buffer time from the start. The issue is that Tom's advice skipped that part completely.
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