Chronometry that helps protect schedule and manage your life

I wish to begin my explanation of chronometry and Lyubishev’s system with the maxim:

That said, we can assume that a person is a natural constraint for productivity, and even if the person can work non-stop, he still, at some point, runs out of energy; the fact is that the unprotected calendar merely exacerbates the energy drain.

The ultimate idea that I wish to convey with the passages above, before jumping into the chronometry, is that every aspect of productivity and possibly any professional success hinges on how bullet-proof the calendar is against the encroachment of others’ tasks, and to really understand one’s own calendar it is necessary to know the structure of daily activities, and the best example¹ of such analysis would be the Russian biologist Alexander Lyubishev.

Back in 1910-1916, when no one yet spoke about productivity slash efficiency of intellectual labour², he created a system that, in combination with a strict note-taking routine and reading habits, allowed him to become one of the most prolific scientists of his age³. And everything he became in the later stages of his life began with a failure⁴.

In the beginning of the 20th century, biologists usually didn’t apply the laws of statistics to their research, at least not the majority; it wasn’t a common practice. Lyubishev, like many scientists of the time, during the summer vacation picked a “thing” to pursue⁵. In the summer of 1910 he decided to study statistics and by the end of summer failed. First he thought that maybe he didn’t have a knack for math⁶, but he didn’t beat himself up over the lack of results. Instead, Lyubishev decided the next summer to count how much time he had devoted to studying statistics in the first place, so he started counting, and found a habit he kept for the remaining 56 years of his life.

An eye opening practice

Counting time opened his eyes. Among other things that he pursued during summer⁷, he studied statistics for only 10 hours during the whole time. Which is a measly amount for any math studies⁸. Learning this, he decided to take control of his life and started counting everything that he did⁹.

His routine had been quite straightforward: he simply recorded everything¹⁰. Throughout the day he wrote down every activity that he was engaged with. In the evening Lyubishev used a typewriter to put down the activities in an ordered journal, and later kept every typed journal in one place¹¹.

Here is an example of chronometry from May (the whole month) of 1925¹²:

For many, this level of detail will be the biggest obstacle. Mimicking Lyubishev’s system will be excessive for any contemporary person. Several times I attempted to recreate Lyubishev’s logging routine, but every time I failed miserably¹³.

At first I thought maybe I was not made for that shit, but instead of abandoning it, I delved even deeper into Lyubishev’s work schedule, which led me to devise a completely different approach to logging, which I have now practiced for more than a decade, with ups and downs of course, but the system is pretty much alive and is growing.

Lyubishev’s work schedule, like that of any professional nowadays, spanned from 12 to 13 hours¹⁴, which he apportioned evenly between teaching duties, scientific work, social life and leisure that included family time and various travelling. He also counted the time he slept, as you have seen from the sample report above.

To structure his daily activities, he devised a standard that he called “a half of evening equivalent” (HEE). When I first looked into the concept I couldn’t find anything, so I assumed that it was just three hours (which I set as my basic measure). Much later, poring over ancient guides and old instructions, I found an obscure publication for a local university that he wrote back in 1951, while he was working in Ulyanovsk¹⁵.

He wrote to university students with one idea in mind: to provide the next generation of scientists with tools that help them manage their intellectual load more efficiently. Which he declared in the following fashion:

According to this guide slash instructions, HEE consisted of evenly distributed 2-hour blocks throughout the day; in these blocks he planned certain types of activities, like teaching students or planning his lessons, reading, attending meetings, etc. As you remember, prior to finding the real measure of HEE I decided that mine would be three hours.

The logic that I implemented was this — if a day has three big sections:

1. Morning: 6 AM – 12 PM
2. Afternoon: 12 PM – 6 PM
3. Evening: 6 PM – 12 AM

Then HEE would be just three hours¹⁶, half of the equivalent of 6 hours:

1. 9 AM – 12 PM
2. 12 PM – 3 PM
3. 3 PM – 6 PM
4. 6 PM – 9 PM

Because I am an early riser, I have made for myself a 2-hour block from 5 AM to 7 AM. During this I work with my notes, writing essays (this one included), process ideas from the past day and reflect. Lyubishev had a habit of typing up his day’s proceedings every evening; I do this in the morning instead, in this two-hour block. Another block from 7 to 9 is family time: we gather for breakfast and get ready for school and work; this is also when the commute to work takes place.

Later, when I got into the habit of working in my variations of HEE, I found similarities with the Maker’s and Manager’s schedules described by Paul Graham¹⁷.

The HEE in Lyubishev’s system and mine serves the purpose of structuring the day and planning daily activities, which in my case are mostly similar to what Lyubishev had¹⁸. For everyone’s convenience, I will also mark them as elements of Paul Graham’s Maker’s and Manager’s schedule.

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Work-related activities: teaching both at school and university, taking notes (self-teaching), planning lessons, general planning of the day/week/month/year. MAKER

Social-related activities: attending meetings, participating in conferences, engaging in other professional gatherings, communicating online (commenting on social media¹⁹). MANAGER

Travelling: quite a broad category that encompasses errands and leisure. MANAGER

Illnesses: unforeseen and unavoidable. This category also includes various urgent tasks that disrupt the daily routine.

Research-related activities: Reading, annotating, writing. Like Lyubishev, I have several pursuits, such as incessantly learning what is interesting, studying what is needed to stay professional, and reading for leisure. Writing scientific articles, essays, books, publishing notes in my digital garden, planning new education programs, shooting and publishing videos. MAKER

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Knowing the structure of one’s day is the best remedy for detoxifying attention from modern-age distractions. Perception of daily activities, personal role and occupation opens the way to flexible planning that accommodates day-to-day realities.

The more a person understands the structure of the day and the activities he is engaged in, the better he is at planning, and the more reliable and bullet-proof his calendar is. And past experience is the best way to plan, but to obtain experience in planning one MUST calculate and assess the time spent on various activities, so as not to deceive himself.

The recipe to start

As I promised in the beginning, I am duty-bound to fulfill my part now in explaining how to start.

The greatest obstacle for logging, as far as I can tell from the experience of teaching others, is the distractions coming from the tools we use to log. Most people at the beginning of the practice are naturally drawn to use phones or other digital tools, but the gravest pitfall of using them is that they send the wrong signals.

Phone and tablet cues are not “take me to think and work”, but “use me to entertain yourself”²⁰. So the moment we pick up the phone to log, we are usually bombarded with distractions that come from social media, pings in messengers, etc.

Logging is a habit, and to have one you need to create the conditions for a habit to settle. So my advice is simple: copy Lyubishev’s approach almost exactly. Use A6 notebooks to log your proceedings, and the following day read them as if it were someone else’s diary, open a digital note-taking app²¹ and reflect on the day you relived while reading. Start small, create sections in the daily note and populate them with what took place in that period of time, with one general idea upfront followed by elaboration, like this:

### 05:00 - 07:00

* **Activity:** Writing an essay
* **Notes:** I’ve been writing an essay for [80 min] straight. Proofread the first part, updated some ideas, and worked over the recipe section. Added over 700 words, still a lot to do. Got distracted by the urge to reach for my phone, looking for messages.

Many at this point might exclaim: “OK, you tell us to take notes of what we do, but I can’t!” And they will be correct: it is not the easiest practice, not only because phones and tablets cue different signals, but also because usually the habit of logging needs to settle, and I have found a solution for how to make the habit stick.

I just had to log every time I felt the urge to touch my phone. Instead of reaching for the phone, I reach for the notebook and log answers to the two following questions:

1. What have I done in-between urges to reach for the phone?
2. What do I want to do next? Or what have I learned in the span of time between urges?

The answers were sobering: I didn’t do anything meaningful and learned nothing. The practice of logging before touching the phone led to another unexpected outcome: not only have I learned to log systematically, but I have also decreased the amount of screen time. I used my phone three times less.

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BIO

🧠 theBrain mapping

ID: 202606030711 Source:: Friend:: Child:: Next::

Footnotes

1. As far as I can judge from the studied daily routines of many, many, many other scientists, artists, and productivity gurus ↩

2. The first person known to me would be Drucker, much later, in 1960. ↩

3. “Influential” undersells it. In his lifetime he published more than 70 scientific works, but the published portion is only the visible tip. His full legacy — across general biology, entomology, mathematics, philosophy and the history of science, together with a vast scientific correspondence — runs to roughly 500 author’s sheets, the equivalent of about 12,500 typed pages. And the taxonomy of ground fleas was merely a side pursuit done in his “spare” time: by 1955 he had assembled a personal collection of 35 boxes holding some 13,000 specimens. https://min.news/en/culture/ce0264b91a2c95789692f0f94e5b112d.html ↩

4. As is usual with almost everything important and significant ↩

5. Feynman had a similar habit ↩

6. Nowadays biology is a highly math-dependent subject ↩

7. Collecting critters and catching butterflies ↩

8. A friend of mine, a math professor, is used to saying that studying math is best described by the principle of the stone arse. You sit and study until your arse feels like a stone; you get up, walk around a bit, and sit again. Hence, 10 hours in three months of summer is NOTHING compared to what is really needed to obtain any level of proficiency. ↩

9. In modern conditions it would be overkill, and many might (after learning the benefits such logging brings) want to start behaving in a manner similar to Lyubishev’s and will inevitably (as I did) fail. We are not Lyubishevs, and we live in a different time. By the end of this note I will give a solution for how to start, so be patient. ↩

10. For example, his logs from 1937 to 1948 consist of two heavy volumes of meticulously documented work ↩

11. Some (big) chunk of his archive was destroyed during the WWII bombing of Leningrad, where he worked at the time. ↩

12. It was the most productive month of the year, according to Lyubishev, and, as far as I remember, he used it to demonstrate to his students how to log time. ↩

13. For this I actually found an explanation: I logged with too much detail, thought of it as a photo of the day, didn’t understand the purpose, and logged everything with equal precision. Later I thought it through and adapted to modern conditions. I also devised one trick that put me into the habit of logging. ↩

14. Mind that the quality of his 12 hours is not similar to ours. Lyubishev’s 12 hours were highly intensive work, usually without any distractions. He had no social networks to scroll through; he had to work with pen and paper, not screen and keyboard. Saying this, I mean that his pace of work cannot be compared to ours. He did less, but he was much more engaged in his activities and definitely more focused on the task in front of him. ↩

15. Любищев А. Руководство для начинающих научных работников. [Электронный ресурс]. URL: http://blog.nazarovsky.ru/2012/10/blog-post.html (дата обращения: 12.02.2025). ↩

16. Mind this: I devised this myself without referencing Lyubishev’s system; I didn’t know at the moment that his blocks were just 2 hours ↩

17. Graham P. Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule [Электронный ресурс]. URL: https://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html (дата обращения: 20.09.2024). ↩

18. I think anybody reading these lines might find the categories below adaptable to the majority of roles and occupations ↩

19. As part of my routine ↩

20. Another big concept that I wish to elaborate on at some point ↩

21. Obsidian, Notion, Anytype, etc. ↩