How to grade your hours
To grade your hours, split your day into blocks (an hour, or a 25-minute Pomodoro). At the end of each block, write one honest sentence about what you did and mark it a color: green (lived well), amber (neutral), or red(wasted). It takes five seconds and turns your day into an honest ledger you can't argue with.
Why grade your hours at all?
Most productivity systems track what you plan to do. Grading your hours tracks what you actually did— and forces a small, honest judgment about it. That judgment is the whole point. The stoics called it the evening review: Seneca wrote that he would examine his day, “What bad habit have you cured today? What fault resisted?” Grading your hours is that practice, made small enough to do every hour instead of once a day.
The five-second method
- Pick a block length. A full hour is simplest; a 25-minute Pomodoro works if you like tighter loops.
- Do the work. Run a timer so the block has a clear boundary.
- Write one sentence. “Wrote the intro and got stuck on the outline.” Honest, not flattering.
- Mark a color. Green if you'd be glad to have spent your life this way, red if you wouldn't, amber if it was just maintenance.
What the colors mean
Green isn't “productive” — rest and time with people can be deeply green. Red isn't “lazy” — it's the hour you look back on and wish you had back. The distinction is about intention, not output. Over a week, the pattern of color tells you more than any metric: you can literally see how you spend your life.
Common mistakes
- Grading to feel good. The value is in honesty. A day of ambers you actually meant beats a day of flattering greens.
- Skipping the sentence. The note is what makes the color meaningful a month later.
- Perfectionism. A missed block is fine — the gap is its own signal.
Your Hours Are Numbered runs the timer, prompts you at the boundary, and fills your days and months with color automatically — so the only thing you have to do is be honest for five seconds.