What is hour grading?
Hour grading is the practice of marking each hour of your day green (lived well), amber (neutral) or red (wasted) — a simple “lived vs lost” judgment — right after it happens. It takes five seconds and turns your day into an honest ledger of how you actually spent it. Your Hours Are Numbered is built around it.
The idea: lived vs lost
Every hour is either lived or lost. An hour is livedwhen you'd be glad to have spent a piece of your life that way; it's lost when it was wasted, or when it slipped by unaccounted for.
Crucially, lived isn't the same as productive. Work counts, but so do intentional rest, time with people, and play — anything you'd choose again. Only wasted time and the hours you never noticed are lost. The line is intention, not output.
How to grade an hour
- Do the work in a block or timer. Give the hour to one thing and let it run.
- Write one honest sentence. A few words on what the hour actually was.
- Mark green, amber or red. Lived well, neutral, or wasted — no overthinking it.
- Move on. The grade takes five seconds; then the next hour begins.
Hour grading vs time tracking
Time tracking asks what you did and for how long. It fills a spreadsheet with minutes but never tells you whether those minutes were worth spending.
Hour grading adds the one thing tracking leaves out: the honest judgment of whether the hour was worth it. It measures intention, not output — and that judgment is what actually changes how you spend the next hour.
Why it works
Honesty compounds. One graded hour is trivial, but a week of colors reveals a pattern you can't argue with — where your green clusters, where the red keeps creeping in.
That pattern connects to the bigger picture. See how to grade your hours for the full habit, and zoom out to your life in weeks to remember why each one counts.
FAQ
What does it mean to grade your hours?
To grade an hour is to mark it lived or lost — green (lived well), amber (neutral) or red (wasted) — based on an honest look at how you spent it. It's a five-second habit done at the end of each hour or focus block.
What counts as a 'lived' hour vs a 'lost' one?
Lived is any hour you'd be glad to have spent that way — including rest, exercise, and time with people, not just work. Lost is wasted time you'd want back, plus hours you never accounted for. The line is intention, not productivity.
Is hour grading the same as time tracking?
No. Time tracking records what you did and for how long. Hour grading adds the honest judgment — was this hour worth a piece of your life? That judgment, repeated, is what changes behavior.