You spent the afternoon with a relative. There was lunch to prepare, a letter to work through and a lift to arrange. Between those things, you read. A list of tasks would leave out the fact that you stayed nearby throughout.
This paper exercise keeps a timeline of what happened and a separate note about being available. The two can overlap. You can describe both without adding the same hours again.
Choose a stretch you can describe
Start with one afternoon, evening or other period you want to remember. Write the date, the approximate beginning and end, and what you were there to do. Keep the personal detail as brief as you want.
For this exercise, care tasks are things you can name: making a meal for someone, helping with correspondence, arranging transport or spending time keeping them company. Availability means a period when you had agreed to stay nearby or be reachable. Write what that agreement involved; having your phone with you does not, by itself, define such a period.
Give the timeline and availability their own places
On the timeline, describe each span once. That might include care tasks, your own activities and gaps you cannot reconstruct. You can use broad blocks rather than timing every small interruption.
Beside it, write the availability window and its conditions: “13:00–17:00, staying at the house and ready to help.” This note can cover the same hours as several timeline entries. Label it as overlapping context so you do not add it to the timeline total.
A fictional afternoon with overlapping responsibility
This example is invented. Ari agreed to stay with a relative from 13:00 until a cousin arrived at 17:00. The availability continued throughout, including during Ari’s own activities. The entries below are rounded estimates of that four-hour stretch.
| Time | Timeline entry | Duration |
|---|---|---|
| 13:00–13:30 | Prepare lunch and clear up for relative | ½ h |
| 13:30–14:30 | Read a book | 1 h |
| 14:30–15:15 | Help relative work through letters | ¾ h |
| 15:15–16:00 | Unknown activity | ¾ h |
| 16:00–16:30 | Help arrange tomorrow’s lift | ½ h |
| 16:30–17:00 | Listen to the radio | ½ h |
Availability: 13:00–17:00, 4 hours, all overlapping the timeline. The 1¾ hours of care tasks are within those 4 hours, so they are not added to make 5¾. Ari remembers remaining available during the unknown activity; that does not establish what happened in that gap.
Keep mixed activities and uncertain memories visible
If you make your own lunch while preparing someone else’s, one half-hour can have both descriptions. Write “Lunch for both of us” and count the half-hour once. You do not have to decide a precise fraction for each person. Use the same approach when a task helps more than one relative.
If help and your own activities were interwoven too closely to separate, keep a combined block and explain the mixture. Leave the care-task subtotal unresolved rather than guessing a split. “Several interruptions while reading, durations unclear” preserves more than an invented total.
Use “around” for uncertain boundaries. If you cannot remember when someone else took over, keep that uncertainty beside the availability window. A planned handover time is a cue to check, not proof of when it happened.
Read the record without asking one number to explain it all
In Ari’s example, the hour of reading happened while staying available at the house. It does not establish that the same hour could have been used for a trip out. Keep that condition with the entry if you later review the week.
If you repeat the exercise, keep the dates on both the timeline and availability notes. When two availability notes overlap, such as being nearby and reachable by phone, count their shared clock time only once in any availability total.
Task hours and availability describe different aspects of the same time. Neither number measures effort, the importance of the care or the whole responsibility. You can keep just the notes if totals do not answer a question you have.
Keep a page for yourself
Copy a care-time worksheet
Use paper or your own notes. Approximate boundaries, combined blocks and unknown activities are allowed.
UNPAID CARE RECORD Date and stretch covered: Care context, in as little detail as I want: TIMELINE — COUNT EACH SPAN ONCE Time or order | What happened | Approximate / known / unknown Mixed activities kept in one block: Task durations I cannot separate: AVAILABILITY — MAY OVERLAP THE TIMELINE Beginning and end, if known: What staying available involved: Any overlapping availability notes counted once: Actual handover, if remembered: CHECK Does each clock span appear only once in the timeline? Have I kept availability separate from that total? What would a task total leave out?
Use this in a place you choose. There are no answers to enter on this website.
From “How to record unpaid care and time spent available” · hoursgiven.com/guides/care-time-record
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