Social-scientific theory and research give rise to conflicting expectations regarding the extent to which individuals’ everyday lives in modern society follow predictable patterns of behavior. Much previous research has addressed this issue implicitly by documenting widespread trends in patterns of “time use” or “time allocation,” including trends in time devoted to paid work, unpaid work, and leisure. This study expands on this research by examining common patterns with respect to not how much time individuals spend on certain everyday activities (e.g., leisure), but rather how those activities are sequenced throughout the day. Using sequence methods and cluster analysis, we analyze a large collection of harmonized time diaries from the Multinational Time Use Study (MTUS), including diaries from 23 countries and dating back to 1961. Our analysis of these diaries reveals eight common everyday sequence patterns—including different paid work, unpaid work, and leisure clusters. This same set of patterns reappears in a generally similar distribution across the different countries and time periods that are included in the MTUS sequence data. This study has implications for how analysts study time diary data and raises important questions about the causes and consequences of individuals’ experiences with particular behavioral sequences.

社会科学理论和研究对人们在现代社会中的日常生活遵循可预测的行为模式的程度提出了相互矛盾的期望。以前的许多研究通过记录“时间使用”或“时间分配”模式的广泛趋势，包括专门用于有偿工作，无偿工作和休闲的时间趋势，暗中解决了这个问题。本研究通过研究常见的模式，而不是关于个人在某些日常活动（例如休闲）上花费的时间，而是全天如何对这些活动进行排序，来对本研究进行扩展。使用序列方法和聚类分析，我们分析了来自多国时间使用研究（MTUS）的大量统一时间日志，包括来自23个国家的日志，其历史可追溯至1961年。我们对这些日记的分析揭示了八个常见的日常序列模式-包括不同的有酬工作，无酬工作和休闲集群。MTUS序列数据中包含的同一组模式在不同国家和时间段内的分布大致相同。这项研究对分析师如何研究时间日志数据产生了影响，并提出了有关个人经历特定行为序列的原因和后果的重要问题。