I had a good conversation with Doris, one of my mastermind buddies where I sought out her help over saving time. Last year, she challenged herself to work a 25 hour work week. She has her own business and a family so I was eager to hear her suggestions. One thing she recommended was time tracking.
When I think of time tracking, I think of client facing work that is billed by the hour. However, it can also be useful for getting an overview of your time usage. At the end of the day, instead of thinking what did I do? You just need to look and see. Once you have the data, you can see if it is how you want to spend it.
I’m already using Rescuetime Lite (1) which sends me a weekly overview. It gives me an idea of which applications I am using and for how long. However, it doesn’t tell me what I’m doing on the applications. Therefore, I have just signed up for Clockify (2), a free time tracking tool.
Using this, I create a number of projects and then hit the Start button when I begin a task. In some ways, it helps me stay track on the task at hand and not wander off and be distracted. It will take a few weeks of collecting data before I will be able to see patterns.
Do you know where your time is going?
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