Tracking your daily activity

- Are you aware of how you are spending your time? Many people when they do a self audit of where their time is going are shocked at the inefficiencies in their day. This is why that I recommend that occasionally, not all the time, you do a self assessment where you track how your using your time. What I mean is that you make a minute by minute assessment of what activity you're working on and where your focus is. In it's most basic form you'll want to create a chart that looks a little bit like this.

You have a column for activity, a column for start time, a column for end time, and then a total of how much time was spent in that activity. It's not necessary but if you wanted to go the extra mile you could also add a column for category. Meaning the type of activity such as marketing and sales or free time or time with family. Don't get too caught up in the details though because the value of this exercise comes primarily from the awareness that it brings to your day and to your mind.

As an alternative to a hand written chart you could search for time tracking apps which will show you a variety of tools available for your smartphone. Now, how long should you do this exercise for? Personally I don't think it's practical to try to track your time for more than one day. The act of tracking your time itself becomes extremely cumbersome and distracting. If the whole point of time management is to help you get more time excessive time tracking is going to get in the way, but if you did this once every three months or so, every quarter, and we did it for just one day that can provide some valuable insight into how your spending your time.

As you track your time, be aware of the following. First, be conscious of how many switches are taking place in your day. We want to look not just at what kind of activities you are doing throughout your day, but also how long you can focus and be single minded on one task until some interruption of some kind gets in the way. My guess is you're going to be shocked at how many times you're being interrupted. Many people are interrupted 20 times or more per hour whether it's due to a message popping up, to someone calling them or coming by their office, to just themselves interrupting their own work with their own great thoughts.

Look at how many interruptions are occurring in your hour. Then consider steps you can take to reduce interruptions. Reducing these switches in your attention can have a multiplying effect in freeing up available time. Next, be aware of how much time you spend in your most valuable activities. If you need help in figuring out what your MVA's are, you might want to check out Time Management Fundamentals where I walk you through the process.

Most people are spending far too little time in their most valuable activities. Then take a look at how much time you're spending in your least valuable activities. These are the things that are worth very little, perhaps minimum wage type work. Most people are shocked at how much time they spend doing minutia that could be delegated easily to someone else. Finally, after you run this test for a day and look at the results ask yourself one question: what is one thing I'm going to change as a result of what I've learned? There will likely be many changes that you could make, but by focusing your improvement to one clear actual item you'll increase the likelihood that you follow through and make a positive change in your schedule.