Could time tracking be the key to great productivity? | Issue #8
In this week's bulletin, I focus on whether tracking your time - and understanding it better - could be the key to boosting productivity, and more.
Welcome to The Leadership Bulletin.
My experiences of working with people and businesses have taught me two things on time management: firstly, most people don't make the best use of their time; and secondly, most people know this already and want to improve it.
This week, I consider whether time tracking is the key to better productivity, talk about finding business lessons in unlikely places, recommend a book on empowering others and promote bursary opportunities with the Chartered Management Institute.
Let’s begin.
CAN YOU TRACK YOUR WAY TO BETTER PRODUCTIVITY?
Peter Drucker, one of the world’s great management thinkers, is perhaps best remembered through his short yet incisive comments on business, leadership and management. Even if you don’t know his name, you almost certainly know one of his phrases, such as:
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”
Drucker’s words speak to a fundamental truth about how measuring something helps us to better understand it and consequently manage it. So can measuring how we use our time, for example with a time tracker, help us improve how we spend it? I think it’s worth us exploring, so I’ve created this simple model for tracking, analysing and improving how we spend our time.
Create a list of the key tasks you complete in your working day. Try and create enough categories so that you can distinguish between how you spend your time but not so many that they lose meaning. For example, “Emails” is a suitable category; three categories for emails, breaking down between clients, direct reports and your seniors would likely be excessive. Aim for around a dozen categories and remember to include the non-work activities, like social media scrolling, as well as the work-related ones.
Track how you spend your time over a week. I’ll be doing this, too, and will be using an app, but you can also use a spreadsheet to measure how you use your time. If you are using a spreadsheet, break the day up into 15 minute chunks and record the task that takes up a majority of each segment. No matter how you’re tracking your time, one thing is critical: do not try to perform for the time tracker. Use it to record a typical week.
Analyse how you spend your time. Once you have your week recorded, I suggest creating a basic chart to see how you spent your work-related time. It doesn’t have to be anything complicated, just total up how many hours each activity took. Take some time out to look through your table and see what stands out to you. Ask yourself questions such as: “is that a good use of my time?” and “should this take up as much of my week as it does?”
Once you understand how you currently use your time, and have begun asking questions about it, you can begin to make improvements. I recommend making a list of the things you want to streamline in your working week or cut out altogether, then identify strategies for addressing them. Too much time wasted on emails? Create specific times of the day to deal with them. Interrupted too much, leading to large parts of the day lacking focus? Switch off notifications on your desktop or phone. Wasting hours every day travelling? Look at working from home an extra day, or try and shift some of your in-person meetings online. Basically, take some time to find the productivity-boosting strategies that are relevant to you.
I’ll return to this topic again in the future, but in the meantime let me know how you find tracking your time and whether it generates some eye-opening revelations about how you work. If I can help come up with some approaches to enable you to get the most out of your time, email me on lee@edfolio.co.uk.
BUSINESS LESSONS IN UNLIKELY PLACES.
I used to watch this programme called 'The Hotel'. It's about a hotel in Torquay and its eccentric team of staff - think Fawlty Towers, but with P&L reports. I was recently re-watching an episode and a clip stood out to me. It's Mark, the hotel manager, claiming he doesn't need an online booking system, despite admitting his is probably the only hotel of its size without one. Instead, they use tipex and highlighter pens in a big, scruffy book.
It's easy to mock and criticise him. Perhaps that's the point of the show. But I think every business has their own "tipex and highlighter pen system" - something we need to change to stay competitive, but that we convince ourselves is actually just part of how we do business. What's more, sometimes we tell ourselves it's what our customers like about us, without ever actually asking them or pausing to wonder if old truths remain true.
Click here to watch the clip and ask yourself: what's your "tipex and highlighter pen system" and how can you change it for the better?
IF YOU WANT TO READ SOMETHING ON…
… empowering others, try Building the Best by John Eades. Throughout this book, Eades focuses on the principles that help leaders contribute to peoples' long-term success and personal wellbeing. Building the Best provides 8 leadership principles and 16 key competencies you can apply to improve your leadership performance in a way that helps others succeed. You can get a copy from my favourite bookshop, Blackwells by clicking here.
75 SCHOLARSHIPS FROM CMI.
The Chartered Management Institute are launching a three-year bursary programme to provide aspiring managers with up to £1000 a year to develop management and leadership skills. The bursaries mark the 75th anniversary of CMI’s founding. You can find out more about the opportunity by clicking here.
22 March 2022
I personally love lists and measuring how effective they are. Great post.