4 Tips To Improve Your Time Tracker

As Peter Drucker said, "What gets measured, gets managed." In other words, without a baseline to evaluate improvements against, there’s no way to see if an improvement ever took place.

Know what? It is the same with time. We measure how much weight we lifted in the gym, how quick we run this morning, how many sales we’ve got today, and our income for the previous month, but have you ever tracked your work time?

Time Tracking Is Not Time Setting

Every moment of time during a work day, chances are that if you’re a working professional, you already know what task you should be doing and how you do it. Well, what do you do? You set a time and starts working. This is time "setting". You set a time – either formally or informally – then sit down and work.

It is rare to complete this piece of work in one approach because of increasing fatigue and distractions, and then understanding accurately how much time you work, both productive and wasteful, gets hazy. This is what we work to improve by providing a time tracking solution in CrocoTime. With the automatic time tracker you have a precise data that quantifies your work hours and compares it to your results, but how does it align with your hopes?

To achieve conversance and better understanding of how you spend work time, here are 4 questions to take into account while going about your workday.

What Activities I Want to Cut?

In 9 cases out of 10 it is email. Email is a real relationship killer because it’s so isolated. It means that the time spent with yourself and nobody else. Of course the reverse side is that email is fast and offers immediate feedback.

Here are two things you can do to reduce the curiosity towards new letters arriving to your inbox:

• Turn off desktop alerts. After that you won’t hear that annoying little chime which distracts you whenever you try to focus on a task.

• Try to set a schedule of checking email. For example, check inbox every 4 hours starting at 9 am. If the case in letter is urgent, my cell number is in the signature.

This way, you decide when you read emails and when you don’t.

Is This Work Worth The Amount Of Time Spent On It?

If what you work on takes a lot of time but gives small benefits (financial, of course) but is just something you love to do, you can be in a difficult situation of work and play balance. In other words, how you may find satisfaction in the work that gives more money? Or, maybe you should monetize that which you personally enjoy?

Can Someone Else Do It?

If you do work that someone who is one or two levels below in the organisation can do, you should definitely consider delegating such tasks. Don’t be afraid to take the time to teach them the in’s and out’s of what to look for and what to expect. We are not advocating here that you hold anybody’s hand, but employees need an introduction into the role they’ll fulfill. It’s never too much to set clear expectations.

What Gives the Greatest Value?

Do you actually focus on the most things, or can your time be better spent elsewhere? You will be surprised to find out that you’ve just spent 2 hours managing a project but 4 hours working out. If that’s the case, bring your dumbbells to the office. If there’s something else you want to spend time on but don’t, then why not?

Ivan Petrov is interested in using modern tools for improving efficiency of businesses. Start 14 days free trial of CrocoTime time tracker now to grow the productivity of your business.