How to track and analyze your time spent on different tasks? In this quick tips episode, Laura Kukemelk shares her screen and shows a sample Toggl Track account. If possible, we recommend watching this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/toefYtxpbic
Productivity and time management are popular topics not only for those who are on the professional development or self-improvement journey, but increasingly these things are talked about more and more in the media as well.
We are all in such a hurry - years fly by while we keep waiting for the “suitable time” to do a task or activity that we have been procrastinating on, right? Well, there is no such thing as time management. We cannot slow down time or make it go faster. We can only control what we do with the time that we have. And if you do not plan ahead and if you do not stick to your calendar, then you are allowing others to steal your time.
A few episodes back Laura talked about calendar planning. We suggest you go find the episode called “7 steps to effective calendar management”. This is definitely step number 1 on the so-called time management journey. But to understand where your time goes and whether you stay on track, Laura's advice is to use a time tracking app, such as Toggl.com.
So, why should you track your time?
- First of all, to understand where your time actually goes. It may seem to you that you spend just 5 minutes on a simple, mundane task here and there, but when you look at a longer period, it may account for hours of your time wasted. So, instead of guessing and estimating, look at facts and numbers!
- Reason number two is that it will discipline you to focus on the task at hand. You know that you are tracking the time for a certain task and therefore you are less likely to start multitasking and switching tasks midway through.
- Reason number three is that it will give you valuable information about how you could improve productivity and efficiency.
Make sure to watch the YouTube video as Laura shares her screen and shows a sample Toggl Track account: how to use Clients and Projects to categorize your tasks, how to edit time entries and how to view reports to understand where your time goes.
We encourage you to give tracking your time a try and track every task that you do for at least two weeks. This way you will already start seeing some patterns and it will help you plan better for the future!