Random musings: Get More Done in 2017 by Tracking Your Time #TBT

This post was obviously first published two years ago:

Even though the year is rapidly approaching the halfway point (how did that happen?), we can probably use some more help in getting the things we need to do, done!

This post is based on an article from The Art of Manliness:

To know how to be more productive, you first need to know exactly how you’re spending your minutes and hours of the day.

It's time to track your time!

To take control of your hours rather than being controlled by them and feeling lost at the end of the day, track your time. Below I walk you through the benefits and specific tools to use to conduct this experiment and begin getting more out of life.

One of the tips:

To get a better grasp on time, I thus recommend thinking about it like something more concrete: food. The propensity to get distracted is like a craving for junk food. A lack of productivity is like carrying extra pounds around the waist. And the solution? Time tracking, i.e., keeping a food diary.

It's been proven over time that those who keep a food diary, lose more weight than those who don't. So, to plug the time leaks in your day, you need to keep a time diary. I'm kind of doing both at the moment. I was just drifting through the day, when I'd suddenly realize that it was time to get ready for work and I hadn't accomplished anything. Now, I set alarms all throughtout the day to tell me when I should be doing something instead of scrolling Facebook or something along those lines. I've still got a ways to go, but it's helping. As far as the food diary, my Fitbit is keeping track of every calorie I consume and how many calories I need to burn off to lose weight.

Awareness and a healthy sense of shame and accountability add up to the fact that food diary keepers lose weight much more effectively than those who do not.

The same exact benefits and reasonings apply to keeping a record of how one spends their hours and minutes. So if you want to start seeing your productivity abs, start tracking your time.

So, how do we track our time?

Let’s first get into some specific benefits tracking your time has on productivity, and then go into the best ways to actually do it.

It Builds a Foundation For Other Productivity Methodologies

You’ll Come to Realize You’ve Been Overestimating How Long Certain Things Take…

…And Underestimating How Long You Spend on Other Things

It Keeps You Immediately Accountable

Allows You to Put More Load on the Arch

Forces You to Single-Task Rather Than Multi-Task

Now what?

Now that we’ve discovered the benefits of time-tracking, let’s get into the nitty gritty about how to actually do so to make the most of it. We’ll start with some overarching principles, then get into a few helpful tools you can use.

Honesty

Consistency

Meticulousness

There are two basic ways to track your time:

By time of day

By task

Which one do you choose?

Try both, and see what works for you. For my first few days of time-tracking, I did so by task. I’d write down, to the minute, when I started and stopped doing something and moved on to a new activity. This helped me figure out how long things actually took, and how my day was naturally being structured.

After that, I went into tracking by time increments, which is more useful for planning purposes, understanding what times of day you’re more likely to waste time, how to structure your breaks, etc. Another benefit is that when you have a timer to remind you to write down what you’ve been doing, it re-focuses you if you’ve gotten off track.

What are some of the tools that you can use to help you track your time? First. some digital tools:

RescueTime

Toggl

ATracker

Evernote

And some analog tools:

168 Hours Timesheet

Pocket notebook

Be sure to check out the article for descriptions of these tools to see which ones might fit your needs.

2019 update - I didn't really follow through with this, however I did start using my Fitbit again and I've lost a little over 20 pounds in about 2 1/2 months...although I have a ways to go. I need to review the article and figure out which of the tools I may want to use. I already use Evernote, so I may see how he uses it to track his time.