Lessons from Time Monitoring

When I had a job I would often have what felt like a highly productive day.  I would get to about 4.00pm and look back on hours of solid effort. I would feel rather pleased with myself and reward myself with half an hour of tidying up and tackling those enjoyable jobs that you don't mind doing and leave for home bang on time and with a smug look on my face.


However, when I came to review what I had achieved it was often very disappointing considering what a Trojan I had been.

As an employee I had a set of ready made excuses.  The company was hopelessly disorganised.  I had to contend with unsympathetic managers who just didn't know what I even did.  And of course I had to cope with continual interference from co-workers.  So it wasn't that I was inefficient,  it was just that I had an environment what sapped my productivity away from me.

In fact I think by the standards of workers in general I was pretty well organised and had rather above average focus.   And most workplaces are tremendously difficult places to get any work done.  However, what I never did was carefully monitor my time use to make sure I was using the time I was being paid for efficiently.  I had a system that kept me looking busy and productive enough to get through yearly appraisals and nobody complained about my output.   So basically I had no incentive to do anything hard like finding out where the time was actually going.

But now I work for myself it turns out that using my time effectively is the difference between scraping by and doing rather nicely.  So now I keep track of time all the time I am working.  I have just broken off after what felt like a long productive session only to realise that I have in fact frittered away several hours on trivia.  I wouldn't have even known I had done it if I hadn't been keeping note.

It's quite an eye opener about just how distorted our view of the world, including even our own activities is.  I am beginning to realise that I really do need to work really hard at even such simple things as making sure I am actually working when I am supposed to be working let alone devising ways of being still more productive.