Who Knows Where The Time Goes?

Sandy Denny didn't know where the time goes. ( See  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oBMDcLf6WA&feature=kp if you haven't heard of her.)  Up until yesterday, neither did I.

But keeping track of the time I spent with colour codes on a Google calendar made it much easier to keep track.  I am pleased to have it, but it makes grim reading.  I worked from 9.45 to 17.10.  That is hardly stakhanovite, but there were some valid reasons for knocking off fairly early.  (I usually regard working to 6 as standard.)  I have no excuses at all for my late start.


But I am not trying to impress anyone with working long hours anyway - the trick is to work effectively and so achieve short working hours.

So how did I do?   I was rather shocked to find I had taken an hour and 20 minutes worth of breaks.  Breaks are important but I am not sure I needed that many.  I booked an hour and 15 minutes to planning and organising.  There is an element of self delusion there because some of that time was spent actually working.  The theory according to time management expert Dick Tracy is that every hour spent in planning saves 10 in execution.  I can believe that, but obviously there has to be a limit since if you spent 100% of your time planning you'd be highly efficient in theory but still never get anything done.  I think I am going to aim to spend 30 minutes a day on planning and see how that works out.

I only spent three hours on billable work.  This is not really sustainable.  I need to get a lot more hours in.  I will have to do some calculations on that.  It is a little more complicated than it might be for some people because I have plans to employ people to do work for me, so I don't simply need to work out how much I need to live on.

I need to balance working on stuff for the future with getting in the cash now.

One thing I noticed was that monitoring my time did affect how I used it.  It didn't make me concentrate on key priorities, but it did make me procrastinate by doing marginally useful stuff rather than wasting my time altogether.  I suppose that is a good thing, but I don't feel very triumphant about it.

But on the whole, it was a good and useful exercise that has got me moving in the direction I need to move in.