I tracked my time for 3 months. Here's what I learned.
Three life lessons for three months of time tracking is a good deal.
At the end of last year I started an experiment: I was going to track my time for three months. Despite being good at prioritizing tasks, I was feeling very unproductive at the end of the workday, as if reactive tasks had eaten most of my time. I also wanted to spend more time focusing on personal projects, something very hard for me to do while I'm employed full-time because I feel guilty that I'm not spending time on the things I'm being paid to do. This is so wrong that companies incentivize side projects for employees, but I was raised with a no-slacker, loyalist ethic and such is the power of nurture.
To check my time I used Toggl, a very popular time tracking software with a generous free tier that is perfect for personal time tracking. The hard thing about time tracking is remind yourself to do it, so having a service that works across devices and minimizes friction is key. Toggl turned out to have some cool reporting features that made it easy for me to look at the data and realized three things I would have never guessed.
1. Our productive time is less than we think
The traditional workday is 8 hours per day, but only a part of it is "billable", meaning spent working on projects and tasks. Moving around the office, bathroom breaks, hallway conversations, and natural distractions eat about an hour each day. I averaged a mere 6 "billable" hours a day.
This exercise made me rethink the definition of productive time. I have a creative role. Part of my job is read about what's happening and anticipate trends and competitor moves. I took long lunches with my mentor and mentees. Was that unproductive, just because the outcome wasn't defined? Maybe not, but realizing I only had 6 hours to execute my top priority projects was a revelation: I was able to better forecast my time, and give better estimates to people who were asking for help.
2. Recurring and internal meetings are a time suck
The team at Amazon I was working with was very meeting-heavy, and I spent almost half of my working hours in meeting with colleagues. Some of those meetings were probably a better use of time than countless back-and-forth emails to make a hard decision (for example PR FAQ document reviews), but how many meetings could have been turned into emails recapping what everyone was working on? Tracking internal meetings also made me realize how little time I was spending talking directly to clients. My customer was 100% internal. When you're in marketing, that's a red flag.
During my years at AOL, I used to cancel all my recurring meetings every year. If a meeting was really necessary, I knew it would have crept back into my calendar. It was incredibly effective, and I should have adopted this practice at Amazon, too.
3. To optimize time, focus on what motivates you
I wanted to spend more hours on my side project. After two weeks, I looked at the hours spent on "back at it" and realized I was failing miserably. I beat myself for having no willpower.
For a week, I did nothing for my side project, but started meditating in the mornings to mitigate stress. Guided meditation helped me become self-aware of my inner judge, but most importantly made me reflect on why I wanted to pursue my side project in the first place. Focusing on my values and looking forward to the happiness and satisfaction the side project would give me made me find the energy to start again.
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