Time Tracking Not Only Saves Time – It Can Save Money and Aggravation Too.
Time: We’re constantly thinking about it and constantly wondering how we can squeeze more time out of our weeks for work or personal pursuits. But making more time isn’t possible: We have work and home and exercise and meals to make, among thousands of other things.
What, then, can you do to find time—without that time travel machine? The devil, as they say, is in the details, and in this case the detail is time tracking.
For most people, time tracking sounds like a tedious, to-be-avoided task. But it doesn’t have to be. In fact, tracking your time can be a sure pathway toward a number of benefits. For starters, it creates awareness, because you’re recording not only your productive time, but your unproductive time. That helps you identify when you’re doing something that isn’t essential, with sound proof about hours spent surfing the Internet, for example.
By tracking your time, you can also improve your ability to focus. We don’t do things well when we switch from one activity to another. Figuring out how to dedicate bigger blocks of time to tasks can help you actually keep that worktop of mind. And it also helps with current and future monetary issues. For example, if you are working on a project now, you can understand and record how much time it took—so that if there’s a similar project in the future, you’ll better understand how to estimate its costs. Tracking time can also help point out inefficiencies so that you can make changes to better allocate your and other’s time.
But before you task all your employees—or even yourself—with tracking your time, take some first steps. For starters, small is best as you begin to track your time. Of course, you could do it the old-fashioned way, but there are plenty of free or low-cost applications that can help you. You should also be consistent. If you can’t do it for the whole day, for example, then just track your time in the morning. You can build on that. You also don’t need to break it down into a thousand different time-tracking categories. Keep it simple, which makes it easier to do.
If you’re ready to dive into more in-depth time tracking, you might want to consider the features that are possible in different programs. For example, you can integrate with different types of apps. You can use your time-tracking application to help you manage employees. When you do that, you can create reports, for example, send payments, or provide other paperwork such as invoices.
The conclusion? Time tracking can be a way to boost your productivity and to increase efficiencies. It can make you realize what you do—and how much time you waste—in a way that helps you re-focus and re-commit to taking advantage of every day, no matter what happens. Want more ideas on time tracking? Use the information in this graphic.
Source: Quill