When Time Tracking May Not Save You Any Time At All

When Time Tracking May Not Save You Any Time At All

Your productivity can largely be determined by how you spend your time, and that makes tracking your time seem like a big help. It can also be a trap that eats up more time than it saves.

Picture: david.dames/Flickr

We often get so excited about all of these systems and ways to track and schedule our time that it just becomes a giant stack of /”productivity porn”. Time tracking and time management are some of the most important aspects of building a routine for yourself, but that also makes them the most prone to hurting your productivity. Kevin Zawacki at Fast Company spoke with Laura Stack, known as The Productivity Pro, and she posed an interesting question:

“Why are we wasting time figuring out how much time we’re wasting? People are spending far more time creating these elaborate systems than it would have taken just to do the task. You’re constantly on your app refiguring, recalculating, recategorizing. A better strategy would be [returning] to the core principles of good time management. Block out time on your calendar for the non-negotiable things. [Or] have an organised, prioritised task list.”

Tracking time and planning out tasks can be helpful, but the tasks themselves are the most important part. You could spend 20 minutes tracking your time and organising your to-do list of tasks for the morning, or you could just get started on the list. You might think you’re saving yourself time, but you could just be eating it all up with the management of unnecessary systems. If you find that’s the case for you, stop logging, tracking and wasting time on something that’s intended to help you save time.

The Perils of Time Tracking [Fast Company]


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