So yesterday I completed my one week 'time audit', as announced last Monday. I decided to do the time audit to give myself a clearer idea of how long my regular tasks take me during the week - and where I can make improvements.

The tracker - I used the previously mentioned ActivityTracker gadget for the iGoogle home page. Full marks for ease of use - I just had to punch in and out of each activity as I went about my day. You can set the Tracker to issue a sound alert at a specified interval if you have trouble remembering to log in and out. This has the added benefit of being a regular reminder to get back on track with what you were *supposed* to be doing if you've gotten off track.

Having to log my activities was a good motivator to stay focused - watching my 'break time' and 'warcraft time' add up during the week spurred me back to work several times. It also showed me how much I multi-task each day. It's quite hard to track your activities when you have several things on the go each once or get pulled into finishing something urgently.

The data - one feature which Activity Tracker lacked which I would have quite liked is a way to save and compare different weeks. It can show you your total hours for the week and break them down into activities, and can even show them in a graph format for you, but I'd really like to be able to compare week on week. I guess I'd need a more sophisticated tracker for that.

The results - Looking at my results for the week I have two goals - to reduce my breaktime during work hours, and to work at reducing how long it takes me to complete regular tasks.

So did you complete a time audit last week, or have you done one in the past? What did you learn from it? Answers in comments please!

 

 

I mentioned on Friday that I'd be conducting a time audit of my working week this week. If anyone else is interested in trying it too, grab your favourite digital or paper-based tracker and let's roll. :)

Last night I looked at a few different apps for timetracking and decided to keep it ultra simple - I'm using the previously mentioned Activity Tracker gadget for the iGoogle homepage. Why? Because it was super easy to create a list of my regular tasks, I just need to hit a button to clock in and out on each task, and I'll be able to view the data in several ways (a log, a graph).

If you decide to take up the challenge and audit your time this week, let me know in comments and we can compare notes at the end of the week. Good luck!

As I mentioned yesterday, we've posted a few timers and time tracking tools lately. In my quest to become more productive in my working week, I've decided to put my money where my mouth is, and use next week to conduct a 'time audit' of my working week.

I haven't yet picked which time tracking tool to use, but from Monday morning until Saturday morning when I finish work for the week, I'm going to keep a record of the tasks I do and how long they take me. At the end of the week I'll have a better understanding of how long various tasks take (ie research, writing and editing, as well as the marketing, networking and pitching for new business that's part of any freelancers job.

Gina posted recently about using a digital timer to get things done. I had a look at the blog that tip came from, and I liked the philosophy behind it - which is make the list of your daily, weekly and monthly activities, then decide on the amount of time you have to complete each one. Use a digital timer to keep on track. I think once I've done my one week audit and gotten an idea of how long my take me, I'll be in a position to put a system like this in place. Anyone else interested in doing the audit next week? Let me know in comments.