Minute-by-minute timelog - Discussion Forum

Discussion Forum > Minute-by-minute timelog

Hi everyone - I decided this morning to try DIT again, making a fresh start. I'm also completing a timelog of what I actually do. When I've done this in the past I've tended to round the number of minutes up or down to make it look 'neat', but I think it'll be more interesting and illuminating to write down every activity, even if it only lasts one minute - after all, activities that just take a couple of minutes add up to a substantial amount over the course of a day.. No doubt this will be too much overhead, but it'll be fun to see how it goes.

February 26, 2015 at 10:07 |

Margaret1

I did the same thing for several weeks and found it really helpful. I think I will try to repeat it every six months or so.

February 27, 2015 at 3:36 |

Seraphim

I've had mixed results results with time-tracking. One thing I learned, the time/activity data alone needs to be accompanied by other contextual informatio (amount of sleep, mood, sick or not, etc) to better inform me of what happened on a specific day.

February 27, 2015 at 12:28 |

avrum

avrum, I agree. Together with the time log, I would try to capture things like this:
- meeting results/outcomes/observations
- what went well / went poorly / seemed surprising about particular tasks
- reflections on the day as a whole

This helped me:
- realize overall how much a huge time sink meetings usually are, compared to the value of the meeting
- realize that an awful lot of real results on a project can be accomplished in 20 minutes or less
- identify repeating tasks that can be streamlined with a better process, or performed less frequently, or eliminated
- simply be more conscious of how much time things really take to accomplish, vs the value generated
- identify the tasks I should be focused on personally, and other things I should delegate or eliminate

March 1, 2015 at 0:12 |

Seraphim

Just like to add my experiences. Now 15 days into time logging experiment inspired by Margarett's initial posting and subsequent comments. Getting good results.
Method-use lined notebook, track in 15 min sections.

Started, out of desperation -to use as a method to overcome severe lethargy ,time-wasting. and high resistance to doing what needed to be done. Felt I needed to more easily see and feel the value of my time.
After a few days, added a quick morning review-quick list of achievements, quick review of what could have gone better, and rough idea of what i want to/need to do today.
Certainly got me out of a rut, and as after two weeks, feels sustainable.

March 13, 2015 at 8:23 |

jim p

Get Everything Done

Discussion Forum > Minute-by-minute timelog

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