Sam Miller

Time logging to increase your Personal Productivity

Discover a way to increase your personal productivity and gain astounding results not just in your personal life but in your career as well.

Has it ever occurred to you when you look back on your day or week with a feeling that you didn’t accomplish as much as you wanted? Your time is your most precious asset, especially when establishing your career or business. Proper use of your time can help you do more and even earn more. An intelligent approach to increase your personal productivity is by time logging.

Time logging is a good way to better manage your time since you know how you are currently spending your time. When keeping a detailed time log, record the time each time you start or finish any activity all throughout the day. You can simply use a stopwatch to record the intervals for every activity, doing this during your working hours or the entire day. Then, sort the time into categories and determine how much time was being spent for each type of activity.

For instance, note how much time you eat, surf the Internet, read the newspaper, spend in the bathroom, etc. If you want to be more detailed, consider doing this step for a week. Depending on your activities and your consistency, you can be surprised at how many log entries you can make for a day. Moreover, you may even be surprised to find that you are only spending a small portion of your working time on what should be considered as actual work.

Studies show that an average office worker spends only about 1.5 hours of actual work in a day, with the rest of the time spent engaging in non-work tasks. In fact, s/he does not eve begin doing actual work until at 11am and starts to wind down at about 3pm.

Your time log should help you analyze your results and make changes, when necessary.

The next step is to measure your personal efficiency ratio. This can be computed by recording the time spent on “actual work” divided by the total time spent “at work.” However, you should keep in mind that while it is important to get as much of the job done as possible, it would also be foolish to work longer than you should. You may want to consider cutting back on the total hours to boost efficiency.

If you try to discipline yourself by doing something that does not really motivate you, chances are that you are most likely to fail. Trying harder can, in fact, actually de-motivate and drive your efficiency ratio even lower. For instance, if your time log indicates a low efficiency ratio, try limiting your total working time per day and see the result.

This is because when the brain recognizes that working time is limited, it sends you a signal to get working. Usually, you will find a way to get the job done and be more efficient with time constraints compared to having the luxury of time. Then, you can gradually increase your total hours at work while keeping peak efficiency.

Time logging is a great way to ensure peak productivity without necessarily increasing your work hours. It only takes little effort and time to do it, but it can produce long term benefits.

Article Tags: Time Logging, Personal Productivity, Working Time, Actual Work, Time Spent

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