Monitoring your Time

Monitoring your Time:

Having established what your values and goals are, the next step is find out how you actually spend your time. This is achieved through the use of a time log.

The best way to fill in a time log is to record each activity and the time taken to complete it as it occurs. A contemporaneous account of time spent will obviously be more accurate than a retrospective one. If this proves too difficult to do, then try to ensure that you record each hour’s activities at the end of it.

The time recorded in your log should equal the amount of time spent at work (if not, then maybe you are not being diligent enough in filling in your log or something unusual occurred which you did not consider to be part of your daily work routine and therefore omitted it).

If you leave filling in your time log until you get home from work, it is likely you will produce a distorted account of your working day (e.g. ‘how long did that phone call take? I can’t remember. I’ll put down twenty minutes to be on the safe side’).

A time log can cover every waking moment of each day (rather than just time spent at work) as you may want to undertake a time management review of every aspect of your life. Keeping a time log for one or two days will probably provide insufficient information for a thorough review of your time as you may not spot behavioral patterns emerging (e.g. procrastination, unassertiveness) or how often certain individuals encroach on your time. Keeping a time log will increase your workload in the short term but enable you to see where changes can be made so longer-term benefits can be gained.

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