Posts Tagged ‘Time Tracking’

Time Management to Reduce Workplace Stress

Sunday, April 28th, 2013

It’s easy to find yourself swamped and pressured at work. You have a lot of things to

Cover of "Manage Your Time (Essential Man...

Cover of Manage Your Time (Essential Managers)

finish, a ton of tasks to get to, and a list of deadlines to meet. You might not notice it, but work could be piling up so fast you become lost in your projects and find yourself forgetting what you need to accomplish first. You end up not only compromising the quality of your work, but your work habits become so messed up as well, making you inefficient and unproductive. This shows how time management is important in your professional life, and this is why you should get around to doing it.

Keeping track of your tasks and allotting enough time for each is the key to becoming more productive and performing at your best at work. Time management will allow you to properly plan out how to tackle different projects, which ones to prioritize, and how much time you need for each.

What you need to do is plan your day so that you will feel in control of everything you need to do. Next, prioritize your tasks so you can easily recognize urgent ones and bump off less important ones. It is important to take your time when working on each project and not rush anything because doing things right will save you more time in the long run.

Altering your work and life habits will also contribute to your productivity and make time management easier as well. You need to limit your distractions at work, since it eats up a lot of your time without you noticing it. Don’t spend too much time on the phone or checking your email and just allot a designated time for these things. Delegate tasks if you can – no one expects you do to everything, and you have other teammates who would be glad to help you out. Lastly, it would also do you good to sleep early and eat healthy so that you can maintain your focus and concentration.

Time management will allow you to be at your best at work. It will show people what you can do by balancing your time and knowing your priorities. If you are bent on making it work, time management software might help you carefully track your activities so you can monitor your behavior. It will take a lot of will to become more productive but the rewards are far greater and very fulfilling.

Freckle helps you manage your time.

 

 

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Warning: Use These Time Management Tools At Your Own Risk

Thursday, December 8th, 2011

This is an interesting post about how the tools we use to help make our lives much easier

Time management matrix as described in Merrill...
time management matrix

can sometimes add to the frustration and work load in our lives if we don’t use the tools correctly.  Time management is no exception to this rule.  There are many powerful time management tools out there than can really help effectively manage our time, but they can also drive us down the rabbit hole as well if we are not careful.  Read on for more about how time management tools can wast our  time if not used effectively.

Are you managing your time efficiently? Or do you often find out that the time lost in working on your time management is more than the time saved from it? This is by far the biggest risk, along with losing money on bad tools or bad time management training.

Remember:

The point of time management is to improve the way you use your time, free up your brain from unimportant tasks, and free you up from stress. If instead of this your efforts to manage time end up in less time for you and more stress, you are obviously on the wrong way.

Tools and software can help you a lot to control your time better. Instead of having to remember activities and techniques, time management tools help you automate them. But… sometimes there is a risk. Let’s explore three major types of tools and the risks associated with them:

Low Risk: Calendars
Calendars help you organize your events, meetings, dates, important milestones and other duties. They help you not to miss your visit at the dentist and can remind your friends to come at the party tomorrow. Many calendars are free and have nice features like email reminders, sending iCal invites and so on. Calendars are very useful time management tools and you should use them. But use them properly, because otherwise they can get you in trouble too.

The main risk with calendars is to rely too much on yours. If you expect your calendar to know your appointments better than you (which is it’s purpose anyway), what happens when it doesn’t work well? What happens for example if you rely on receiving email reminder about an appointment but exactly this time the email arrives in your spam box? Such events are rare and that’s what makes them so unexpected.

You should never rely 100% on technologies. If an event is important for you, insert it in 2 or 3 calendars, put it in your phone alarm, use the good old method with paper and fridge magnet.

Medium Risk: To do lists
To do lists are neat little apps that let you create projects, assign tasks to them, reorder them, and mark them done when done. While bloody simple, these apps are very useful for time management. They help you not forget the tasks you have. They help you write your ideas as tasks in very simple way. They help you watch how you accomplish a project. Very nice!

What’s so risky about them? Just think a little. What happens with the tasks that you forget to write in the list? I’ll tell you. They never get done.
Then what happens with the not-so-easy tasks? I’ll tell you. They never get done, because you always move them after the others and if by any chance they remain the last in the list, you come up with new ideas and new tasks.

And finally, when your to-do list becomes too large, it causes the decision block. How to order the tasks, which ones to do first? When you have a long task list you can easily feel depressed and lose your motivation.

But don’t get me wrong, to do lists are great tools when used right…

High Risk: Time management charts
Time management charts are supposed to help you visualize how you spend your time, figure out the time wasters, and figure out which activities you do in your most productive time. They can be extremely powerful in giving long term results by helping you organize your daily routines and productive time better.

They can also lead to extreme time waste if not used correctly. Imagine what happens if you underestimate the importance of proper tracking and enter values in the chart “as you feel them”. Generally you will decrease the time spend to time wasters (think checking your Facebook account), because you don’t feel them as wasters. At the end the time management chart will show totally misleading information.

Another even more common risk is just to spend too much time maintaining your time management chart and then get no useful results. You don’t need another addiction – if you can get useful results from using time management charts in a couple of weeks, drop using them for good.

Don’t forget that time management tools are created to help you and they will, if you use them well. And if you combine them with the best time management activities you will be the master of your time!

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Business Time Management – Learning About the New and Powerful “Target” System

Saturday, August 7th, 2010

There are many kinds of different systems out there that can focus and target someone to be able to manage their time more efficiently.  In this article, the author talks about a new type a time management system called the target system which focuses on getting a handle on your time through  identifying target activities and ranking them then working from the highest rank on down.  The more productive they are, the higher they rank.  I feel that it is all really understanding your subconscious hidden agendas.  When those are gone, everything will automatically fall into place.  This is more of an outside fix to an inside problem.  But read on for more.

No question about it, everyone has been introduced to lots of time management tips. Many of the business time management systems have much to offer, however it seems that they lack in at least one area. For a system to be totally effective, the individual applying it must be certain that it is effective. They must be able to measure the results. The “target” system is designed for maximum measurable results.

First, visualize an archery target.

The target has the smallest circle in the center, (the bull’s eye), with concentric circles gradually getting larger around it. Hitting the bull’s eye is the objective as it produces the most points. As the circles move further from the center, they get larger and produce fewer points.

The activities that comprise the running of a business can be prioritized using an archery target model. Let us assume that the main goal of a business is maximum profitability. Each business will have core activities that most DIRECTLY affect profitability.

It is up to each business owner to identify these activities, as well as ALL the activities required to run the business. Make a list of all the activities.

Next, on a large erasable white board, draw an archery target. It should be plainly visible from your primary work space.

Take your list of all your business activities, and assign point values to them based on how closely they affect the profitability of the business. The points will be anywhere from 5 points for the most important activities, to 1 point for the least important.

You will assign ZERO points to non productive activities.

During your business day, each 30 minutes (approx) you will review the activity you are performing. You will walk up to the erasable board, and draw an arrow to the circle that provides the points you have just earned by performing the activity.

If you have performed a mix of activities, select the activity that you spent the most time on during that time block. The bull’s eye, for example, would earn you 5 points for that block of time.

Your daily objective is to earn more points than the previous day. If you manage to beat your daily scores for a week, be SURE to reward yourself!

This business time management system is SUPER powerful because it develops an acute, conscious awareness of what tasks you are performing throughout the day.

In a relatively short time, you will find yourself “naturally” performing more productive activities!

Keep a weekly total of your scores, and strive to beat the previous week.

My name is Mike Hutchins, widely known as the “action” business coach. I am the author of   ” The Alligator Syndrome “  which is an eBook guide that helps business owners overcome information overload and feelings of being overwhelmed, to finally create serious business profits. Get your FREE copy HERE.



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Tracking Your Time – How to Do It

Sunday, July 4th, 2010

One of the things about time management is knowing where you spend your time.  When you know where you spend your time, you can track your time much more effectively.  There are many tools available to allow you to track your time effectively.  You should pick one that works best within your style because if you have to change a lot to use it, chances are, it won’t be permanent because you will stop using it.  So be thoughtful in picking your time tracking system.  In this article, it gives one way that you can track your time.

Time tracking is a big problem for many of the people especially for those who are in the profession of freelancing or content writers. It is important to keep a record with time to fulfill the needs of your clients. Freelancing is coming up with a great urge in these days. The demand for them is increasing day by day. A good freelancer is always that who know how to keep track with his/her time. It is not an easy task to cope with. It needs some solid effort before you can able to keep a track with your time.

Freelancing becomes more difficult when you are a mobile freelancer. Mobile freelancer means that you have to work on more than on computers or multiple computers and you can be work from anywhere, you need not to stick to one place to do your work. In that case time tracking become even more difficult. But there is no need to worry; there are many web based time trackers available on internet. But always go for simple, easy to use and rather cheap time trackers.

Hereunder are given some of the best time tracker tools, but remember they are not free and best things are often never free.

Toggl (www.toggle.com)

It has a nice and simple interface and most importantly it is free. It is an efficient time management tool. It has both a web and a downloadable for version for windows user only. It is a helpful tool for freelancers that keep the exact track of your time.

It is very simple and slick interface. It is easy and fast to use. It is a web-based interface and can be used on nay browser or operating system.

It is a professional package. Harvest is web application so can be used from anywhere. It works well for teams, it contains project estimates and also some reports. It is also a paid application and you have to become the membership of harvest first. It has package plan from free to premium.

Cashboard is not as simple as the above three applications. A bit complex but comprehensive application. It has a perfect time tracking system, and also it includes; producing and tracking invoices, keeping track of accounts and clients, producing estimates, and much more.

It is quite an old interface as compared to above interfaces. But it is capable of doing its job well. It can be more useful if it is used with invoicing software. It is also a web based application.

Ya Timer (www.nbdtech.com)

Ya timer is a downloadable desktop application which is not available on web. It is the simplest of all and has a very simple interface with lot of options. It is best for basic needs. it has a interface with zoom option to help the users.

There are many Time trackers available over Internet but you should be very careful choosing the right Time Tracker that fulfills your needs.

More on How to Track Your Time:

Top Time Tracking Tools and Tips | Office Technology | OfficeArrow

When managing employees, it’s often helpful to have time tracking tools at your disposal. On a day-to-day level, it allows you to see who is being productive and who isn’t, and makes employees feel more accountable regarding their …

Publish Date: 04/22/2010



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Time Management Strategies – the Ones That Work

Saturday, May 8th, 2010

There are many different time management strategies that are out there today.  Some of them are more successful than others.  Some of the characteristics in the ones that work include the ease in which it can be implemented in someone’s day to day activities, and how willing someone is in using it.  The more complicated, or the more someone has to change, the less likely it will be effective for the average person.  Read on for more on the time management strategies that work.

There is no crime against having poor time management skills. Not everyone is as motivated as they should be. There really is no set way to be when it comes to time management anyway. However, if you are looking for a new way to make your life better, employing strategies to utilize time might be the way to go. The ability to be flexible at the same time as punctual is a skill that can be learned and applied with careful time management strategies. Being flexible and easily adaptable is one of the best time management strategies one can employ. If you are not flexible, you can start to get frustrated when your short term goals are not met. When you get frustrated, stress starts to set in and any time management strategies you may have chosen to employ are no longer in effect.

Setting short term goals through out the progress of a project is a great way to keep your project in focus. Chunking the project allows you to keep a scope on the project and gives you a little boost of good feeling throughout the project. Achieving a lot of smaller goals can sometimes build up to one final goal that can be the icing on the cake so to speak.

A good plan to have when you are going into a situation where you need to employ time management is to identify your deadline. Also keep in mind your other projects. Ask yourself what are the deadlines for other projects. Also ask yourself what projects are higher priorities for you besides the actual deadlines. Some things are just more important, deadline or not.

Always make sure you have your time set up where you know when you are going to work and what you are going to do. Also keep your relaxation times set. Do not skip out on your stress relieving times. Stress relief is one of the more important parts of time management. Remember, the more stressed you are the more rushed you are going to feel and the worse your work is going to turn out. When you are in your working time, keep all unwanted distractions away from you. This will be your productive time and nothing should be allowed to interfere.

As you complete each smaller goal of a larger project, reward yourself. Make sure to only pick rewards that will not distract you from your larger picture. If you have five more smaller goals to achieve before the end of the day, it is not a good idea to have a reward that will distract your mind from the task at hand, otherwise you might not be willing to jump back into your project.

A positive attitude is your biggest weapon in the fight against distraction. Keeping your mind on your task and having a positive outlook to it will encourage you to continue on with the work in question. This is also part of where the smaller goals and rewards come into play.

Find the Secret of Managing your Time. All the Time Management Strategies you need can be found here.. Looking to Get Organized? We have all the tools you need.


More on Time management strategies:

3 Time Management Strategies for Social Marketing

To effectively maximize the traffic potential of these sites will require the use of some keen time management skills. Read more to discover 3 simple time management strategies you can use to get a ton of traffic without investing a ton …

Publish Date: 03/28/2010

http://www.promotionworld.com/misc/articles/100329-Time-Management-Strategies-Social-Marketing

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Effective Tools for Time Management Tracking

Wednesday, March 24th, 2010

Although this author violates my #3 commandment of article writing in terms of not linking to things that have no relation to the article whatsoever, this article does share an interesting tool on how to do time management tracking.  This tool allows the reader to build a personal time management system that will allow them to free up more time.  It’s very simple…  Just be aware of the way you spend your time.  What does that mean?  Read on for more!


If you have time management issues then time tracking is a must-have.

Have you ever found yourself in hurry? Have you ever been late? If you answered yes on those questions, then this is perfect place for you.

This article will solve your problems! Just follow next steps.

So, first of all, create a matrix. Make ten columns for ten days. Also create 48 rows, one row equals 30 minutes.

Here is a short explanation. First, experience says that 10 days are optimal for measuring your time management because less would give us incorrect information and more than 10 days would delay our results too much. Also, we divided time into pieces of 30 minutes because we think that’s logical period of time that can be measured.

After you’ve done that, start tracking your time. Write in each cell what are you doing. Time that you’ve spent doing nothing leave blank.

It’s important that you stay consistent in making your notes. Your attitude will play a big role. Bear in mind that you have to be accurate no matter what results you see because we all tend to become defensive when we don’t see what we want.

When you finish your time tracking, try to observe results. Ask yourself: “What can I do to improve my matrix?”

But be careful.

If you track your time, it doesn’t mean that you are improving your time management. It is just a preliminary step to effective management of time.

This is where most people fail. They tend to rearrange their activities but in the end, everything ends up the same. They eliminate some of their activities, prioritize other tasks etc. Result of that is even more frustration because they are trying hard to improve but problems are still there.

So to sum it up, time management isn’t keeping track of how you spend your time. Time management is making real changes to the way you spend your time. It’s improving quality of spent time. Time tracking isn’t essential for that, but it can certainly help you.

I really enjoy writing. My latest articles were about Cuisinart Waffle Makers and about Belgian Waffle Makers


More Time Management Tracking Articles


PageAddict Charts Your Web Surfing Habits – Time management …

Firefox: Tracking habits—whether you’re tracking your spending, amount of sleep, or other personal metrics—is an excellent way to get a big picture of what’s going on in your life. PageAddict tracks and charts your web browsing for your …

Publish Date: 03/19/2010 9:30

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