Time Audit: Why It Matters – Know Where Your Time is Going

You are your biggest time waster. You may feel that others (e.g. your boss, kids, etc.) waste most of your time, but a couple things in response to this notion of your.

One, you cannot fully control these things. Two, insofar as you can control them, it often comes with how you react to them, approach them, or major life overhauls (e.g. changing jobs).

C. Northcote Parkinson describe in a 1955 essay in the Economist what has called Parkinson’s Law – works expands to fill the available time.

If you give yourself a month to complete a task, it will take a month. That same work could have taken you a week or day if you had assigned that amount of time.

Ultimately, this has limits (you cannot assign a nanosecond to something and assume it will get done), but this law has value. Instead of considering it a negative reality, give yourself less time and hold yourself accountable. Work to develop better habits of time management.

Just like nutrition or budgeting, worst knowing what you are consuming or how you are spending helps you begin to modify your actions.

Time Audit: What It Is & How To Do It

A time audit is a method to track how you spend your time over a given period. It helps you identify non-urgent, non-important tasks you can eliminate and urgent tasks you can delegate. Additionally, you will likely fine that the simple act of completing the time audit will improve your time management actions.

Track blocks of time down to the 15 or 30-minute increment for one week. If something takes less than that time, you can write that down.

Matt has a 15-minute timer that he uses. When it goes off, he quickly jots down what he did.

Matt uses Clockify, but you could use a spreadsheet or pen and paper.

You can read an article Matt recently wrote about the time audit here. You may also be interested in reading Dan Martell’s book Buy Back Your Time.

Matt recommends, even if you have done pretty well with time management, doing this annually or bi-annually to check-in and continue to improve your time management.

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