On frequent request from both participants and people interested in our Time Management courses (http://www.simplyefficient.ca/training.php) , we will publish handy Time Management tips and tricks.

In the first installment of this miniseries, we will start at the basics. There are some fact we cannot change, like: There are always only 24 hours in a day. That’s a constant, no matter how organized we are, all we can actually manage is ourselves and what we do with the time that we have.

In order to do so, the very first thing we have to do is find out where and how we are spending our time. It’s like driving a car: If you want to find the best route to a better place, knowing where you are now is just as important than knowing where you want to end up! One additional result the following exercise is to give us a benchmark we can measure our progress against.

So how do we actually spend our time? We all wear many hats during the day (and sometimes at night, too). But what does this mean? What tasks are we actually performing and how much time do we spend on each activity?

For the following week, I invite you to find out by tracking your daily activities lets you see where your valuable time is being spent, and gives you the data you need to set goals and make the changes to your work habits that will make you more successful.

Our goal is to get a 24h coverage – without any gaps – of a “normal” week of your life. Don’t distinguish between business and personal activities at this point. You need to have a complete picture of your schedule so you can more easily see where to make the changes that will make you more successful.


Daily Activity Tracking Tips

Use a device to record your daily activities that is constantly accessible to you, so you can record exactly what you do when you do it. Memory is fallible – and kind.

A Day-Timer or calendar, a PDA, an organizer software program, a digital recorder, or an ordinary notebook will all work to record your daily activities; choose whichever method you are already comfortable with and find the easiest to use.

Don’t record unnecessary information; it’s the activity and the time you spent on it that’s important for our purposes. For example, in the morning, we only need to record “get ready for work” followed by the start and end time.