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10 Signs You Need to Start Tracking Your Time
Kayla Matthews, a productivity-obsessed writer from Pittsburgh, has been writing for nearly a decade about self-improvement and business efficiency. You can see her articles on sites like MakeUseOf, Inc.com, Information Age, and her blog, ProductivityTheory.com.
When you wake up every day, you know what you can expect based on your schedule. You might need to take notes at meetings or present to your team. Blocking off time for big events is easy, but how good are you when it comes to narrowing down what you’ll do in shorter periods?
Imagine you have two hours to work on assignments before your next meeting. You might tackle your duties by jumping in and not stopping for breaks, but then time slips by. Before you know it, you’ve barely accomplished anything and you have to leave.
This is one of the common ways people realize they aren’t as productive as they’d like to be. If you think that might be you, here are 10 signs that prove you need to start tracking your time. Once you try a few of these tips and start tracking time, you’ll breeze through your daily schedule and accomplish more than ever before.
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How To Use Time Tracking To Beat the 9-to-5 Grind and Work Fewer Hours
Conventional wisdom has told us that working from 9 to 5 is how you support yourself and your family, build wealth, and save for retirement. But things have changed.
Younger workers, especially millennials, are looking for more out of their occupations than a steady income and a 401k. People want work-life balance, flexibility, and jobs that combine skill, passion, and purpose.
With the advent of digital nomadism and cloud-based systems, working when you want and where you want is more common than ever. In fact, by 2027, freelancers are anticipated to make up a majority of the U.S. workforce (!)
In theory, freelancers have the ability to mold their own schedules, pursue their own clients, and work exactly where they want — whether that’s on their living room couch, at a local coffee shop, or heck, at a downtown brewery.
That all sounds heavenly to us. But is it realistic to work as a freelancer, and still work fewer than 8 hours a day?
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How to Identify Your Flow Using Time-Tracking
“Flow” is a term that you may have heard thrown around quite a bit, but are you sure you know exactly what it is? It sounds undoubtedly positive, suggesting a state of effortless output and profound enjoyment. At the same time, flow sounds a bit nebulous. What is it, exactly? And most importantly, how do you identify your flow?
Think of it this way: Some days, you are super-productive and hyper-focused, so concentrated that you seem to lose track of hours passing, mealtimes, and the need to sleep. Other days, you feel like you are grinding away, maybe even fighting distraction while you try to work.
The first scenario, of course, is you in a state of flow – accomplishing your goals, checking off tasks, and enjoying work so much that it doesn’t feel like a slog. The second is you outside of flow – grinding away at your checklist while you attempt to stay off your iPhone.
Of course, you can’t always be in your flow, ideal as that would be. Still, there are certain ways to identify your flow, foster a flow-inducing environment, and get your best work done while you’re focused, goal-oriented, and maybe even having fun.
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Automate Time Tracking on your iPhone with Timing and Siri Shortcuts
Two weeks ago, we covered how to use the Timing Web App to start and stop tasks on the go. Today, you will learn how you can use Siri shortcuts to start and stop tasks, without having to open the web app at all. This means you can start tracking even faster than before — without wasting time loading the web app.
You can even come up with a custom voice command to open your shortcut — “do work”, “get it done”, “every day I’m hustling” — are all perfectly acceptable options. Let your imagination run freely. There’s nothing like commanding your phone to “get er done” at the start of a meeting…
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Becoming a Champ at Time Tracking
Time is arguably the most valuable currency in life. We are all allotted the same amount of it in a day, but we never know how much of it we will have in a lifetime. That’s why it is so precious.
In order to live a fulfilling life, we must be extremely cognizant of how we are spending our time each and every day.
Many of us would prefer to spend our time with family and friends, enjoying the simple pleasures of life, and feeding our brains.
However, we can’t do all those things without financial stability. Though money certainly isn’t the most important factor of life, it does award us freedom and security. Which is why time tracking is so important not just in terms of work, but our whole lives.
Maximizing productivity in our work lives means we are giving ourselves the opportunity to not work harder, but instead work smarter. Once we master this, we find we are able to spend less time making the income we need to live a balanced and rewarding life.
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How to Structure Your Timing Projects When Working with Multiple Clients
If you’re already a user of Timing, then we don’t need to tell you how time tracking can seriously improve your productivity, earning potential, and attitude.
Facebook even recently announced that it will allow users to track and limit the amount of time spent on its social media app to have a positive impact on mental health.
And, as a Timing customer, you likely immersed yourself (or hopefully at least skimmed) our email course during your first week playing around with the app.
Timing offers a lot of capabilities and features, but your situation might not require every single one. To get the most out of the software and become as efficient as possible when tracking time, we rounded up our best tips and tricks in one place.
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