This is what I spent my working hours on last year:Īs you can see, for me, 2010 was about this web site. is typically 2,000 hours a year (remember in my case these are actual hours spent working (most of them out of a suitcase), not hours spent at a place of work (which might involve a large portion of time surfing the web or otherwise being unproductive)). For a point of reference, a full-time job in the U.S. Here is the breakdown of 2,097 hours I worked in 2010. It might not be the truth you wanted, but that's exactly the point. Once you track hours and analyze them, the truth becomes clear. Note that I'm sharing this graph not because I'm happy with the distribution, but because I'm not happy with it. I've been tracking hours for well over a year, so let's take a look at my total hours from 2010. Tracking time is not just about awareness: it's about change. If you want to have what other people don't, you have to be willing to do what other people won't. For anyone who's thinking, "tracking any kind of hours doesn't sound like fun," well, no - it's not supposed to be. For a lot of people, tracking working hours is going to seem like enough of a chore, without tracking everything else therefore I recommend only tracking how much work - and what kind of work - you do. Sure, you could track your sleep, track your exercise (which I do when running, actually), and you could probably track your sex life, but I'm more interested in knowing how much work I'm getting done than I am in getting penetrating (ahem) insight into every aspect of my life. The best time-tracking plan isn't the most thorough one, however - it's the one you stick with. In fact, since I have an appreciation for great infographics, here's his 2009 location report (click through for the full-size version):įor the rest of us, it's more about making every hour count than it is about counting every hour. He publishes brilliantly illustrated books every year about his life, entitled "Feltron reports," and they've become so popular that people actually buy them (thanks for the heads-up, Raafi). You could take it too far and track analytics about absolutely everything in your life, as does Nicholas Felton. Ultimately, use whatever time-tracking method you feel most comfortable with: the best method is the one you actually use long-term, not the one with the most features. For those times when you're not using a computer or mobile app to track your time, you can always use the web interface to guesstimate time after the fact. You'll want to use a time tracking app that works on multiple platforms (in the case of both Freshbooks and Harvest, there's a Mac dashboard widget (pictured), an iOS app in the form of MiniBooks, and an Android app in the form of TimeDroid). I can't recommend either highly enough for freelancers and small business that need to keep track of clients and create invoices, but I've found that even post-freelance, I'm still using Freshbooks Harvest every day simply to track my own hours. There are plenty of free time-tracking apps out there, and even some fancy automated approaches (both of which I experimented with), but I found myself most comfortable using Freshbooks because I've used it in the past (I've since switched to Harvest). Here's a list of time-tracking tools (and another). The first step in tracking time is to find a way to measure hours that isn't painful. Then you'll find a way to start spending more time on what's really important to you. Track your time, and you'll get a dose of unfettered truth. Perception and reality are two different things. The best way to gain awareness - the first step toward change - is to find a source of objective analytics that cut through the powers of human rationalization. No mere mortal can keep track of them all in his or her head. Once you know where your hours are going, you can start changing your behavior in order to achieve your goals.Īs the saying goes, "the first step towards change is awareness." Are you aware of how many hours you're spending on various activities in your life? How many hours did you spend at work yesterday? How much time sleeping? Pursuing your own creative goals? What about today? And then, how about all of last week? Hours add up quickly. So for the last 16 months, I've tracked my time religiously. The truest indicator of what's important to us is the amount of time we devote to something. But the truth of the matter is, if we spend 40 hours a week doing and we only find a few hours to do, which of these tasks is more important to us? Plenty of us say we're working on a while we we're only to pay the bills.
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