(Less) Time Tracking for (More) Productivity
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Client Question: For best productivity, shouldn’t we measure all the time actually spent and compare to the time we planned to spend?
Answer: No. It works against you. Try this instead…
As a productivity coach with years of hands-on experience, here’s what I’ve learned about time monitoring and tracking:
Do NOT track and reconcile every minute of work—not with your team, not with yourself.
True, time and money are similar:
- Both get spent by people
- Both need some form of budgeting
But what happens to a company when every dollar is tracked down to the penny, all the time?
What if every expenditure must be approved or justified to a manager? Does productivity improve? No—it almost always gets worse, because morale declines. [Exception: when cash is the key factor for short-term survival, you have to monitor it closely during turnaround.]
The same is true for individuals. The best personal budgets have both fixed and flexible components, for two reasons:
- People have feelings. Good psychology is an essential part of great productivity. Too much constraint kills morale.
- Agility and versatility are essential. You need room to respond intelligently, intuitively, to new opportuntities and threats as they arise.
But you don’t want either of those to get out of control. So how to balance them?
For Yourself…
Be as organized as necessary—no more, no less.
DO budget time appropriately and get excellent feedback on its use.
BUT a “natural feedback loop” is best. It should:
- Automatically give you feedback with no effort
- Take no extra time
- Require little or no logical analysis
- Change behavior naturally, subconsciously
That kind of feedback loop is already built into the Total, Relaxed Organization time management system:
- The feedback happens automatically, intuitively during your Reviewing step (5 min./day regardless).
- For longer tasks/steps, you also get that feedback constantly during the DOing step.
Easy Personal Time Tracking Tool
For smaller items, if time is draining inexplicably, use a simple spreadsheet printout, one column per day, 1/2 hour time grid, and a pencil.
- Record the ONE major type of activity you did during each 1/2 hour block.
- Set an onscreen timer if needed. I like this one: http://timer.onlineclock.net
- That’s as much granularity as you need to see what’s going on.
For Teams and Direct Reports…
Do NOT use Time Doctor or any other tool that tracks actions and records screen shots every minute. They will:
- Create stress, resentment, and looking-over-my-shoulder feelings of mistrust
- Kill initiative and creativity
- Force your best innovators to go somewhere else
See this excellent YouTube video about some of the psychology factors with teams and direct reports:
The optimal approach:
- Hold people accountable for broad visions, objectives, assignments, goals
- Have regular 1-1 meetings to discuss objectives and progress
- Let them find the best ways to accomplish those things
- When intervention is needed, use the easy personal time tracking tool above
Total, Relaxed Organization also makes this easy. Automatic 1-1 follow-up and zero-preparation group agendas are built into the system.
Agree with some of the sentiments in your article but don’t agree with the fundamental premise:
“What happens to a company when every dollar is tracked down to the penny, all the time?” – most companies do track down to the penny, but they do NOT track their time at all. Does this mean that money is important to track and time is not? Yes it’s not about tracking to know that you spend 10 second on Facebook (and in fact we purposely remove this information from Time Doctor data reports), just as it’s not important to know that you spent 10 cents on a piece of paper, but it is important to know where the majority of time went, and if you do not track it you will have no idea.
“For smaller items, if time is draining inexplicably, use a simple spreadsheet printout, one column per day, 1/2 hour time grid, and a pencil.” – this is ok, but it takes time and is not accurate at all, why not do something that is 100% accurate and takes the same amount of time?
There is a culture in most businesses of being accountable around where money is spent. However there is not a culture of being accountable for where time is spent. Some people may feel like they are being pushed or monitored. However that is not the point. Just as you give people flexibility around where they spend money (to a certain point), for example it’s great to give spending authority to everyone in your company so that you are not micromanaging people around money. Similarly around time. You don’t need to micromanage about every aspect of where time is spent. however it is valuable to know where time is spent for an individual or for a manager, as you can use this information to improve processes and to analyse the work day. Find that you are spending 3 hours per day on email? You can do something about it.
Comment by timedoctor — 9 September 2012 @ 7:38 pm
[Note: All my answers are for a typical US workplace knowledge worker culture.]
I agree wholeheartedly with this:
“Just as you give people flexibility around where they spend money (to a certain point) [you should give flexibility with time. For] example it’s great to give spending authority to everyone in your company so that you are not micromanaging people around money.”
However, I have concerns about this:
“Some people may feel like they are being pushed or monitored. However that is not the point.”
A: I think it is precisely the point when it comes to productivity and effective management. We are managing people, people have feelings, feelings determine productivity. If they feel pushed or monitored, it hurts morale; engagement, initiative, and output will drop.
You ask: “Why do something that takes time and is not 100% accurate?”
A: Because the act of deciding “what was the most important thing I did during this time block?” is self-feedback that creates behavioral modification without making them feel monitored or pushed. It isn’t over-burdensome once every 30 minutes, and it supports the Pomodoro Technique. It also has a subtle, subliminal affect of saying: “Each time block should really be focusing on one major thing.” That has a huge benefit too, minimizing task switching.
A final thought:
People think of time differently than they do money. It’s the company’s money, but it’s their time (even though they are hired to spend it on company things). Knowledge workers need to feel like they are in control of deciding where to most effectively spend their time or they will wilt. Sometimes that means browsing Facebook or news to rest their mind a few minutes.
BIG Exceptions:
Exception 1) Occasional assessments to monitor where people are actually spending time are VERY helpful as a workflow analysis/improvement tool (in the confidential hands of the third-party consultant). But it must not be public or something they worry they might need to justify, or bad feelings and low output will ensue.
Exception 2) If you need an intervention for someone, 100% accurate monitoring is valuable, but use with caution. It’s heavy-handed, so it will be seen as a form of discipline.
Comment by Kevin Crenshaw — 10 September 2012 @ 8:46 am