Eliminate time wasters by using this free time management log

A time management log is similar to keeping a household budget.

Keeping a household budget, you know where you are spending your money, and when you want to save for something big, a budget helps you to know where you can save.

A time management log is an objective way to examine how you spend your time.

If you ask a number of people about the pressures of time, a common reply may be that “they are constantly busy and stressed”, “they can’t get enough done in the day”, or “they would like to spend more time with family and friends”.

One of the common reasons is that they don’t know where their time goes. Does this sound familiar?

If you want to use your time more effectively and you don’t know how you currently spend your time, then this is like trying to “pin the tail on the donkey” – a very hit and miss affair.

If you don’t have the time for this ‘trial and error’ approach then download and photocopy this time management log

The benefits of keeping a time log are that it will tell you how you are using your time and what the time-robbers are. The adage that “You can’t fix an issue until you can identify it” is true of time management as well.

Instructions for filling out your time management log

1. Record all activities as they occur. Record all interruptions, trying to give as much detail as possible. Do not rely on your memory to fill in the log at the end of the day. Click here to understand why memory is a poor indicator of time use.
2. Enter a priority for the action, either an A, B or C. A is important, B is somewhat important, and C is not important. If the action is ‘Urgent’ then put an * next to the priority.
3. Comment on each action. Note any suggestions for how the action could be improved upon. The more detailed the better for analyzing your time log. Treat the time log as a challenge and record every significant event.
4. Keep a log for a minimum of 3 days.
5. You can keep you log for work only, however better gains can be made by including work and home time.

Examine your time management log

Now it is time to put your use of time under the microscope and see where you can make more use of your time.

Pick a common day that you have kept a time management log for.

1. Examine the amount of time that you spend on different priorities.

The best way to do this is to add up the time that you spend on priority A, A*, B, B*, C and C* tasks.

What you really want to be doing, to live the most effective life that you can, is to spend most of your time in the priority A area, and most of this time should be on A priority tasks rather than A* tasks. To see why see our explanation of proactive time management.

How does your time log look? You need to be happy with the amount of time that you are spending on the different priorities.

2. Ask yourself the following questions

1. Are you spending too much time on unimportant things or too little time on important things. This is a common source of stress for many people.
2. Are there common interruptions to your day? Can you think of ways to minimize your interruptions?
3. Do you procrastinate between tasks or get a coffee when you should be working on important things
4. For each task, ask yourself Why am I doing this? or Why do I need to do this? If the reasons are not clear to you then you have a number of options such as delegation, prioritizing the task to a low priority, or dropping the task altogether.
5. What activities are you doing in high energy areas? Are you doing activities that are value-adding and important to you when you have high energy? If not, then why not?

What are your most common timewasters?

Moving from analysis to change

What a time log does is that it gets you to log your time and analyze it. Just by doing these two things you are more likely to become aware of your timewasters and self-correct yourself. However, this is not guaranteed for change, a third step is to plan for change.

As for any plan of change, it is necessary to not only write down your plans for change but to act on them. To do this, it is important to understand the “Whys” before the “Do’s” of the action.

Some of the more common areas that need improvement are procrastination, difficulty with delegating and unclear priorities. To understand your “whys” of procrastination and then develop clear steps to overcome procrastination, click here. If you have difficulty delegating, then see our effective steps to delegation. If unclear priorities are a concern for you then please see our goal setting page.

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