Have you ever wondered how a successful company that seems to operate off the cuff stays successfull. More than likely it won't. In order for a company (or individual for that matter) to be successfull you must budget. So I won't get into financial matter, but keep the theme around budgeting of your time.
Many time management guru's will have you think that wasting time is the killer of productivity .. hmmmm wait a minute ... it is!!! However, sometimes you have to plan to waste some time.. that way you are within you expected time expenditures. Yes I said time expenditures. You should treat your time like money, hence the age old term "time is money".
Well, if you budget your money (and I hope you do), then why not budget your time, down to the last 15 minute increment. And if you have a budget you can then compare your actuals to budget to see what your time mangement performance is like. Do you get an A, B, C, D or F??? Thet great thing about budgeting is you can budget for fun time or down time so you don't feel like you are being unproductive. If you do feel unproductive without knowing it is ok, you can tend to slip from your productive mindset and get back into old time wasting habits. Similar to feeling like you cheating on a diet and and eventually fall off the diet all together. People tend to beat themselves up over this behavior. If you have it budgeted and you stay within your budget then you are less likely to give up on your process (diet, time, goals ect..)
Here is a sample of my time budget:
I realize this is small (click on the image to see an enlarged view), but I hope you get the point. Budget your time in "types" of activities and then you can summarize your actuals to compare to later. I'll get into that detail in a different post.
Here is a sample of the actuals vs. budget summary:
This shows in week one of tracking time that I have two areas that are in the Red. If you have gone through the effort of budgeting and tracking your time, make sure you spend the time to review your actuals to budget. I suggest doing this process twice a year. It will help keep you on track and remind you of your goals and what steps you are taking (or not) to achieve them.
I'll cover the details of what to budget and how in another post.
Until Next time...
Many time management guru's will have you think that wasting time is the killer of productivity .. hmmmm wait a minute ... it is!!! However, sometimes you have to plan to waste some time.. that way you are within you expected time expenditures. Yes I said time expenditures. You should treat your time like money, hence the age old term "time is money".
Well, if you budget your money (and I hope you do), then why not budget your time, down to the last 15 minute increment. And if you have a budget you can then compare your actuals to budget to see what your time mangement performance is like. Do you get an A, B, C, D or F??? Thet great thing about budgeting is you can budget for fun time or down time so you don't feel like you are being unproductive. If you do feel unproductive without knowing it is ok, you can tend to slip from your productive mindset and get back into old time wasting habits. Similar to feeling like you cheating on a diet and and eventually fall off the diet all together. People tend to beat themselves up over this behavior. If you have it budgeted and you stay within your budget then you are less likely to give up on your process (diet, time, goals ect..)
Here is a sample of my time budget:
I realize this is small (click on the image to see an enlarged view), but I hope you get the point. Budget your time in "types" of activities and then you can summarize your actuals to compare to later. I'll get into that detail in a different post.
Here is a sample of the actuals vs. budget summary:
This shows in week one of tracking time that I have two areas that are in the Red. If you have gone through the effort of budgeting and tracking your time, make sure you spend the time to review your actuals to budget. I suggest doing this process twice a year. It will help keep you on track and remind you of your goals and what steps you are taking (or not) to achieve them.
I'll cover the details of what to budget and how in another post.
Until Next time...
