504-Tracking Time To Reduce Overwhelm

Today I will share with you some ideas for ways to track your time, depending on your desired results.  And why tracking time can be so important to unlocking that feeling of overwhelm.  

 

Transcript:

 

Welcome to Everyday Happiness where we create lasting happiness, in about 2 minutes a day,  through my signature method of Intentional Margins® (creating harmony between your to-dos and your priorities), happiness science, and musings about life. 

 

I'm your host Katie Jefcoat, and I am on a kick right now about time.  Do you ever feel like you have so much to do that you secretly want to run away to a secluded hideout and give it all up?  Honestly, I think about minimalism, we’ve talked about that before on this show, and how maybe if there were less distractions I would feel more like I was in control of my time and my todos. 

 

Well, if you are like me, we can’t actually run away forever.  So I wanted to share with you a tip that I used to help me see where I was actually spending my time.  It’s called time tracking.  You can google time tracking and get apps and plug-ins for your computer or phone, or you can, like me, use a good ol’ fashioned pen and paper.  

 

When I was practicing law at a big law firm, we needed to track our time in 7 minute increments to bill our time to our specific clients. In those days, I used a legal pad for notes and then inputted the appropriate descriptions and tags into the law firm’s billing system.  Lucky for us now, we can google time tracker printable and you can print off a few free template sheets and start today. 

 

Depending on what your goals are, you can categorize your time or be super specific.  So take a few minutes and think about why you want to track your time and what results you want to see.   Some of the things I like to bucket together are all of the work I do on different projects or consulting clients.  It might look like a bucket for redesigning my website or writing and recording podcasts.   It might be buckets like phone calls, computer work, networking.  I also like to be super specific and log showers, think time, scrolling social media (your iPhone can help with that too in settings).   There are so many ways to track your time based on what you want to learn. 

 

Time tracking is important because it forces us to do the math.  We all have the same 24, right?  But doing the math really highlights where we spend our time.  I invite you to reflect on your Intentional Margins, those priorities that drive you, that mean so much to you. Does your time reflect your priorities or do you need a little shake up? 

 

Now, before you try to recreate the wheel from last week - stop.  Research shows that we as humans are terrible at estimating time.  We can’t guess accurately, we always overestimate. This also goes for how we estimate how long it will take us to do a task in the future.  We’re terrible at getting that right - unless of course you’ve done the same task 5 times and you know.  But that’s not what I’m talking about here.  

 

Today, I invite you to consider how you use your precious 24 hours and if you are interested, track your time for a week and see what happens.  See what you learn.  For me, it was super insightful.  When I was super clear on how I was using my time, I had the knowledge to reflect and pivot.  

 

Until next time, remember, kindness is contagious. 

 

    

 

 

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