Leaders who chart their time are often surprised by their own choices.
Spending too much of the day on activities that do not produce happiness, satisfaction, or productivity is a common affliction. Knowing, with more precision, exactly how you spend your time is an exercise that can pay big dividends.
Known as a Time Audit or Time Field, the idea is to document how you spend your time in 30-minute increments over two weeks. Capturing the activity and placing it within the Time Field is relatively painless but does require the discipline to do so throughout each day. Trying to remember what you did hours earlier is harder than you think. So the key is to track your activities in real time.
After you complete a given day’s Time Field, the next step, and perhaps the most important, is to assign each 30-minute increment a value for satisfaction. Don’t wait for more than a day to capture your feelings about each time block, as your memory is much better when fresh.
Try not to draw strong conclusions before the two weeks expire. But once the time field is complete, take the time to review more precisely how you invest and spend your time. You may be shocked or at least mildly dismayed.
As you lay plans to make some changes, moving from a spend to an invest mindset of time will help you. What investments do you plan to make differently in the future as a result of your Time Field? Every day is rich with time until you make choices that either invest or spend those resources. Consciously deciding what investments in time you prefer to make in the future is both a healthy and productive thing to do.
Investments of time have the advantage of paying dividends in the present and the future. Activities such as exercise, producing meaningful work, learning new things, and deepening relationships create value now and into the future.
Consider doubling down on the learning activity. As Benjamin Franklin instructed, “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”
A Daily Dispatch from the Front Lines of Leadership.
