I should be tired. It is 2:30 am in Philadelphia.
Today, I drove my car for 8 hours and 33 minutes, mostly in circles. It was a long day. But, I achieved a lot:
Please, do not try to make sense of the route (or lack thereof), as it was mostly last minute meetings put together on the fly. And it turned out to be a terrible route, but a fun & productive day.
- 6 hrs 31 min of sleep, and my day started in Philadelphia, PA
- 4 min of exercise was enough to get me energized
- 25 min of morning preparation, and off to first client visit in NY
- 2 hrs of client visit in New York to kick-off a project
- 12 min of lunch (a nice Gyro on Route 1 in New Jersey)
- 1 hr 13 min of meeting with consulting partners in Yardley, PA
- 2 hrs 42 min of another client meeting over dinner in Wayne, PA
- 1 hr 39 min of beer & chat with a friend in downtown Princeton, NJ
- …and back to hotel in Philly close to mid-night
- Deeper focus. Now that the clock is ticking on the selected task in Toggl, you feel the need to focus on it, or otherwise switch to another task/activity and focus on that one. “Doing nothing” is not an option (theoretically it is, but it feels terrible that you are doing nothing with your valuable time, and you are actually recording this as data).
- Reduced “waste”. Facebook, Twitter, Web surfing, non-sense TV. Record all of it, and over time you will realize how much valuable time you are losing. After the first full month of recording, and realizing this waste, I spent 85% less time on my “time killer” category of activities the next 2 months
- Better work-life balance. Please stop lying yourself about how busy you are, and why you don’t have enough time to spend on healthy & spiritual activities, including exercise, family and friends. I realized that I can actually fit in a short exercise into every morning (even if it is just 5-10min), and now I have a long series of daily exercise regimen. Time tracking turned exercise into daily obsession/habit for me.
- Continuous improvement. What is more beautiful than a very well organized data set which is showing your own personal performance and weekly / monthly improvements. You start noticing trends (e.g., spending at least 30-40 min of morning prep time), and want to improve it over time. I set mental targets for specific activities such as “no more than 60 continuous min on emailing”, and try to do things faster and more efficient each time. Data will show how successful I get over time, and will also highlight where there is biggest opportunities to improve myself.