Increase Your Time Management & Productivity by 46%

Increase Your Time Management & Productivity by 46%

Are you always late?

Would you like to find more time throughout your day?
If I said, I will find you an extra 2 hours at work to get your work done, would you believe me?

Understanding Time Management and productivity techniques allow you to feel more:

• Productive
• Successful 
• In control
• Highly valued

Activity Logs

It's an easier concept to grasp if you use an activity log in your personal life before you apply it at work. 

Step 1: Reflect on your morning ritual to get up and ready for work.

How much time do you take to get ready in the morning? 1 hour, 2 hours?

Why does it take so long?

Would you like 46% of your time back every morning?

Step 2: Print off an Activity Log Template from here

Step 3: Complete the Activity Log on a daily basis for a week

Step 4: Analyse where you can save time or be more efficient. 

An activity log is useful for both your personal and professional life and is used to track the time it takes for you to do certain activities.

An example of a typical activity log for the morning routine is below:

Time	Activity description	Duration	How do I feel?	Value/non-value added
7:00am	Alarm goes off – hit snooze	15min	Tired	Non-value added
7:15am	Alarm goes off – hit snooze	15min	Tired	Non-value added
7:30am	Alarm goes off – start getting out of bed	5min	Tired	Value- added
7:35am	Go to the toilet	8min	Drowsy	Value- added
7:43am	Wake up the kid(s)	3min	Awake	Value- added
7:58am	Have breakfast while reading Facebook/news	15min	Relaxed	Eating breakfast is value- added, however, reading Facebook and the news is not value added.
8:13am	Get into the shower	8min	Relaxed	Value added, however, longer than it needs to be
8:21am	Get dressed including finding something to wear (including yelling at the kids to get ready)	10min	Annoyed	Value added, however, longer than it needs to be
8:31am	Put make up on	7min	Relaxed	It makes me feel confident, therefore value added
8:38am	Make school lunches	10min	Annoyed	Value added, however, it could be done the night before.
8:48am	Motivate the kids to get ready for school	3min	Angry	Value added, however, they could be given a checklist so they are more motivated and won't need me to say you need to get ready.
8:51am	Leave to drop the kids off to school	10min	Angry	Value added
9:01am – kids are late for school, I’m late for work, stressed and I wonder how 2 hours to get ready in the morning is not enough!

The activity log above, is a typical morning, so why does this client try to squeeze all the activities into the morning? It's a simple answer, she has created a habit. It takes 21 days to create a habit, and the client above had been doing the same routine for years. 

It also takes 21 days to break a habit, and it is easy. The client above reported she was able to get to work early, relaxed and even had time to take the dog for a walk to improve her own physical fitness, in the morning instead of running around here there and everywhere. 

When you map out your activities of a typical day, you can instantly see where you go wrong or eliminate non-value added activities.

The client in the example wasted time with:

• 30min snoozing (non-value added)
• Looking at Facebook/news (non-value added)
• Taking longer than a 3min shower (non-value added)
• Finding something to wear (value added however organisation skills could be enhanced)
• Making lunches the night before (value added, however, organisation skills could be enhanced)

The client saved approx.. 55 minutes during her morning ritual.

Stop. 

This doesn’t mean you can set your alarm for 7:55am every morning instead!

The beauty of Time Management is you can fit more VALUE ADDED activities into your day.

Would you like to take the dog for a walk in the morning, would you like to improve your physical fitness or read a book?

One of the biggest hurdles you have with Time Management is your PERCEPTION of time. You know when you say, “I’ll be there in 5 minutes", but really you’re there in 10 minutes?

Perception of time is a learned habit, which has developed since you were a young child and it can take the effort to re-form an actual perception of time.

You can learn how far out of whack your perception really is, by doing the Activity Log activity, BEFORE you actually track your time and then compare the two.

Once you know the average amount of time your perception is out, you can then adjust the time you leave for work or appointments (so you are not late) or set multiple alarms on your phone when you need to start your next activity. 

This client found 55 minutes in the first 2 hours of her day. That’s a 46% increase in productivity.

If you keep an activity log for a few days, imagine how much time you can use to do activities you love to do and start rearranging your activities around to fit in with your energy levels.

From the activity log above, this client was not a morning person, therefore she changed her decision-making times to the afternoon and evening instead. 

When you analyse your activity log for the few days identify activities that:

• Do not help you achieve your personal or professional objectives and eliminate them if you can.
• Can be delegated to others
• Should be rescheduled to more energetic periods of the day
• You can reduce double handling
• A quicker way of doing a particular task can be found
• Reduce the number of times you switch between tasks
• Reduce the number of time-wasting activities such as social media

Download a weekly activity log template here

Would you like a personal 1:1 mentor who can keep you on track with your goals? Head to Business Mentoring Australia or book in your free mentoring session below