When Time Tracking Can’t Save You at All
Your productivity is largely determined by how you spend your time, and therefore time tracking seems to be of great help. It can also be a trap that eats up more time than it saves.
We often get so excited about all of these systems and ways of tracking and scheduling our time that they just turn into a giant pile of “productive porn”. Time tracking and time management are some of the most important aspects of building a routine for yourself, but it also makes them the most vulnerable to your productivity. Kevin Zawaki of Fast Company spoke to Laura Stack, aka The Productivity Pro , and she asked an interesting question:
“Why are we wasting time figuring out how much time we are spending? People spend much more time building these complex systems than they do this task. You are constantly rebuilding, recalculating, reclassifying your application. The best strategy would be to [return] to the basic principles of good time management. Set aside time on your calendar for non-negotiable things. [Or] make an organized and prioritized list of tasks. “
Tracking time and scheduling tasks can be helpful, but the tasks themselves are the most important part. You can spend 20 minutes tracking your time and putting together a to-do list for the morning, or you can just get started with the to-do list. You might think that you are saving yourself time, but you can simply eat it by managing unnecessary systems. If you find this to be the case, stop logging, tracking, and wasting time on things that will save you time.
Dangers of Time Tracking | Fast Company