I was reading The Way I Work: Matt Mullenweg in Inc magaine. Matt mentioned one of his favorite programs his company hadn’t made was Rescue Time. I’ve been thinking a lot about how I spend my time, and doing a lot of questioning whether I am doing what I should be. I’m supposed to be the head of a company. Why do I feel like the admin assistant?
At first, I thought the idea of a program monitoring how I spend my time was really creepy. It felt like something companies who don’t trust their employees would use. But when it comes right down to it, I had to admit I was probably playing games in my head about what I am really doing. So I downloaded the Mac version of the program for solopreneurs onto my main computer. Note I said main, I have two others I use that are not being monitored.
Measuring a typical week
Last week was a typical week. Always a long list to things to do, but no super pressing deadlines. Perfect as a baseline for measurement. I did my best to forget the tracking was there. I would notice when I was doing things like aimlessly looking for stupid things online, I would just happen to be on the computer in the living room. The untracking one. But it wasn’t too bad, and when I would notice that is what I was doing I would chuckle to myself and stop.
I would occasionally glance at the dashboard, but knew it wouldn’t be very meaningful until it had enough data. The program has the ability to set up ratings for particular activities. You can tell it what is productive for you and what is distracting. At the end of the week I got my first weekly summary.
OMG, I’m a time disaster!
Eye-opening bordering on shocking it was. 39 hours on the computer alone.
- 9 hours 5 minutes on EMAIL
- 7 hours on blogs and forums (4 hours on Kitchen Table alone, where I have cut way back)
- 5 hours 6 minutes on social networking
- 4 hours 42 minutes writing
- 45 minutes on digital image processing
- 3 hours 2 minutes on news sites
- 44 minutes shopping (for laser toner- not even fun stuff)
How much of this is productive? Good question. Nowhere near enough. I knew I spent a lot of time on email, I had no idea it was an entire day a week.
In addition I had 18 hours of meetings in Portland, with 4.5 hours of driving back and forth. I painted at least a half hour every morning. That’s already over 66 hours of worktime. No phone call time logged or other things I did away from the keyboard.
What should I be doing?
Really good question. One that I’m not entirely sure how to answer. As my business has shifted, I have not yet redefined what the best use of my time is. What really makes a difference? I suspect its not what showed up on my weekly time report.
A couple of weeks ago I was on a group coaching call with Gary Barnes from Max Life International. He talked about productivity as PINO.
- P- productive: time facing customers who can say yes to your offer
- I- indirectly productive time: time that leads you to productive time
- N- Non-productive time: everything else
- O- Other people could do it
Gary suggested we aim for spending 1/3 of our time on each of PIN. Delegate the O. Ok, that makes sense, at least it did until I started to look at my time. Especially when I asked Gary where designing products came in, and he said nonproductive. Really? I’m a designer.
I’ve been trying ever since to figure out what productive time is for me. So far I have:
- Public speaking.
- Writing my newsletter.
- Conversations with customers.
My business is about to change with a new distributor, so suddenly my newsletter and direct customer conversations change. I think. But really I’m not sure. I suspect writing becomes a much bigger part of the equation. Looking at new ways to communicate about visual tools?
I’m not sure looking at time from this perspective works for me. Creation is such a big part of what is really important to me, and this idea doesn’t seem to support that. It certainly is an interesting exercise to look at my actual time through this lens, and realize I am spending most of my time in the non-productive areas. Its probably why I feel like an admin assistant. I’m responding to what comes at me rather than strategically determining what I should be doing.
How else can I look at this?
I’m in the overwhelmed stage of realization. The part where I am seeing some of the problem, before I see the way out. Have any ideas? Stories of what has worked for you? How do you become more strategic in your allocation of time? Any and all suggestions are welcome.
I’m trying to figure out, am I doing the things that are most important? Tough question.
