How are you really spending your time?
by Christine Martell on August 24, 2009
in Time
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.
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Hey Christine,
I don’t know how helpful that PINO stuff sounds… Check out Charlie Gilkey’s post Create, Connect and Consume for another way to categorise your time (http://www.productiveflourishing.com/create-connect-and-consume/).
Also I’ve heard he and Naomi (ittybiz.com) talking about important tasks as being about Cashflow, Visibility or Opportunity.
This is tough stuff and I don’t know any self-employed person who doesn’t struggle with how they spend their time (including me!).
Thanks for sharing!
@Rebecca Leigh:
Thanks for the reality check. I can actually find myself in Charlie’s create/connect/consume. More of what I have been doing makes sense. Still don’t feel like I have the balance dialed in, but the larger buckets of activity are more useful.
Very interesting! My profile may be pretty similar, without the meetings, etc. I’m trying to track my time with Outlook, but there are big blank spaces where I know I’m working and those would probably count as Email. And that email is mostly with people in the same industry – colleagues and potential clients. Then there’s the time like this morning when I had to spend about 45 minutes on tech support — and I have more to do still, since I can’t work without my computer and I can’t move around without my pocket pc.
Writing time varies, but what keeps being shoved to the side is the stack of things I intend to read to provide feedback to others or inform my writing. Yet I do check my google reader on most days and run through it quickly because each item is fairly short. But in total it takes up a lot of time. Then I take the time to comment from time to time…
I really enjoyed this post – to see you modeling what it looks like to watch time closely.
Time is such a weird and wild and wonderful thing for me. Sometimes it feels like I have too much of it, but most of the time it feels like I have too little. I ultimately know that’s all about my relationship to it. Which, in many ways, remains a big mystery to me.
The last few weeks I’ve been thinking a lot about this – how I spend my time and how I can better spend my time. So, if you’ll pardon a bad pun, this post is very timely for me.
Thanks also for mentioning the PINO thing. And thanks to Rebecca for linking to Charlie’s post.
Oh my gosh I’m afraid to even look!
I know I should be measuring this unproductive, time-wasting-type stuff.
But the truth! I don’t think I can handle it!
I LOVE this idea of a formula, some kind of baseline so I know how far off track I am. Bookkeepers have that baseline percentage for expenses to revenue. We should have something like that for time as well!
Here’s what HAS been working for me:
First I listed out exactly what I need to do in a week–the most important stuff that can’t be skipped:
Publish a blog post
Publish a newsletter
Tweet & comment on blogs
Copywriting projects
Proposals
Calls with prospects
Then I listed out how much time those activities would take.
Then I literally scheduled blocked out time on my calendar for them.
Calls, blog posts, and social networking all go together on the same day.
Copywriting and proposals go on the other days. They require different mindsets and states of being. Allows me to be my “internal” person on one day, and my “external” person on the next day.
Anything that’s not scheduled is “nothing time.”
Nothing time has a right to be there.
Since I already know the hours in which I’ll be working productively, it’s easier to allow myself the hours in which to do nothing.
And it’s easier to keep email from dictating my activities.
Having an assistant helps, too!
The trick is to not get carried away with this and try to schedule every single thing I need to do. Otherwise my calendar will start to look ridiculous, with no empty spaces.
So far, this is working for me. Helps to create a container for the most important things. Reduces the overwhelm and the feeling that because I’m doing x, I’m not doing a, b, and c.
@Betsy Hansel:
Oh yes, its amazing how much time gets used in maintaining the technology. I might be the opposite, I get sucked into anything where I can learn or reflect. Disciplining myself to write is a challenge. Probably because I am spending so much time writing emails!
@Fabeku:
What I’m starting to see is there is time with art that is often spacious and flowing, and there is time with computers that isn’t so much. It can cross when I am doing art on the computer, but the flow isn’t as reliable. Then I wonder why so much of my time is on the computer, and so little painting? That opens up another whole can of worms.
@Kelly Parkinson:
Yea, the measuring has been scary. I’m currently going with the devil you know is better than the one you don’t theory. I’ll keep you posted.
Creating a container, and knowing what the most important things are. I am so not there yet, but its really helpful to define that as a goal. I also like the strategy of clustering into tasks that take a different self. I’ve been trying that with meetings, but finding that I am totally exhausted if I try to pretend I am an extrovert for too long. All about balance? It might also be my blocks are too long. I try to get whole days, it might work better if halves.
First, giant kudos to you for having the courage to look! That took guts. So yay.
After you congratulate yourself for that, maybe the next step is to exercise a little self-kindness. I think this is where Jen Hofmann would advocate *acceptance* or Havi would suggest *meeting yourself where you are*. Problem-solving is generally easier with a more compassionate mindset of curiosity than judgment. Try being open to the possibility that you are *not* a time disaster. In fact, try not calling yourself names at all. Unless they are names like The Very Brave & Curious Christine.
There is a ton of useful information in here (even without looking at it through the PINO lens). Such as: feeling like your own admin isn’t in your head. And it’s neutral info until *you decide* what it means.
I really like how Kelly identified her must-do priorities first and worked from there. It really does help to be proactive than reactive (as you concluded yourself).
So without trying to fix it all at once (because that *is* overwhelming) – pick the area that ags you the most and experiment with what you can do to change it – to bring it in closer alignment with what feels right, what feels less disastrous. Make it more efficient somehow? Do it at a different time or day? Set a limit on it? Eliminate it? Then move on to the next and so forth.
You are intrepid and amazing! And that’s why I know you *will* figure this out. oxo Cairene
I figured out this week that I have to spend 5 hours of admin time for every 3 hours of client time. So in a given day, I only have 3 hours that I can bill for. The rest is marketing, networking, one-on-one communication, or writing. That’s if I want to stay booked solid.
It’s really nuts! My brand is built so much around me and my personality that it’s hard for me to delegate much. I do delegate a lot of non-work stuff, but I’m having a hard time with some of the work stuff. Okay, nearly all of the work stuff.
Thanks for pointing out the PINO way of looking at things. I’m extremely productive, and I know that everything I do has a purpose, but do *I* need to be doing all of it? Probably not. Can I let go? Errrmmm…
@Cairene:
So interesting, I was curious until I saw the results, and wham-o, instant judgment. I’m slowly working back to it just being information. With lots of opportunities for creative application of new behavior. Sudden in my face awareness has unleashed a fount of ideas from typing classes for the cats to a vacation from new input from surfing. Change is incremental, and there is nothing like a little tattle tale program on your computer to keep you honest about making it.
@Sarah Bray:
Another thing Gary talked about in the PINO system was delegating anything we could get someone else to do for less than $50 an hour. Esp all those pesky admin details. I can totally relate to the struggle in letting them go at times. Esp when a number of the experiments in doing so are not terribly successful. when you do find the right person, it can be great.