Previously, I offered one simple rule for improving productivity: keep track of your time. Because simple rules aren't always easy to follow, here are some time-keeping tips.
A few weeks ago, I posted an article that offered one simple rule for improving your productivity: keep track of your time. As we all know, simple rules aren’t always easy to follow. So I offered to share a bit more about my time-keeping process. I’m a bit late in writing this—for reasons I described in my last post—but here’s the follow-up article I promised.
My time-tracking system has morphed over the past eight years. When I first decided to keep track of my own time, I simply wrote down the date, a brief description of what I was doing, and a measure of how long I did it. But I began to see that keeping track of my time could do more than just help me stay on task; it could help me be more productive. To measure my productivity, every line item on my “ProjectTracker” spreadsheet now includes the following: the day’s date, a job category code, an activity code, a project code, an activity description and an hour column. Let me explain what I mean by job category, activity and project:
Job category: Job categories are the various parts of a marketer’s job description. In one of my previous jobs, for example, I was mostly focused on managing marketing projects, so I kept track of creative management, project management, campaign management, event management and non-project work. For my health care B2B marketing business, I keep track of all billable work, sales efforts, marketing activities and staffing issues, plus I include an administrative category so I can keep track of things that are necessary to run the business but that don’t fall in to the above categories. You know your job better than anyone; break it up into categories that will give you a meaningful view of how you spend your time.
TIP: I use numerals as job category codes. For example:
1 = Billable work 2 = Sales 3 = Marketing 4 = Staffing 5 = Administrative
Activity: Activities are the things you do to “get the job done.” For instance, if part of your job is creative direction, there are a number of activities you perform to do that part of your job well: you develop creative briefs, you conduct meetings, you edit, you review and approve. If you’re a public relations pro, you’ll do things like planning, writing, editing and pitching. As the leader of a B2B marketing agency, the activities I track are centered around planning and strategy, creative direction, production management, and project/campaign evaluation. Whatever you do, have enough activities so you can describe everything you do throughout the day.
TIP: I use alphabetical characters for activity codes. For example:
A = Analysis B = Brainstorming C = Concepting D = Planning E = Outline F = Creative Direction G = Draft Copy H = Edit Copy I = Finalize Copy J = Draft Design K = Edit Design L = Finalize Design M = Production N = Launch O = Comparison P = Evaluation
Project: A project is something that you do to reach your business goals. To keep track of my agency’s projects, I’ve made up five-character alphanumeric codes for each billable deliverable and for all my sales and marketing activities. The type of code I use doesn’t matter—it could be a phrase rather than a code. What matters is that it’s unique. That way, I can keep track of how I spend my time on each project.
TIP: Here’s an example of how I develop project codes. The first character represents the client (I use an underscore for internal projects), and the final four characters describe the deliverable.
DPPCC: Client PPC Campaign XSPKR: Client Speaker's Bureau NBRAU: Client Brand Audit GBCRD: Client Business Cards _BLOG: Agency Blog
Once you’ve figured out all the category, activity and project codes, use your spreadsheet’s built-in functions to tie everything together: calculate how much time you spend per job category, how much time you spend per activity, and how much time you spend on each project.
You can go even further and develop tables that track the activities that make up each job category, the activities take the most time per project, how much time you spend per activity per job category, etc.
How much time does this take? I typically spend no more than 15 minutes a day logging my time, and that’s only if I wait until the end of the day to track my time. If you’re going to make the commitment to track your time, I’d recommend making it part of your workflow. When you finish up an activity, take 20 seconds to log it, and it becomes part of what you need to do to complete that activity. The thing that takes the most time is developing your ProjectTracker spreadsheet. But I can make that easier for you.
If you’d like to start tracking your time, I can provide you with a template to get you started that has all the spreadsheet calculations built in. If you want the template, let me know by commenting on this article and I’ll send you the file.
