Using activity logs as part of your time management strategy can significantly increase your productivity.

Have you ever had the experience of looking back on a busy day, week, or month only to realize that you didn’t accomplish nearly as much as you had planned?

If so, you’re not alone.

Most people, even those of us who diligently block out our time and prioritize our schedules, find that, while we’re always busy, we often don’t make the progress we anticipated.

Whether you’re building a successful career or a successful business, your time is your most valuable asset.

Just as your financial condition is a direct result of how you use your money, your productivity is a direct result of your time management.

However unlike finances, which you can easily keep track of with bank statements, receipts, and other records, it’s easy to lose track of just where your time is going.

Before you can effectively use any time management system, you must have an accurate picture of how you’re spending your time right now.

By far the best way to keep track of your time is to use an Activity Log. With this system, you keep a detailed record of just how you’re spending each hour of your day. After you see where your available time is going you’ll be in a much better position to make decisions that increase your productivity.

How to Benefit from an Activity Log

Click Here to Download our Activity Log. (Or create your own by making a table with 3 columns: Time, Activity, and Value.)

Starting tomorrow morning, keep a copy of your activity log with you throughout the day. Go about your activities as you normally would. Only each time you begin a new activity, note it on the log. Be specific. Don’t just write down “telephone calls.” If you’re calling a colleague to finalize a sale, solve a problem, or get some needed information, write that down. If you’re just calling to check on weekend plans, note that too.

To get the most accurate picture of your time usage, record every activity on your activity log. Note when you break for lunch or coffee, when you are interrupted by coworkers, and when you check your email. If you work on a single project for an hour, you only need to note that project one time. However, if you stop what you’re doing for any reason, make a note of it and then note the time you restart.

Keep your activity log for a full week.

Then, at the end of the week review your activity log and objectively analyze how you’re spending your time. Go through each activity and, in the “value” column, note whether each activity is in your:

Top 20% — high-value activities that contribute significantly toward your goals

Bottom 80% – activities that need to be done, but don’t contribute as significantly toward your objectives

0% – activities that should be delegated, or simply not done at all

Determine how much time you actually spent in each “Value” column relative to your total working hours. This can be eye-opening.

When I (Jane) first began keeping this log years ago, I found that I only spent a small fraction of each day involved in activities that significantly impacted my bottom-line results. The more time I shifted to these activities, the more productive I became and the better results I saw in my career.

Since then, many of our clients have benefited from this simple technique. Charles, the president of large restaurant chain, found that he was wasting a significant amount of time at the beginning and end of his many meetings. By scheduling meetings back-to-back he was able to come up with large blocks of uninterrupted time for important projects.

Janet, publisher of a women’s magazine, found that her long hours at work were interrupted so frequently that she rarely spent more the 20 minutes at a time on any one project. After she began scheduling specific “open door” periods, she was able to cut down on her total time in the office and get home at a reasonable hour.

While we recommend using an activity log to get a baseline picture of how you’re spending your time, keeping an activity log regularly can also be a very effective time management tool. A few moments of writing and analyzing your time usage each day can help you make better choices about your activities and can lead to significant gains in productivity and a significant drop in stress!

If You’re Too Busy to Keep a Log

If you think you’re too busy to keep an activity log, yet you’re not yet as productive as you’d like to be, remember the story of the woodcutter, sweating and straining as he struggles to cut down a large tree with a dull blade. A man approaches and suggests to the woodcutter that he would be able to cut the tree down much more quickly with a sharper saw. At which point the woodcutter replies, “I can’t stop now, I’m too busy sawing!”

If, at the end of a month, you realized that you had less money in your accounts than you thought, you would (hopefully) take the time to do an audit to determine just where the money went. Remember, while finances can always be replaced, your time is an irreplaceable resource. Take the opportunity now to determine how to best invest your time assets. This simple, short-term strategy will pay off in significant increases productivity and significantly better long-term results.

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