Find Time by Seeing Where Your Time Goes

The Time Finder with Paula Eder

The way you use your time is the way you live your life.

Find Time by Seeing Where Your Time Goes

Posted on January 7, 2009, under Time Choices.

Finding more time can be difficult if you don’t know where your time is actually going. That’s a little like trying to set out on a journey when you don’t know where you are right now.

So, finding your time baseline is a necessary first step in managing your time and your time choices more realistically. But how do you do that?

In Getting to Grips with Time Management, Rachael Ross offers up the idea of creating a time diary to track how you spend your time each day. It’s very important to be accurate and comprehensive in documenting your time. As she notes:

The time diary is not meant to be a negative judgmental experience, but an opportunity to learn your current way of working and then put in place definite steps to better manage your time.

So, when you’re keeping a time diary, it’s very important to set aside self-criticism and jot down everything that you are doing. Track time spent on tasks, and time spent in-between tasks. It’s often that “in-between time” that gets lost in the shuffle – and has treasure troves of information to reveal!

Tracking your time in this way will not only help you be more productive; it also reveals to you what you are valuing in your life right now. You are giving yourself the opportunity to see what you are choosing by default, so that you can make more conscious choices going forward.

Remember, the way you use your time is the way you live your life.

Do you know how you spend your time? Have you tried tracking your time with a time diary? Would you like to make changes in the time choices you are making? I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences!

What if you could find another hour every day? You can! For more Time Finding resources, you are invited to sign up and download The New Finding Time Boundary Template. It’s FREE, and when you sign up you will also receive (if you don’t already) my FREE, twice-weekly Finding Time Tips and my FREE, monthly Award-Winning Finding Time E-zine!

Let’s explore time together …

Paula's Signature

If this is your first comment it may be held for moderation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed, or Trackback from your own site.