Time Management Audit (Time Management No.2)

When someone asks you, “What do you do?” The typical response is, “I’m a [insert profession here].” But does that really describe what you do? Do you even know what you really do during the course of a day?

I’d venture to say that, unless you’re a practiced time manager, you may not know where your time goes.

You might have a general idea; however, the truth might shock you. Because time seems to be the resource in shortest supply, it’s very important that you know what you spend your time doing.

By taking stock of your “time spent” you can then decide where best to allocate the time you have.

Think of your time like a product on a warehouse shelf. The things that demand your time are your customers.

If you just dole out your time on a first-come-first–served basis, the shelf is going to get empty very fast. And, more importantly, the customers that are fortunate enough to get some of your limited supply of time aren’t necessarily the most deserving ones.

Just as a business keeps track of its inventory of products, so too should you keep track of your inventory of time.

How much do you have on hand? How much needs to be earmarked for certain activities? Do you have some surplus to use in case an unexpected customer comes knocking?

These are the types of questions you answer when you perform a time management audit.

This Bite-Sized Training™ session will help you do just that.

Since you can’t just go out and manufacture more time, you need to be diligent about tracking it and spending it.

By completing the exercises here you will:

Share your thoughts and experience, or ask any questions of your Mind Tools’ trainer at the Bite-Sized Training™ forum, by replying to the posting for this lesson.

Just visit the “Bite-Sized Training: Time Management Audit” thread of the Bite-Sized Training forum here:

Knowing where you spend your time is the first step in allocating it properly.

If you haven’t tracked your time before, I am pretty confident that once you start really tracking it, you will be surprised where it is going.

Do you really know:

A great way to come to terms with how you spend your time is by estimating the time you should spend on various activities, and then comparing this with reality.

This Bite-Sized Training is a little different from usual, in that you won’t be able to complete it in one hour.

You’re going to track your time for the next week and use the information to build a better time management plan.

First things first, though, let’s do some estimating.

Use the first column in the table below to write down the main activities or categories of activities that comprise the bulk of your day. Think about a typical workday and start from the morning.

Try to group together the things you do as you work your way through the day.

Remember to include an “other” or “miscellaneous’ category for the things that aren’t easily definable.

Now, think about a typical workweek. Are there other activities that need to be included in your list? Record these as well.

When you are satisfied that your activity list covers the main things you do in a weekly period, start filling in the estimated time column. Use the total weekly time spent at work as your basis point. Now you have homework!

What you are going to do is gather actual data to fill-in the last column of your activities table. To do this you’re going to complete an Activity Log. An activity log is a record of everything you do for a certain period.

Because our memories get fuzzy and our estimations of time are typically not that reliable, using a running log of your time is the best way to find out - without a doubt - where your time goes.

To fill in an activity log, simply record the time at which you start an activity, describe what you are doing, and then record how long you stayed on task.

Every time you change activities you need to record the time, description, and duration.

Here’s an example of a typical day at the office:

For more information on Activity Logs, see the Mind Tools article located here:

As you are doing an activity think about its value to the organization and to your goals. Ultimately you want to be spending the majority of your time on high value items and minimizing low value activities as much as possible.

In our example, only 35% (110 of the 315 minutes accounted for) of the person’s morning was spent on high value tasks.

Using the Activity Log on page 14, record your activities for the next week.

Try to use the same categories as you listed when estimating your time. This will make it easier to make an estimate to actual comparison.

Now, make a note in your diary for a week’s time to come back here and resume this training session. I’ll wait… ;-).

Welcome back!

Did you have any major revelations about where your time goes?

It’s amazing to learn what we really do through the course of a day.

This activity is really powerful and is often the turning point for people who have struggled with time management.

When you know where your time goes, you can start taking back control with solid time planning. How well do you think you estimated your usage of time?

Let’s find out.

Gather up your Activity Log sheets. Figure out the total amount of time you accounted for. For each of the categories you listed in your activity table on page 4, calculate a total time as well.

Figure out a percentage and record that in the “actual” column. Take a moment to analyze the differences and figure out where you had the largest discrepancies.

Why do you think your estimates were off? Before any further analysis, answer the following question:

So far, we’ve looked at the value of the work you’ve been doing and put them into three broad categories: high, medium, and low value. You need to dig a bit deeper and figure out where your real priorities lie. This will help you determine which actions to keep doing and doing more of, and which ones you should drop completely.

The reason for doing a time audit is to allocate your time more effectively. Therefore, you need to have a systematic way to identify the activities that are high priority and the ones that are not.

A great tool for this is the Action Priority Matrix. Using this framework some of your previous evaluations regarding the value of your work might change. The Action Priority Matrix divides your time into four categories based on how much impact the activity has and how much effort it takes.

For the major categories of activities, you have identified you spend your time on; determine which category they fall into. Record them in the matrix below.

In the “Present” column include an approximate percentage of time you spend on each.

Are there hard slogs you can be getting rid of? Are you spending too much time on fill-ins?

In the “Action” column for each item in the matrix indicate whether you will:

This is the start of your new time management plan.

When you have a big picture idea of how to spend your time it is so much easier to plan out your day.

For practice with specific time management tools, you might be interested in these other great Bite-Sized Training sessions:

I am betting that a large portion of your time is spent dealing with email and other types of communication and correspondence.

No time management audit would be complete without an examination of how to best handle this necessary but time-consuming task.

There are those who check emails continuously, treating it like a treasure box whose contents they can’t wait to uncover.

Others treat it like the plague, hoping the contents will die off on their own.

There is a happy medium in there.

You need to keep on top of your email, otherwise it will bury you.

However, if you check it too often, you will waste far too much time and interrupt opportunities to get into the flow of your work and maximize your productivity.

How do you currently manage your emails?

Do you deal with them in chronological order?

Reverse chronology?

By how much you like the sender?

By how interesting the subject line sounds?

Jokes, YouTube video links, and sentimental clichés set to beautifully arranged Power Point presentations first?

Or maybe last?

The goal is to handle emails in order of priority.

When you have a system for prioritizing and dealing with email, you will do it much quicker, and be much more effective.

Give yourself a rating from 1 to 10 with 10 being the best. ____________

First things first.

You should be scheduling one or two blocks of time to deal with email throughout the day.

Morning and afternoon are good delineations.

Look over your time audit and decide how much time to allocate to email management per day.

slot in distinct periods.

I will divide this into ____ sessions at ___:___ / ___: ___ / ___: ___ / ___: ___

This addresses the time sensitive nature of some emails and it ensures you don’t miss one by mistake.

When you jump around from one to the other you may think you’ve read one when you haven’t.

However, before responding, check that the sender hasn’t sent a follow-up message which you need to have digested before replying.

You now know when you will deal with email, so the next step is to decide how.

When managing email the 4 D system works very well.

For each email that comes in you have four options:

In the following table record the last 15 emails you received that are still sitting in your inbox.

Beside each record your action (Do, Delete, Delegate, Decide).

For the items that are either delegate or decide, determine their priority order.

There are many tools like Grid Analysis and the Urgent/Important matrix you can use for prioritizing items.

For details on using these techniques please refer to our article on prioritization:

To practice some of the techniques discussed, we also have a Bite Sized Training session on prioritization which you will find here:

If you were to use this system for your inbox every day, how would you rate your email management?

Better than you rate it now?

This is a really simple way to successfully eliminate that unpleasant backlog and, by cutting out the “noise” made by unimportant emails screaming for attention, you will find your email can be effectively managed.

It’s then not something to fear or avoid, and you can schedule it into your day like any other administrative task.

Time auditing is an important process. Until you know where your time goes you have little hope of directing it to places it needs to go.

After completing an Activity Log the need for diligent time management and control is immediately apparent, and it can be downright frightening to learn how much time unimportant and invaluable activities eat up.

Determining where you need to spend your time and deciding how much time to spend is done using the Action Priority Matrix.

This simple grid allows you to see very clearly what activities you should and should not be doing.

When you look at impact for effort, what seemed like effective use of time is often not.

Finally, getting control of one of the biggest time wasters, email, is a huge step toward effective time management.

With some decisive action and solid prioritizing, you can get your email under control and get on with the things that truly need your attention.

Now go back to the Bite-Sized Training Forum, and share your thoughts, tips and experience, or ask any questions of your Mind Tools’ trainer.

Simply reply to the posting for this lesson at the following URL: