Management for Geeks: Know where you spend your time

Eli Lopian    Management for Geeks, Time Management    

In a previous post I talked about managing myself which I believe must be done before you manage others, if only for the sake of leadership

One of the task that I put on my weekly goals, was to find out where I was spending my time.
So I wrote next to each daily tasks, how long I spend on the task. Using David Seah Daily Goal Tracker I filled in the 15 minute boxes and summed them up at the end of the week.

What I found was astonishing:

• I spent 2 hours a day on e-mails
• My most effective hours are between 10-12
• A few hours after lunch 3-4pm, I have the least effective hours (sometimes I found that at 4pm I didn’t do anything in the last hour)
• I spent 55% of my time in management tasks. 
• 40% of my time was in meetings.
• I spend a small amount of time on unit testing and reviewing Typemock Isolator 

This data is priceless and helped me refocus my efforts dramatically. I stopped wasting time on e-mails, I put the difficult tasks in the morning, and I try to eat a lighter lunch

If you enjoyed this article please consider sharing it!