How Productive Are You?

Time is one of the only resources that everyone has the same amount of. How you use it will play a vital role in your productivity.

This is especially true for an entrepreneur who works from home and doesn’t have a structured schedule. You have the freedom to make your own hours and decide how you spend your time, but are you being productive with it?

How you spend every hour working on your blog or business is very important.

On average I only work about 18-20 hours per week. This means I need to be productive with every single minute that I am working.

One of my main goals is to save as much time as possible so that I can complete everything I have planned. It is important that I don’t waste hours on lower-end tasks that aren’t helping me to grow my business.

Over the past year and a half, I’ve been able to get more done in half the amount of time.

Want to know how?

Through the magic of time tracking.

It sounds simple, but to be productive you have to be aware of how you are spending your time to start making changes.

Do you know how long it takes you to complete specific tasks in your business?

Is your business full of trivial activities that aren’t helping you reach your goals?

Mine was.

I used to waste so much time on lower-end tasks because I got stuck in this routine doing things that I thought I had to do. I didn’t realize how long it took me to complete certain tasks or how much time I actually wasted every single day.

I started my online journey blogging and realized that all I was doing was maintaining my site. I wasn’t working on the higher-end tasks that would allow me to reach my goals or grow my business.

All I would do was ballpark how many hours I spent working by checking the clock when I sat down and when I finished. I felt like I was being productive.

I didn’t know how long it took me to schedule my social media or write a new blog post. I would look at the clock and see that I was sitting at my computer for 3 hours.

I was clueless.

I was wasting a ridiculous amount of time on trivial activities that could have been automated or delegated.

This was when I started tracking my time.

I had never even considered tracking my time or figuring out what I was doing when I was working. I had a daily to-do list and monthly goals and that was it.

Without knowing how much time I spent on each task there wasn’t a way to see how productive I actually was. Or what I could spend less time on.

It’s like budgeting. You don’t know exactly how much money you are wasting on unnecessary items until you start tracking it. When you look at your bank statement and realize you are spending way too much on entertainment you start to make changes.

This same theory applies to your time.

Without knowing how much time is spent on each task how can you make improvements?

I started using Toggl in March of 2016. Toggl is a software that allows you to track your time.

All you have to do is type in what you are working on and then start the timer. Whenever you are done you stop it and restart it for your next task.

Using Toggl was an eye-opening experience.

It gave me the awareness I needed to see how I was spending my time and what changes I could make to be more productive.

At first, it was tough to see how many hours per week were wasted.

At that time, I felt like I was being very productive, but in reality, I was avoiding the important tasks and instead of filling my day with busy work.

I was making the mistake of thinking that being busy or working a lot of hours meant that I was productive. Wrong!

I was trying to multitask and found that context switching was killing my productivity.

Toggl encouraged me to put my limited amount of time and energy to the best use. After seeing how and where I was spending my time I started making changes to be more effective.

Instead of switching between projects I now focus on one at a time. This has made a huge impact on my productivity and has led me to get the same amount of work done in half the amount of time.

Using Toggl has become a part of my routine. Every time I sit down at my computer I open the application and type in what I am working on to start tracking my time.

At the end of the week, Toggl will send me an email that shows the total time for each project. Seeing the exact amount of hours I spend on each task helps me to evaluate the process to see if I can…

• Eliminate
• Outsource
• Automate

Tracking my time and becoming aware of how long certain tasks take has allowed me to be extremely productive. I encourage you to download Toggl and start tracking your time today.

Do you know how you are spending your time?