How to Track Your Time Easily

"Time is money."
-Benjamin Franklin, Advice to a Young Tradesman



Time is most likely the most valuable commodity that you have. It's so valuable, that I learned a cool secret from the President of a company that I worked for many years ago when he told me that the secret to resolving a customer service issue was to work your way up to a person in the company with more money than time. I have found that this advice applies to much more than customer service.

Be sure to read until the end of this article to discover the secret formula for how much productive time you should have each day.

Track Time or Waste Money

It's almost certain that if you don’t track your time, you are wasting it. According to Franklin, you are, therefore, wasting money. One of the most profitable skills that I learned in my first job after college was tracking my time in 15 minute increments. I was working as a staff accountant for a local CPA firm and had to track all of my time. The enforcement mechanism was really simple: no time sheet, no pay check. Furthermore, the majority of my time had to be billable. This time tracking process taught me to be aware of where I was spending my time and to focus on activities that generated profit for the firm. This time tracking habit gave me a significant competitive advantage in subsequent jobs, even though I wasn't billing by the hour. While other employees were having “water cooler” conversations, I was getting recognized and promoted.

Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today's events. - Albert Einstein

One of the main reasons that we should write things down is because memory is a poor model of reality. This is true for a variety of reasons. First, we all have a bias. Our memories must go through the prism of our experience before they are stored in our brains. Second, many of us have a tendency to remember things in a positive light, especially our contribution to something. Psychologists call this an ego-centric bias. We believe that we are far more focused and productive than we really are. Finally, our memories fade over time. In some cases, they change entirely as our new experiences and changing beliefs attach different meanings to them.

How Time Equals Money

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.-Carl Sandburg

You've most likely heard that time is the great equalizer. When you see a celebrity taken in the prime of his or her career, the truth of this saying really comes into sharp focus. It’s a harrowing concept that everyone has the same amount of time in each day, week, and year.

I remember fondly a teacher in high school who would rebuke anyone coming to class late with this saying, “time, and time alone, waits for no man, dang few women.” The fact that we all, in a relative sense of the present moment, have the same amount of time can be very humbling but also enlightening. The knowledge that time is precious made an indelible impact on me in college while watching Andre Agassi at Wimbledon. Although he was only about a year older than me, he had already achieved unbelievable success in his late teens. He had achieved wealth, fame, and numerous tennis titles. It wasn't luck, though. Instead he spent countless hours training and developing a valuable skillset during his youth.

How are you going to spend your time? Isn’t this an interesting phrase, “spend your time”? What achievements are you exchanging for your time? Are you wasting your time or investing your time? Unlike virtually every other resource on the planet, time is irreplaceable. To illustrate, if an employee leaves your company, you can hire another employee to replace them. Similarly, losing a customer is not the end of your business as you can find another one. This is not true with time, if you waste an hour watching television or mindlessly surfing the web, that time is gone. You can never recover wasted time.

Time / Value Formula: One of the best ways to determine what your time is worth is to divide your annual income by 2,080, which is 52 weeks at 40 hours / week. This will give you an idea of how much money you are investing or wasting each hour.

How to Use an Activity Log to Track Time

An Activity log will help you evaluate where your time leaks are hiding. What you discover may surprise you. As you discovered earlier, it is easy forget time wasters like reading junk mail, personal phone calls, mindlessly surfing the web, daydreaming, etc. Your activity log will bring these issues to the surface so you can deal with them.

So, what do you do? Many of our Daily Planners and Organizers include an Activity Log that allows you to quickly track your time. The format is already set up so all you have to do is write down the category, i.e. Sales Proposal, Web Surfing, Customer Calls, then, fill in the portion of the bubble that you spend on a particular category.

Activity Log Example

Here is a picture of the Activity Log page from the Big Bubble Daily Planner. You can also do this in excel or on a piece of notebook paper.

By analyzing your activity log you will be able to identify and eliminate time-wasters or low-contribution tasks.

The Secret Formula

So, here's the secret formula that I mentioned earlier. How much time should you spend on non-productive activities each day or week? I would say that God knows a little about time being the Ancient of Days. As such, I use his formula of 1 day of rest for every 7 days, which translates to 15% of rest each day. I call this the original 85/15 rule. This is similar to Deming's 85/15 Rule but about a the value of processes.

By keeping an Activity Log for several days, you will understand how you spend your time. Once you have logged your time for a few days, analyze the log.


Buy a Daily Planner Now and Stop Wasting Time on Unproductive Tasks!

“I will act now. I will act now. I will act now. Henceforth, I will repeat these words each hour, each day, everyday, until the words become as much a habit as my breathing, and the action which follows becomes as instinctive as the blinking of my eyelids. With these words I can condition my mind to perform every action necessary for my success. I will act now. I will repeat these words again and again and again. I will walk where failures fear to walk. I will work when failures seek rest. I will act now for now is all I have. Tomorrow is the day reserved for the labor of the lazy. I am not lazy. Tomorrow is the day when the failure will succeed. I am not a failure. I will act now. Success will not wait. If I delay, success will become wed to another and lost to me forever. This is the time. This is the place. I am the person.”

-Og Mandino