The best way to be conscious of an activity and to make changes is to keep it top of mind. And to keep your daily activities at the top of your mind you should use a time log to track your time accurately. One good exercise to use before you start the time log is to write down your anticipated activities and how long they usually take. Now you can compare what really happens against what you believe happens each day. It’s quite an eye opening experience.
When you first start using a time log you might find that you lose a couple of hours over a week. This is because keeping the log takes a bit of extra time in your day. But, it will give you a clear picture of how you use your time – which may be a complete underestimation of reality.
One of the hard things to face is that you may find your day is taken up with taking care of trivia when you thought you were being completely productive. But, it is not until you are aware of your current situation before you are able to make changes and improve your time management skills.
Once you know exactly how long a task will take, you can compare it against how long you estimated a task would take and build in your own personal fudge factor. For instance, if you estimate a task will take 2 hours but your time log tells you that it takes 2.5 hours you’ll know to build in an extra 25% each time you estimate a task.
Resources:
Mind Tools: Activity Logs
http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newHTE_03.htm
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