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Why Everyone Should Do a Time Audit (and How to Complete One)
10 questions for a day that’s finally under your control
If there’s one resource that’s precious as a professional, it’s your time. But it’s not unusual to have no idea where your minutes are disappearing to if you often have to change plans on the fly from what’s on their calendar, or if you often perform small tasks (e.g., organizing their desk) that don’t necessarily get put on the agenda. Conducting a proper time audit can solve this problem quickly so you can determine whether you’re meeting your real potential and make better decisions.
1. Choose and set up an automatic time-tracking tool.
There are lots of these available for free, but ideally, find one that can sync across your devices. This way, if you’re out and about and need to log that you’re spending time on a business task away from your desk, you still can do so. The program should run unobtrusively in the background as you use your devices for other things or do off-device activities (e.g., commuting). The best apps allow you to use labels with the tools you’re using, such as networking, social media, or email. They log most of your activity automatically as you ping between tools but still allow for manual entries. You want this automatic tracking…
