Doing a time log: is it a waste of even more time?

As part of our coaching work we often ask managers to keep a time log for a couple of weeks. Few of us use our time efficiently all of the time. Bad habits can creep in, and the time log is a useful discipline. It helps you to draw breath, analyse where your time is going, and check whether you are spending the right amounts of time tackling your priority goals and tasks.

Completing a time log is nearly always a shock. It identifies our main time-wasters (both things and people) and occasionally confronts us with the fact that we spend too much time playing in our particular sandpits. We do some jobs because we like to, not because we need to. We also sometimes hold on to responsibilities which we should have delegated to others. This can have three effects: (1) we are now doing parts of our old job as well as our new one, which can cause stress; (2) we may be failing to perform in some aspects of our current roles, through lack of time; and (3) we are depriving our staff of work as well as opportunities to develop.

There is, however, one fallacy at the heart of a time log exercise. The fact is that despite ourselves, many of us continue to think about our work and solve work-related problems during our leisure hours. Ideas and solutions to problems do not always arrive by appointment. Sometimes our very best ideas happen when we have switched off and are occupied with something else. If this happens to you often, it is worth keeping a notebook handy as a memory jogger.

By all means do a time log – it helps. But don’t think that you can only be doing useful work during the set hours marked on your time log.

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