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Time Management

How To Do a Time Audit & Eliminate Distractions For Good

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How To Do a Time Audit & Eliminate Distractions For Good

Have you ever heard of the popular children’s song “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt”? No? Well, here’s how it goes and what it has to do with time audit.

The lyrics go something like this:

We're going on a bear hunt
We're going on a bear hunt
I've got my binoculars
I've got my binoculars
I'm not scared
I'm not scared

The song then describes children going through tall grass, a big river, mud, and finally, a cave. Once in a cave, they face a bear, quickly get out, and run home, not interested in hunting the bear again and admitting they are scared.

And funny enough, this song reminds me so much of doing a time audit.

You want to perform a time audit to see where your time actually goes.

You’re not scared; it’s all fun and games since “you already know where your time goes but just want to make sure”.

But once you analyze the results, you suddenly get terrified to change your habits and set a new work agenda.

So you end up running from the results, just like the children ran from a bear.

We're doing a time audit
We're doing a time audit
I've got my tracking app
I've got my tracking app
I'm not scared
I'm not scared

It sure is dark in here
What's that in the corner?
I see LinkedIn doomscrolling
I see watching YT videos
I see messaging friends back and forth
I know what that is!
What?
Time-sucking activities!
Let's get outta here!

Doing a time audit shouldn’t be daunting. In fact, it should be motivating and the first step towards making positive changes that will contribute to your goals and productivity.

In this article, we'll explain how to do a time audit correctly and not be afraid to face its results or change your habits. Performing time audits will help you determine time-sucking activities and eliminate distractions for good.

Let’s get to it.

Being scared to perform a time audit

What is a time audit?

A time audit is the process of tracking time and seeing exactly what you spend your time on in a particular period. Basically, it’s a deep-dive into your time allocation.

The purpose of performing a time audit is to learn about time management habits and, if they don’t serve you or your business, change them. Running a time audit means saying goodbye to guesstimates (and your flawed memory) and hello to harsh facts.

Why should you run a time audit?

Doing a time audit is the only way to define the intention/action gap.

The intention/action gap is the discrepancy between what you intend to spend time on and how you actually occupy your time. It affects even the best of us, whether we are aware of it or not.

So, performing a time audit can help you streamline your day and make intentional choices about how you utilize minutes and hours of your work days.

Moreover, time audits are great if you struggle to complete tasks and always feel too busy. Sometimes, there’s a lot on your plate, and you truly can’t get anything done, but sometimes you run out of time and can’t pinpoint why. That’s when a time audit comes in handy.

And remember: we all have the same 24 hours a day, and if that’s all we get, we might as well try to find more free time to work on things that matter to us. After all, time is a non-renewable resource, so we should know how to manage it.

Note: The goal of a time audit is not just to boost your productivity and make you hustle harder. It’s also to fill newly added space on your calendar with the things that are important to you and bring you joy, like hobbies, spending quality time with your loved ones, exercising, practicing mindfulness, etc.

Time, as a non-renewable resource

Pros to running a time audit

Running a time audit is an excellent way to:

  • Reach objectives. Unmet goals are usually products of poor time management. Once you realize what you actually spend time on, you’ll allocate time so it can align with achieving all your targets.
  • Boost productivity. A time audit allows you to see when you get distracted and what your biggest time-wasters are. And you know that Sun Tzu quote from the Art of War: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, your victory will not stand in doubt”. Once you know how you are distracted, you can eliminate that harmful behavior and switch to a more productive one.
Should you do a daily or weekly time audit?

Do both!

But keep in mind that you’ll get the greatest results if you run an audit each day for a consecutive period of, let’s say, a week. Once you check a week’s worth of time audit data, you’ll make a more informed decision about the changes you should introduce to your time management.

How to do a time audit

Running a time audit should be quick and painless.

It involves documenting a period in which you’ll log your activities and the amount of time you spend on each activity. After your time audit, you’ll have a clear snapshot of where your time and energy go each day.

Here are a couple of steps you need to take before performing a time audit:

  • Find a way to document what you spend time doing.
  • Choose a common week to track, like a week full of standard work days (i.e., don’t track time when you’re about to go on vacation, are busy working with a major client, when you have an unusual amount of meetings, etc.)

Now, here’s a step-by-step guide to starting and finishing a time audit.

Step 1: Use an alarm or a time tracking app

The first step is deciding whether to use a manual alarm or a time tracking app.

Can you use pen and paper or a spreadsheet to track your time?

Sure! But I suggest you skip using the old-school techniques, as you’ll face:

  • Difficulty reaching accuracy as it will be impossible to jot down your multitasking time.
  • Difficulty remembering to start and stop your timer or look at the clock (as this is a time-consuming task in itself).
Moreover, our brains aren't designed to track or remember everything they do throughout the day. We can't remember each second spent on a task and are biased regarding reporting: we tend to miss and forget things. That being said, if you don’t want to lose even more time on tracking your time (what a paradox!), opt for an automated tool that will help you capture every activity of each minute of your day.

Using pen and paper to do a time audit

If you choose a device with an alarm, like a smartphone, it’ll track your time fine. But every time an alarm rings, your focus will be disrupted. I mean, who wants to track time and have a device ringing next to their ears every 15 minutes or so?

That’s why the best option is to choose a time tracking tool that will hunt and note down all your activities efficiently. Preferably one without the alarm system, so you can focus on your work and let the tool work for you.

A tool like Memtime. 🙂

Here’s what’s so cool about Memtime:

  • Memtime runs in the background, SILENTLY 24/7.
  • It doesn’t have an alarm and has no time tracking push notifications that can interrupt your work flow.
  • It captures your time in ALL programs and shows your day in 1-60 minute intervals.
  • It allows you to turn those captured activities into time entries.
  • By assigning time entries to tasks, you’ll know exactly how much time you spend on each task of the project.
  • You can connect Memtime with any project software or create custom Memtime Projects.

If you want to use Memtime to perform a time audit, start a 14-day free trial. That way, you’ll have more than enough time to run an audit and see how Memtime can help you boost efficiency and productivity on a daily basis.

Step 2: Define the categories you want to track

Your days usually consist of several repeating activities.

For example, as a freelance designer, you probably spend most of your time designing/doing creative work, replying to emails, attending meetings, finding new clients, doing personal branding, etc.

So, before you start time tracking, write all these categories down (e.g. creative work, marketing, communication, etc.), so you can track how much time it really takes you on each area of your work day. If you need some further help with it, you can explore our article where we decode time tracking categories for you.

Step 3: Start tracking/recording time

With Memtime, there’s really nothing you need to do in this step.

Memtime doesn’t have START and STOP buttons. It’s just there. Open Memtime and start working like you normally would, and Memtime will capture all your activities in programs, meetings and even calls.

Screenshot from Memtime app

And if you manage a team and would like them to try Memtime, you can choose our team trial by booking a call with us:

  • You’ll get custom onboarding according to the specific needs of your business.
  • We’ll ensure that everyone on your team understands the benefits of automated time tracking and how Memtime can help them run time audits.
  • During the trial and time audit, you’ll recognize the value of daily automatic time tracking and how it can improve prioritization, accountability, and project management.
Should you log or include non-work-related activities?

Of course! There’s no rule that says you should only log work-related activities.

Feel free to track time when you are taking breaks, walking your dog, talking to your friends on the phone, and any other personal activities throughout the week. Logging everything is especially beneficial if you work from home; you’ll see how your personal and professional activities mix and how to find work/life balance.

Step 4: Track your time for a week

Tracking your time for a week can seem like the most difficult part.

A lot can come up in those five business days. And there will be days that might skew your results because they don’t fall under the “standard workdays”.

But don’t worry. The goal is to see what your week looks like in terms of time and recurring tasks. Sometimes, your week gets busier and less organized. Whatever the case may be, feel free to track even the most hectic days, as the target is to have a pool of data showing your work throughout a consecutive period.

What should you do with all that data?

Once you have gathered at least a week’s worth of data, it’s time to analyze it and define potential areas of improvement. Here’s how you can do so.

Pinpoint time-wasters

Time-wasters are recurring activities that don’t benefit you. They make you unproductive and should be limited to a particular time throughout the day or fully restricted.

Some examples of time wasters include internet browsing, scrolling on social media, watching YouTube videos, etc.

Defining time-wasters

Define high-priority tasks

… that you just can’t seem to complete.

High priority tasks are the ones that will move you towards achieving your goals but usually stand “on the shelf”, untouched, because you couldn’t find the time to complete them.

A great example of such activity is client outreach, like emailing prospects or connecting with them on LinkedIn. If you find a way to squeeze in sending LinkedIn messages to potential clients, at least one message per day, that’s five messages in a week. And you are off to a much better start than no messages per week.

Merge or break down your activities

Depending on how long it takes you to complete particular tasks or activities and whether they occur multiple times throughout the day, you should either break them down or merge them.

Here’s what I mean.

If your captured activities show that you do one task multiple times throughout the day (like checking emails or messaging clients) find a way to complete such activities once or twice per day. So, for example, if you tend to check your emails at least 7 times throughout your day, define times when you’ll check your emails: once in the morning and once before you finish work.

Similarly, if there is a gigantic task you try to complete each day but can’t seem to get the hang of it, break the task into smaller activities and assign them into specific time blocks in a day.

Create a new action plan

Once you have defined time-sucking activities, the tasks that you can’t seem to complete, and the ones that occur multiple times throughout the day, you can move on to creating a new action plan.

And any action plan is based on realistic and clear goals, such as finishing X project by a particular date, removing 4 out of 5 distractions, spending an extra 30 minutes on a particular recurring task, etc.

Once you have a few goals in mind, write down high priority tasks and place them in categories.

Then, define how much time you want to spend on each task. I suggest you allocate time using a percentage first, and then you can decide whether that percentage is doable or not based on how many hours you work in a week (no matter if it’s 20 hours or 40 hours per week).

So, for example, let’s say that all your current tasks can be put into the following three categories:

  • Client outreach.
  • Creative work, a.k.a. your actual work (designing, writing, etc.).
  • Current client communication.

We’ll give client outreach 10% of your time.

Creative work can take about 60% of your time.

And you are left with 30% which should go into current client communication.

At this point, you can get granular about your time. If you work 30 hours weekly, 3 hours should go to client outreach, 18 hours to creative work, and 9 hours to communication with current clients (including meetings).

If that seems doable for you, you are off to a great start; if it doesn’t, pivot and see what seems more sensible and pragmatic in terms of time management.

And you’ll see, once you create a new agenda, you can start restructuring your days, step by step.

Creating a new time agenda

Be gentle with yourself

There’s just one more thing.

Finding ways to improve your work days is great. Sticking to the changes you made in time management is even better.

But please remember that we as humans are creatures of habits and our brains don’t like or easily accept change. And new behaviors don’t automatically turn into new habits. Precisely, it can take over 60 days for a new behavior to become automatic.

So, be gentle with yourself when introducing changes to your daily routine, but also hold yourself accountable.

Check in on yourself after every week of work and reflect on the progress made that week regarding time management. Celebrating small wins will motivate you to stay on track, be consistent with changes, and improve your time management.

Final words on time audit

Time is the most valuable resource; you can’t go back to the past and buy it back. That’s why learning how to use it better and be more efficient is essential.

To reach new levels of efficiency, you should know exactly where the minutes of your days are going. By tracking time with Memtime, you can find gaps in time management that require your attention and self-reflection. Once you are aware of time management rabbit holes, you can begin to create a daily routine that will help you reach the objectives you’ve always dreamed of.

And remember: improving your time management with an audit isn’t a one-and-done process. You should repeat the process from time to time to stay on top of time management.

Aleksandra Doknic
Aleksandra Doknic

Aleksandra Doknic is a copywriter and content writer with six years of experience in B2B SaaS and e-commerce marketing. She's a startup enthusiast specializing in topics ranging from technology and gaming to business and finance. Outside of work, Aleksandra can be found walking barefoot in nature, baking muffins, or jotting down poems.

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