When you get down to it, life is nothing more than the sum total of the number of hours you spend not dead. Time is one of our most finite resources. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a clear idea of how you are spending every hour of your day? Here are some reasons why you should start tracking how you spend your hours.
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1. Know Where Your Time Goes
Time management is where most people go wrong when they try to create new habits. In order to make anything part of your routine, you need to allocate time for it. This means you have to decide which part of your routine you will sacrifice in order to engage with your new habit.
It’s hard to achieve all that if you only have a vague idea of where your time goes every day. The good news is that since we spend large amounts of our time in front of screens these days, using a time tracking software on your computer and your phone will allow you to keep tabs on how you spend your time automatically.
Tracking the time you spend away from your devices is a little trickier. You can do it by manually inputting roughly how much time you spent on each task once you get home, or by using different solutions on a smartwatch.
There are also apps that sync to your GPS to track how long you spend on certain locations, which can help you piece together how long you spent in the bank or the grocery store at the end of the day.
2. Get Rid Of Time Waste
One of the benefits of tracking time is helping you keep tabs on how it is being wasted. For example, you may find out that you spend a combined 3 hours every day just checking your social media profiles.
That on itself isn’t good or bad. But you could decide, for example, to just set aside 90 minutes at the end of the day to catch up on social media, rather than do it in short and shallow bursts throughout the day.
3. Track Your Success
One of the best ways to trigger a positive feedback loop in your daily routine is to keep close track of your successes. If you decide to sit down and study until you finish a chapter, for example, you may feel pretty down on yourself if you give up before the end.
However, a closer look at the time tracking data may reveal that you already spent 2 hours struggling with the chapter at hand. And that all previous chapters were done in less than an hour. That can help turn an apparent defeat into a win — yes you couldn’t finish, but that was because the chapter was much harder than usual. It wasn’t due to laziness.
This can also help you in your professional life. If you have been working from home, keeping track of your time can help you figure out when you are working too much or too little on any given day, which helps you keep your routine in balance.
If your boss complains that your performance has been down since you switched to working from home, you can suggest that they use a time and attendance software to monitor you. That will give them definitive proof that you haven’t been slacking off.
If you are interested in even more apps-related articles and information from us here at Bit Rebels, then we have a lot to choose from.
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