Improve Your Efficiency with a Time Audit
Recently, a friend of mine told me that her company hired an efficiency consultant to help optimize everyone's workflow. The consultant performed detailed interviews with key performers throughout the organization to assess their schedules and workflows, and then made a set of recommendations on how to streamline and eliminate non-essential tasks that were slowing everyone down.
Want to increase your own efficiency without hiring a consultant? You can perform your own time audit -- for free.
Despite the presence of the word "audit" in its name, a time audit is neither painful nor difficult to accomplish. I've done a few myself over the years, and I've found they can be quite helpful at illuminating where you waste time each day doing non-essential tasks, or randomizing your day by doing chores in an inefficient sequence. Recently, Productivity 501 described time audits, so I thought you might appreciate reading about them as well. Ready to try one? Here's what to do:
- At the start of the day -- but not right on the hour -- set a stopwatch to 30 minutes.
- Start a journal. When the watch goes off, write down what you're doing and then reset the watch.
- Repeat the process all day long.
Next, analyze your activities. Sort them into categories, like very important, less important , and worthless (or, if you prefer, rank your tasks as priority 1, 2, and 3).
From there, you have some difficult decisions to make. And make no mistake: This is the hard part. Are there tasks you can combine with others, or do at a different time of day? Are there things you can stop doing entirely? After all, what would happen if you simply stopped filing a particular report? Would anyone care? Can that information be archived in a different, more efficient way? Think outside the box and use your journal to reinvent your day.
Have you ever tried a time audit? What other ways have you found to improve your productivity?
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