I am always telling people to time themselves doing tasks they don’t like. For example, if you time yourself folding a load of laundry, you’ll find it takes only about 3 minutes. Knowing this makes it easier to conquer procrastination! It can also be good to time yourself if you are writing procedures or figuring out how to delegate something.
I was looking recently for stopwatch software for my computer, so I could time myself doing some things like bill paying and the like… I found XNote Stopwatch on Download.com, which is both a stopwatch and a timer. It’s a nice piece of shareware (you can pay for it if you like it). I found out that it only took me 17 minutes to pay bills, and it only took me 16 minutes to update this tracking spreadsheet I have in our business that I dread.
Whether you use a stopwatch on your computer or a handheld timer or watch, time yourself this week doing something and comment here and let us know how long it really took!
This is a great idea. If I’m in the office, I use Microsoft Journal to accomplish this. I type in the task, i.e. filing, making phone calls, etc; and then start the timer. Its a great way to keep track of what I’ve accomplished during the day. If I don’t do this, I look up at the end of the day and am never sure why I didn’t get more done.
Good idea. If I compare the time of boring tasks to the time I spend in front of the TV and computer, the tasks seems a lot easier 🙂