Time Use Analysis

How do you spend your day? That may sound inane, but if you stop to think about it, the clock keeps ticking away and each day brings you 86,400 seconds. What do you do with them? Obviously, it depends on where you are in life. If you're an infant, you sleep, play, poop, and eat. If you're in your first 12 years of school, you do God only knows what, for it's been so long and things have changed so much that I can't even remember back that far. If you're in college, you may be tied down with studies, labs, athletics, activities, etc, but those 168 hours you have each week sure seem to be going by faster and faster. If you've entered 'work mode,' your answer is, "I work for a living, and that's where my time goes...and there's never enough of it." Hell, we all said that at one time or another, but what does it mean?

This section will make the assumption that you are beyond high school and college and that you have begun a career path. It's your job and life at which we'll take a look.

• What functions do you perform on a daily basis to accomplish the requirements of your position? Do you, for example.....              

            ...answer the telephone, make sales calls, or use the phone for other purposes

            ...write proposals, memoranda, reports, etc.

            ...attend meetings - daily, weekly

            ...travel...to other parts of the country, the world, how often

            ...manage others to ensure that your team, department, division, or whatever gets "the job" done effectively and efficiently?

Do you really know how your day is spent? You may even be blessed with some kind of a job description that defines precisely what your duties and responsibilities are. If it's like most, the damned thing is so vague and general, it doesn't really say anything in the first place, and it seems far from what you actually do to accomplish what you're supposed to be doing, that is, unless you are in accounting or some profession where job responsibilities are a bit more clearly defined...we hope.

The point of this question is, do you really know how you are spending your time? That is not to say that every minute of every hour when you are at work should be consumed by work. You'd burn out faster than a meteorite heading for earth. How much time do you spend talking about the accomplishments of your kids, the show you and your partner saw this past weekend, the great round of golf you played on Sunday, and so forth and so on. Some time management authorities might say this is a bad thing. I'm no authority, but I'll say that if you don't take a few 'time-outs' during the day, you'll go crazy.

Therefore, the first thing you have to do if your serious about managing your time is to determine how you are currently spending it. This is, without question, the first and the worst in becoming a better time manager. However, it's not called step one for nothing; if you don't know how you're now managing your time, how are you going to figure out how to better manage it?

There are two tools that can be used here. The first is the job function analysis worksheet. You can make one yourself. Take a sheet of paper and make five columns. It's even possible to set one of these sheets up on a blackberry, palm pilot, or some of the other computerized devices that we carry with us each day. The last four columns of the worksheet can be reasonably thin; you're going to put a letter in one and a percentage figure in the last three. Head the first column, Job function; column two is Priority; three is Estimated time (%); four is Ideal time (%); and the last is Actual time (%).  The job function analysis worksheet asks that you clearly identify the functions you perform to do your job. "You're kidding, right?" I hear from cyberspace. No, I'm not kidding at all. If you don't know what you do to perform your job, how do you even know if you're doing what you're supposed to be doing? It's a valid question; don't you agree? Maybe someone has talked, conned, coerced, threatened you into doing what they are supposed to be doing and it's been integrated into what you think is your job. Oh sure, things do get added to job descriptions. It's always the last item in a job description: "And such other duties and responsibilities as may be assigned, etc., etc., etc." There's one thing wrong with that. If you have a job that's going to be taking 40 or 50 hours a week to perform and something gets added, what gets taken away? Is it sleep, meals, workouts at the gym, a film or show. It sure as hell isn't something from the job. The point is that the job function analysis worksheet will give you an idea of what it really is that you do to perform your position. It may take a week or so for you to actually assign all of the functions. After all, you probably don't do everything everyday; at least, I hope not....boring!

I really would prefer not to hear you say, "Well, I do something different everyday." Do you really? I gave you some general headings up above. You most certainly can combine the functions you perform into some kind of predetermined categories...if you're willing to think about it. If you wish to use that as an excuse, great; stop reading; go do something productive.

If you're still here, I assume that you've taken the time to identify the functions that are required for you to perform the job. The second column, the "priority" column asks that you now rank these functions. Don't try to do this in numerical order. Here's a standard that I've applied to my own time management priorities. It's used by a number of TM authorities; it's called the A,B,C,D order of prioritization. If a priority is an A, it means that if this function is not performed each day or by the end of a certain day or week, you will be dead. This may be a literal or a figurative death, but you will either lose your life or you will lose your job. That sort of eliminates several things you were beginning to think of as 'A' priorities, right? It certainly doesn't eliminate all of them; however, this is one of those things that absolutely, positively cannot be put off until tomorrow. It would be relatively easy for me to give you examples from higher education; however, that may not be your field, so I'll let you come up with your own 'A' priorities.

A 'B' priority is a function that must be done and done in a reasonable amount of time. It might very well become an 'A' priority tomorrow or next week, depending on how you've developed your worksheet, but for now, it is just a function that must be completed in a reasonable amount of time. Obviously, this becomes your largest list. The 'C' priority is one of those things that should be done, but the world won't come to an end if you let it slide for a while. It is conceivable that tomorrow it may become an 'A' or 'B,' but in the total scheme of things, it's highly doubtful. Never assume that a 'C' priority is something that can be forgotten; the minute you do that, it's going to jump up and bite you where it hurts. Don't do ever, but do do sometime. This leaves us with the 'D' priorities. Find a drawer, either in your desk or in a file cabinet. Stick what you consider 'D' priorities in this drawer. If no one asks about it in a month or two, send it to the circular file.

There you have one measure of priority functions for your job function analysis worksheet. Will it work for you? I don't really know, but I would caution you that if you wind up with a larger number of 'A' priorities than anything else, you need to take a very hard look at how you've prioritized. 

Column three asks that you estimate the amount of time you use performing each of your 'A,' 'B,' 'C' functions. Here you may have a dilemma. The percentage figure must add up to 100. Now, if you've listed your functions by the week or month, that just further complicates your breakdown. It would be great to do it by the day, but as has been said, your functions may vary from day to day or even week to week. Only you - and I must keep coming back to that - only you can estimate how your percentages should break out. Just remember, the estimated time must add up to 100%.

The next column give you the opportunity to express your true feelings. To your mind, what is the ideal amount of time that you would like to spend on these functions...in order to complete them as part of your overall job. Just because you don't like a function doesn't mean that the ideal time would be, for example, 1%. If that's the case, Monster.com is looking for your resume.

I joke about some of this, but let's face it, what you're being asked to do here is not easy. The reason for that is simple: You've never thought about doing it. This is something new. People have commented that if they're going to complete a job function analysis worksheet, they won't have time to do their job. That's your choice. If you're concerned about where your time is going, about putting an inordinate number of hours into your job, about "not having another life," about no time for friends and family, this is one way to see where that time is going.

The final column asks that you spend some time really studying your job. It requests that every time you perform a function, you calculate what percentage of your day, week, or month, this function is taking out of your 100%. Generally speaking, you'll find that the functions on which you spend the greatest amount of time are not those which give the greatest payback in your position. This isn't unusual. We all, almost without exception, tend to do those things that are more pleasant, even if we're aware that they may not fast-track us in our organization. Who are the exceptions? Start-up entrepreneurs and people who are so driven that to get from point A to point B, they walk over people and through buildings. If you fall into either of those categories, this isn't really for you.

If you have carefully developed a job function analysis worksheet and you still have problems managing your time, there are two other tools that are available to you. The first of this is the daily time log. Frankly, I hope you never have to complete one of these. It is time-consuming and often embarrassing. It is time-consuming because it asks that you account for your time in one-hour blocks for each day, and that you do this for one week. It is embarrassing because you find that you actually do waste a great deal of time during the day...we all do. There are three points that you should know if you decide to keep a time log:

1. You cannot complete it at the end of the day...unless you have the memory of an elephant. Carry the log with you, whether it's on a piece of paper or in your planning device;

2. When you first begin to fill out the time log, you'll lie. We all do. It's human nature. It won't show, for example, that for the first 15 minutes, after arrived at work, that you discussed last night's ball game, the show you attended last evening, or what was happening on some television series. That will go into the time log as 'planning' or some other equally impressive falsehood. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this except...who are you kidding? By the way, these time management devices that you're being asked to complete are for you. They're no one else's business but yours; you don't have to share them or even tell anyone that you're taking this step to become a better time manager. As a consequence, you don't have to spin the truth to meet another's expectations. Okay? We on the same page on this one?

3. The third lesson of the time log concerns productivity time. Each of us has a high and a low productivity time. I happen to be an early morning person; usually up no later than 4 am, off to the gym at 5, workout until 7, and tackle projects until 2 or 3 in the afternoon. After that, it's downhill. Conversely, if you ask Joan, my wife to maintain my schedule...well, let's just say that it would get ugly. However, if you ask Joan to tackle projects between 9 pm and 2 am, she'll give you her very best effort. The log will show when you are attacking projects. If you're having trouble completing them, perhaps you're attempting them when you're in a low productivity cycle. By the way, I'm not asking that you carry a thermometer with you, but high productivity time has also been linked to that time of day when your body temperature is at its peak.

The job function analysis worksheet and the daily time log really are great tools to determine how you are now using your time. They are also, quite frankly, a pain in the butt. Before you use either, stop and ask yourself a question: "Do I need to use these tools or do I already know where the time is going?" If you already know, then you already know what you have to do. Don't use the tools as an excuse by saying something like, "Oh, these just don't work for me." Managing time effectively isn't easy. Few of us do it and do it well. I know that I certainly have room for improvement. Periodically, I just take a hard look at what I'm doing and ask, "What is the best use of my time right now?"

End of time use analysis section.