Do you miss the days of pulling all-nighters – fuelled by Red Bull and an ever-increasing sense of panic – to meet your university deadlines? Us neither. These days, we’d much rather have
a clear plan in order to help us reach our goals.
Read on to discover how, when it comes to meeting deadlines, time tracking might just be your best friend.
What is Time Tracking?
Have you been living under a rock? Time tracking is exactly what it sounds like—tracking your time. Who would’ve thought???
Seriously though, tracking your time is measuring how long you’ve spent on certain tasks. Back in the day, this was done with paper timesheets or log books. Nowadays, it’s all about automated software. Why spend time tracking your time manually when you can save time by doing it automatically?
Save time tracking your time, and track time to save time.
Many companies and individuals track their time to monitor productivity, manage workload and optimize time management. Mostly, you track your time to make sure you’re paid for all the work you do!
How Can Time Tracking Help with Meeting Deadlines?
Increased productivity
Time tracking helps increase productivity and reduce the time spent on non-essential tasks. By tracking your time, you can identify where you’re spending too much time and make adjustments to be more efficient.
Time tracking increases productivity by:
Highlighting time wasters
Find those pesky timewasting activities! Typical time wasters in the workplace may include: unnecessary meetings, looking at your social media accounts, and chatting excessively with colleagues. You can then make changes to minimize or eliminate these time wasters.
Identifying your most productive hours
Whether you’re a night owl, an early bird or midday sparrow, everyone has a time of day when they are most productive. Time tracking can help you identify these hours so you can schedule your most important tasks during this time.
Reducing time spent on admin tasks
Time tracking can help you see how much time you spend on administrative tasks like scheduling appointments, answering emails and doing paperwork. By identifying these tasks and the time you spend on them, you can find ways to streamline these processes, delegate them to others, or automate them using tools like scheduling software, email templates and digital forms.
Accurate estimates of how long tasks take
By tracking your time, you can gain valuable insights into how long tasks take, which can help you accurately estimate how long similar tasks will take going forward. Here are some ways time tracking can help with this:
Providing data on how long similar tasks took in the past
Practice makes perfect. Knowing how long similar tasks took in the past helps you better estimate how long it will take in the future! This data can help you realistically plan how you tackle your workload.
Revealing patterns to allow for better forecasting
You can learn a lot from your timesheet, such as the time of day when you are most productive or the types of tasks that take the most time. By understanding these patterns, you can adjust your schedule and workload to optimize your productivity and ensure you meet your deadlines.
Setting realistic goals and deadlines
When you have an idea of how long something will take you, realistic goals and deadlines can be set. The data provided from time tracking can help you avoid overcommitting or underestimating the time required for a task, which can lead to missed deadlines and lower productivity.
Better time management
Time management is key when it comes to meeting deadlines. Here are some ways that time tracking can help improve this:
Knowing when you work best
You’ll be able to identify when you are most productive and alert. This means you can schedule your most crucial tasks during your ‘firing-on-all-cylinders’ hours. Time tracking also allows you to allocate the right amount of time per task, which can help you better manage your workload and avoid feeling overwhelmed.
Avoiding context switching
Context switching, or switching between tasks, can be a major time waster as it can take a while to refocus your attention. By allocating specific blocks of time for each task and avoiding context switching, you can maximize your productivity.
Helping managers see where employees are overloaded
By identifying areas where employees may be struggling or workloads are too high, managers can take steps to redistribute tasks or adjust deadlines to ensure that everyone is working at a sustainable pace.
Monitoring progress
Time tracking can be an effective tool for monitoring progress in order to meet deadlines. It helps with:
Analyzing time data
Time tracking can provide you with detailed data on how you spend your time. Analyze time data to to increase margins, optimize resource use, and boost profitability. Say goodbye to scope creep, project overruns, and over-servicing clients.
Identifying bottlenecks
Keeping track of your time allows you to notice bottlenecks in your workflow. With a comprehensive log of your time, you can create reports on how time is spent. You can generate detailed reports automatically in Timely to show exactly where your time goes. Use data to find bottlenecks, course correct and simply make smarter choices for better efficiency
Telling you where you’re spending longer on tasks
Time tracking can also tell you where you are spending the most time on a project or task. This can help you prioritize your tasks and allocate your time better. By seeing which tasks are taking the longest, you can focus your efforts on completing those tasks first and avoid falling behind schedule.
Redistributing resources if need be
By monitoring your progress and analyzing your time data, you can identify areas where you may need additional resources or support. Timely is a game changer for resource management, the Projects page gives you all the tools you need to track an individual project or juggle several at the same time, ensuring you stay organized and productive. Know in advance where projects may be getting out of hand, to stay within budgets and ahead of deadlines.
Making real-time data adjustments
Time tracking can provide real-time data on your progress. Real-time data means you can easily adjust your schedule and workflow when needed to stay on track. This way it’s easy to stay proactive in managing your time and resources.
Accountability
Logging your time can be an effective tool for promoting accountability. Here are some ways time tracking can help with accountability and meeting deadlines:
A clear record of time spent on tasks is kept
This can help you be more accountable for your time and ensure you are spending it wisely. Having a clear record of your working day is the first step to easily track progress and meet deadines every time.
Feedback on areas for improvement is provided
By analyzing your time data, patterns or trends that may be affecting your productivity are highlighted. By becoming more aware of your strengths and weaknesses, a sense of responsibility to improve is promoted.
You’ll stay motivated to keep working efficiently
By seeing the progress you are making and the time you are spending on each task, you can stay driven to keep pushing forward and stay on track to smash your deadlines.
Key Takeaway
Time tracking is all about keeping tabs on how long you spend on different tasks. It can help with meeting deadlines in a number of ways, including:
- Increasing productivity by highlighting time wasters, identifying your most productive hours and reducing the amount of time spent on admin tasks.
- Providing accurate estimates of how long tasks take by looking at data on how long similar tasks took in the past, revealing patterns to allow for better forecasting, and setting realistic goals and deadlines.
- Allowing for better time management by knowing when you work best, avoiding context switching and helping managers see where employees are overloaded.
- Monitoring progress by analyzing time data, identifying bottlenecks, telling you where you’re spending longer on tasks, redistributing resources if need be and making real-time data adjustments.
- Promoting accountability by keeping a clear record of time spent on tasks, providing feedback on areas for improvement and offering motivation to employees to keep working efficiently.
