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Buy a watch with a stopwatch. Turn it on when you're actually doing your work - coding, writing, whatever, and turn it off when you're not. My experience is t
by michael_nielsen 19y ago
Buy a watch with a stopwatch. Turn it on when you're actually doing your work - coding, writing, whatever, and turn it off when you're not. My experience is that most people are utterly shocked to find how little they do in a day.
To get improvement, record the results (and a 7-day average) in a spreadsheet, graph the results, and pay attention!
- mmaunder 19y agoOr buy 5 stopwatches - one for each of the 5 apps you use most often. Then flip between them to track each app individually. ...and you should probably get a sixth to track how much time you spend flipping between stopwatches and work.
- ivankirigin 19y agoa chess timer should work well. work vs. not work.
- webwright 19y agoThis is kinda why we built RescueTime. We found the stopwatch solution to be awkward and, if you fail to remember to turn it on or off, it's VERY hard to recover that information. I've done the time management exercise (the manual log) and found it to be incredibly useful. Just the act of paying attention made me more productive. But (like 99.9% of the people who try) I stopped keeping a log-- it was just too much damn work. :-) So I guess we're trying to take the work out of it.
- kingkongrevenge 19y ago> most people are utterly shocked to find how little they do in a day. I disagree. I think most people know how much they're getting done. I think tools like this and over-complicated productivity "systems" are actually just another form of time waster. Simply set deadlines that don't allow for wasted time and then meet them.