What it is
A basic timesheet to record how you spend your time.
Why it works
We are hopeless estimators of the time it takes to do things, and the time – in total – that we work. But if we want to get more efficient we need to start with a fairly accurate view of where our time is going in the first place. This timesheet exercise give us, in gory detail, the places where we are haemorraghing time. Then we just need to work on fixing it.
What you do
I think this exercise is most valuable if, before you start the timesheet-keeping process, you make a guesstimate of how much time you spend in all the areas of your business in a month.
Then, when you’ve finished the timesheet-keeping, you can compare the actual time spent with your guesstimate.
The differences between actual and guesstimate will tell you heaps about how accurate you are at estimating time and where in particular you over and underestimate the time tasks take in your business.
And so to the timesheet keeping. At its most basic you can keep a timesheet on a piece of paper and do this:
If you are happy to use a basic spreadsheet throughout, then the whole timesheet-keeping thing becomes much easier. Just set up a workbook with a new sheet for each day of the month. That way you can easily sum the half hours on a daily basis and by week etc. Lots of opportunity to play around with the figures if you like, and you can do graphs and so on if you want to get really carried away. Of course, there are timesheet apps you can use, but for this exercise it’s all about simplicity and the discipline of actually recording your time, rather than anything fancy. I still do this every so often and always get a sharp reminder of how even the little jobs take longer than I expect. And that’s enough to get me focusing again on being efficient!
This article first appeared on The Business Bakery blog.
Julia Bickerstaff advises small businesses through her consultancy The Business Bakery and is the author of How to Bake a Business.