7 Crucial Tactics for Time Tracking

The survey of 9000 knowledge workers performing their jobs from home showed the disturbing statistics: 33% of workers admitted their struggles with adjustment to new routines alongside experiencing the symptoms of burnout.

Despite the numerous advantages of WFH, in actuality, the blurred line between work and life caused by the pandemic brought a dramatic increase in online presence and resulted in digital fatigue .

One of the most effective solutions for addressing this issue is implementing the practice of time tracking and usage of time tracking apps and devices on an ongoing basis as:

• it creates the friction-free workflow
• it facilitates collaboration
• it keeps workers and employers accountable
• it decreases the pressure of work in the virtual environment.  

Indeed, an automatic time tracker can become a virtual workstation that has the infrastructure similar to the one available under the conditions of digital-free collaboration, which helps to prevent fatigue and normalize work routine.

What tactics are crucial to make the best use of time tracking practice?

Keep Time Metrics Simple

Given the difficulties of remote routine and uncertainty lots of us are facing now, it is important we keep time metrics precise and simple for obvious reason of clarity.

To achieve it, there is a time reporting option that brings an overview on work you do as well as time distribution visible in a single timeline.

For instance, time tracking enables us to get reports on apps usage and analysis of engagement in various daily work activities.

From The Idea To Practice💡: Data visualized in graphs creates transparency and unlocks rich opportunities for optimization.    

Build Your Personal Time Management Strategy

Time tracking is great for identifying the peaks of your productivity by observing the activity bars  and spotting hours when you consistently demonstrate the high level of productive work.

As a side note, it is advisable you allocate the most challenging tasks at those time slots when you feel in your prime 'time management shape'.  

From The Idea To Practice💡: With a deeper understanding of your productive hours, you will be able to generate a pattern of your personal productivity and build your time management strategy around it.

Give Time Boxing a Test Drive

Since its introduction in 1990s, Pomodoro technique supposing the intensive uninterrupted work for 25 minutes became a game changer for millions of people challenged by losing focus on performing the demanding tasks.

Automatic time tracker gives you an opportunity to take a step further and timebox those mundane tasks that can feel distracting. This way, you 'map' a clear start-finish route on the task at hand.  

From The Idea To Practice💡: For instance, timeboxing for sorting out email works well. In case you postpone replying all the letters piling in inbox for the day, it will feel less overwhelming if you know that you have only 25 minutes to handle this task and discard it for the rest of the day.  

Analyze Time Tracking Data for Creating Work Life Balance  

Many weeks of virtual meetings could give us a couchbound feeling that leads to the decrease of productivity and burnout. To give yourself mental health support and improve your work life balance, collect time tracking data and analyze how you actually spend time throughout the week.  

Thus, it is easy to make simple calculations of what domain lacks your prioritization, tweak goal setting, change time management strategy in favor of missing components whether they regard work or out of work activities, and release yourself from unwarranted anxiety and stress caused by time mismanagement.

From The Idea To Practice💡: Time tracking that interlinks your time metrics with all the activities you are engaged in can help analyze how much time you have to interact in work and in real life.

Create Zero Distraction Environment

Similar to an athlete pushing harder when there are two seconds to finish, we are more inclined to keep the focus narrow in a distraction free environment.

Time trackers with advanced functionality include task management, securing data, diverse integration options and offline mode that provide means for setting up optimal digital environment and seamless work experience.

From The Idea To Practice💡: Integrating your favorite time tracker across apps you use most often (for example, project management systems, email service) will not only save you time and efforts but keep your state of flow uninterrupted.  

Use Time Tracking in Goal Setting

If you strive for effectiveness you do not have to stretch yourself thin. It is enough to stay accountable for your time. To facilitate this process, we start with setting clear goals and sorting tasks according to their priority.

Time tracking tactics are effective because they turn a scattered to-do list into a more systematic record, help build consistent routines and increase output. It translates into getting most crucial tasks on your schedule, from essential daily buys to meeting deadlines on long-term projects.

Time tracking tools integrating with calendars elevate scheduling work to a new level and enable users to feel efficient at prioritization.

From The Idea To Practice💡: Analyzing time tracking metrics lets incorporate time evaluations with precision at the stage of planning and make goals aligned with specified time frame, which is essential in SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time bound) goal setting.

Enhance Your Project Management

Digital time trackers allow to list all the project activities and at the same time stay flexible when it comes to incorporating random tasks along with stating their time dependency status.  

Besides, you can use time tracking systems to rate hours and set project budgets. Moreover, in case you run a risk of going off the budget limit, the app will send users a warning notification instantly.

From The Idea To Practice💡: Time tracking functionality that is linked in project management delivers accurate time calculations, integrations in other tools and visibility of task dependency, which enhances the user experience, improves team communication and brings all the collaborative efforts to fruition.

TMetric: Tactics in Use

TMetric presence in onsite and remote work routine can best illustrate the benefits of implementation of the above listed tactics.

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Aside from the overall facilitation that TMetric brings, it enables you to have time tracking free for creating the friendly digital work environment and keeping work life balance in check. TMetric features:  

• the option for requesting paid time off
• the option for marking billable hours
• calculating your work time across tools you use (email, messengers, project management tools, scheduling tools)
• saving all the data
• working in offline mode
• task management
• creating invoices
• generating reports
• sending information for processing payroll.