The role of time tracking in my productivity system

Up: § Time tracking, § My productivity system

I utilize time tracking to aid my productivity in a number of ways:

Time tracking brings focus: By tracking the time I spend on tasks and broader categories, I bring a level of intentionality to my choices around what I spend my time on each day. The time tracking tool I use, Timery, has a menu bar app that shows the duration of my currently tracked task. Seeing the timer helps me stay productive, kind of like the pomodoro technique.

Embracing that I have endless work: The nature of my role as Founder CEO, alongside having side projects I'm passionate about, means that I always have more to do than time available. By tracking time, it helps me shift the paradigm away from "get through everything" and towards "allocate my time optimally". This is very important for me in having the most impact I can, as well as feeling accomplished rather than demoralized by how much I still could do.

Increasing productivity through batching: Through the slight friction and investment to track the time I spend on activities, I am encouraged to deliberately choose what I spend my time on. This leads me to batch tasks rather than jumping between totally different tasks and contexts. For example, rather than respond to an email and then to a Slack message, I spend a dedicated period of time getting through my email and track that.

To enable analysis and improvement: By tracking my time, I can regularly assess what I've been spending my time on and whether there are broad categories that I'm neglecting. I can make tweaks each week and larger changes over time to work towards utilizing my time optimally to move Buffer and my own projects forward.