Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
Speaker 1: This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 1: tip is to try acting like a lawyer or an
Speaker 1: accountant for one work week. Track your time and think
Speaker 1: of yourself as billing it to different projects. The experience
Speaker 1: will likely be enlightening and give you some ideas of
Speaker 1: how to best spend your working hours. So I have
Speaker 1: spoken with lots of lawyers and accountants over the years.
Speaker 1: Many have told me about having to bill their working
Speaker 1: hours to different clients. That means tracking their time, often
Speaker 1: in small increments like six minutes that is one tenth
Speaker 1: of an hour. These tend to be highly paid folks,
Speaker 1: and six minutes for a five hundred dollars an hour
Speaker 1: lawyer is fifty dollars still worth noting. I can tell
Speaker 1: you from these conversations that basically no one likes tracking
Speaker 1: their time in six minute increments. Now, I know that
Speaker 1: often this distaste stems from billable hour requirements. Knowing that
Speaker 1: you have to clock a certain number of hours can
Speaker 1: lead to a loud ticking sound in your mind, especially
Speaker 1: when you know that any time off is just borrowing
Speaker 1: time from the future. But even in the absence of that,
Speaker 1: or even if the billable hour target is quite reasonable,
Speaker 1: it can feel like a pain. And yet I am
Speaker 1: always telling people to try tracking their time for a week. Indeed,
Speaker 1: every year I lead a time tracking challenge around this
Speaker 1: time with thousands of folks tracking their time together. You
Speaker 1: can learn more about that over at my website Laura
Speaker 1: vandercam dot com. For a week, people act like lawyers
Speaker 1: or accountants keeping track of their time. So this raises
Speaker 1: the question, if no one who has to do it
Speaker 1: likes doing it, why on earth are thousands of us
Speaker 1: doing this to ourselves. The reason is that it is
Speaker 1: incredibly useful. I suggest people try tracking all their time
Speaker 1: for a week. That is all one hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: eight hours of a week. But even if you only
Speaker 1: track your working hours as lawyers or accountants do, you
Speaker 1: will find some interesting thing. One thing, you will see
Speaker 1: how many hours you actually work. Now, if you get
Speaker 1: paid by the hour, you know this number. If you don't,
Speaker 1: you may just go by an impression. We think forty
Speaker 1: hours means normal nine to five in the office, but
Speaker 1: it's only sort of true. Most people take breaks, Sometimes
Speaker 1: people come late or leave early. Sometimes people have half days,
Speaker 1: or holidays or sick days, it might actually be less
Speaker 1: than forty when you average it out. This nebulousness happens
Speaker 1: with higher numbers too. If you ever work late, or
Speaker 1: check email on the weekends, or travel for work, you
Speaker 1: might just assign some other number to this question. I
Speaker 1: work fifty hours a week sixty eighty. We live in
Speaker 1: a competitive world, and this number can quickly get inflated.
Speaker 1: I once met a young man at a party who
Speaker 1: told me he was working one hundred eighty hours a
Speaker 1: week at his start up. That is a very impressive
Speaker 1: number if you actually multiply twenty four times seven. I
Speaker 1: used to think I worked fifty hours a week, and
Speaker 1: then I started tracking my time regularly. I realized that
Speaker 1: the average was a lot lower than that. These days,
Speaker 1: I know it is usually around thirty five hours a week.
Speaker 1: I work in the evenings, I work in the early mornings,
Speaker 1: I work on weekends. But my work days are often
Speaker 1: interrupted and end early due to kid stuff, So the
Speaker 1: time does an add up nearly as fast as I
Speaker 1: feel it does. If you track what you are doing
Speaker 1: or working on during your working hours, you will also
Speaker 1: find some interesting things. Many people try desperately to do
Speaker 1: multiple things at once and wind up getting very little done,
Speaker 1: or they keep getting distracted and find that a ten
Speaker 1: hour work day contains less than seven hours of real work.
Speaker 1: Sometimes people see that they spend the majority of their
Speaker 1: time in meetings and not all of those meetings actually
Speaker 1: needed to happen. I have certainly seen folks get a
Speaker 1: fire lit under them to minimize meetings after realizing that
Speaker 1: if they want to work forty hours a week and
Speaker 1: they spend twenty five hours in meetings, then they have
Speaker 1: a mere fifteen hours to do the rest of their jobs.
Speaker 1: But in any case, when you know what your work
Speaker 1: week looks like, you can make more rational choices about
Speaker 1: what proportion of time you should spend on different things.
Speaker 1: You can decide to spend a certain proportion on planning,
Speaker 1: or on drumming up new business, or on meeting one
Speaker 1: on one with direct reports. You may generally think you
Speaker 1: should be spending more time on these things. But unless
Speaker 1: you know exactly how you spend your working hours now,
Speaker 1: you don't know if you are spending too much, too
Speaker 1: little the right amount. Who knows, time tracking is just
Speaker 1: data data. It's really another way of saying reality or
Speaker 1: if we want to get all lofty the truth. I
Speaker 1: believe that the truth sets us free. When we know
Speaker 1: where the time is going. Now we can make more
Speaker 1: rational choices about how we want to spend our time.
Speaker 1: So yes, perhaps time I'm tracking is not a ton
Speaker 1: of fun, though. I have been tracking my time for
Speaker 1: almost nine years now, and that's all one hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty eight hours of the week. It's enough time to
Speaker 1: rival many lawyers or accountants. I find it absolutely fine.
Speaker 1: I keep doing it because time is valuable. I want
Speaker 1: to spend this valuable resource. Well, I am guessing you
Speaker 1: want to do that too, So why not try acting
Speaker 1: like a lawyer or an accountant for a week keep
Speaker 1: track of your working hours and what you are doing.
Speaker 1: If you are inspired, you can track all your time
Speaker 1: working and non working time. It really won't take that
Speaker 1: much time or effort, and you'll have data that can
Speaker 1: help you spend more time on when matters and less
Speaker 1: on what doesn't. In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening, and here's to making the most of our time.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to before breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
Speaker 1: or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
Speaker 1: vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
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