I’ve had a really unexpected success this year – it’s something I’ve been meaning to trial for a while and now I’m a little bit addicted. I signed up to a time tracking app. If you aren’t using one, here’s a few reasons why I’m sold:

Project Value for Money

Some of my work has been set hours, but most of it has been output-based. Work where it’s up to you to make the total cost of the project worthwhile. Tracking time across projects has been a great way to check that I’m within the time tolerances, and actually providing value for money.

Distraction Accountability

It’s also been a great way to help keep me focused. When you know you’re only turning the clock on for actual work, it helps minimise the distractions. You’re suddenly really conscious of the hour you spent on LinkedIn, because you can’t attribute it to any of your projects.

Business Versus Business Development

One of the challenges of self-employment is definitely balancing doing the work and getting new work. Applying for contracts, prospecting and building your network can all take serious chunks of time and it’s really interesting to capture week by week how it’s panned out. Over the last two months, I’m averaging about 2hours a week on business development – with huge variation, some weeks not doing any and one week with a big application due nearly putting in a whole day.

The Real Cost of Running a Business

Along with the time to secure new work, tracking my time has also helped evidence the real cost of running a business – that alongside contract work, no small amount of time is needed on admin, whether it’s emails, insurance, IT, or CPD. My weeks have varied between 42% and 94% billable work, with an average of 74% each week.

Work Life Balance

It’s also proved really revealing about how my work/life balance is going! One of my commitments was trying to stay working 3 days a week before our youngest starts school, and it’s easy to see where evenings/weekends/early starts have snuck in. I’ve achieved by goal of max 24 hours a week only half the time. My average is a few hours over each week – oops.

Overall, using a time tracking app is a giant time and motion study, revealing where you spend your time across the week and helping you assess whether you really are putting your time to good use. My verdict? Definitely some room for improvement! But who doesn’t love a multi-coloured graph?!

Photo by mostafa mahmoudi on Unsplash