Not so long ago, my daily routine was something like:
And here comes the big surprise: after working all day, not even half of the planned work is done. And this was happening on a good day. In a bad one, I had no idea what I did all day long.
So, forget the free afternoon, and I've worked until my eyes were burning - ok, outside it's dark already. Go out with some friends or watch a movie...no, too tired. Just get in bed, tomorrow will be better. But, of course, the next day...the same story.
At this point, I realized that I use to work all day long but, on a good day, I do half of my work. Therefore, also half of my planned income. Not to mention the bad days, when, at the end of the day, I have no idea what I've been doing all day long. The obvious problem was: no work done, no income!
I realized I need help. Since my main concern was the fact that I was losing time without knowing exactly what on, I started using PlanArty . I recorded on PlanArty everything I was doing during the day and, after one week, I checked the results...
BIG SURPRISE there :)
But, if I consider that each time I returned to work on today’s project, I had to spend 5 minutes figuring out where I was and which was the next step I had been thinking about, those 357 minutes were actually only 317 minutes, 5:28 hours!
Time spent on social media = 161 minutes, 2.6 hours!
Time spent on different activities that could have been done much faster if they were well organized: 305 minutes = 6 hours
So, from all of those 13 working hours, I only have around 4.6 hours spent on the project that I had actually planned for today. And, if I also consider the productivity factor...well let's be honest. After 12 hours of sitting in front of the computer, the work that I've been done between 20:03 and 21:00, under normal circumstances, would have been easily done within 20 minutes. And, most likely, with a lot fewer errors.
And this was a "normal" day :(
If instead of 3 clients, there were 5-6 who wrote me regarding an issue, at the end of the 14 hours work program I had 2-3 hours of billable time, at best.
And I was so proud of myself about how serious I am, and how much I work…
In fact, I was losing a lot of my time on social media, and some more on correcting the errors that I made because of my disorganized working style. During the time I spent on the actual billable projects, my productivity was a disaster, to put it mildly.
Thanks to PlanArty , by recording my time and seeing the outcome on the reports, I realized that I drastically have to change something! This, if I wanted to be productive and make more money. And yes, I wanted!
Better planning by better analyzing and prioritizing things. Learned from PlanArty !
08:00 - 13:00 - work on today's project
13:00 - 14:00 - lunch break, read some news, social media or take a short walk
14:00 - 16:00 - work on today's project
16:00 - 17:30 - solve the issues reported yesterday by email, messenger, …
17:30 - 18:00 - read my emails, read my social media for my clients messages. Plan the things to do for the next day