Time Clocking

There is no one right way to get things done and be productive, but perhaps time clocking is something you might want to give a try.

What I read: “Timeboxing” by Mindtools Content Team.

Let me preemptively assume that many reading this are about to roll their eyes at yet another productivity approach amid the plethora of approaches that come in and out of favor like the wind. On some level, I plead guilty to deserving that eye roll. I might typically be joining you in that eye roll. But hear me out.

I generally dislike productivity systems of any kind that are externally imposed. By that I mean, someone creates a system, documents it, probably writes a bunch of articles and maybe a book about it, and it gets added to the heap of such offerings out there as “the” way to get things done.

Some productivity approach adherents are willing to accept that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to getting things done. There are even those people like me who agree that we should rethink whether we should be creating goals at all or the extensive task lists associated with them.

So, here I am about to tell you about something related to productivity I’m experimenting with right now that even I’m not sure is going to work well for long. That’s the thing about getting things done in our lives. Productivity looks, feels, and functions differently for each of us and rides on top of how we view the necessity or priority of productivity in the first place.

The approach I’m going to tell you about I call “time clocking.” I was going to call it “timeclocking” to mirror the spelling of the popular timeboxing strategy that’s been written and talked a lot about in recent years. But every spelling convention reference I consulted said “time clock” is always two words and thus how I am spelling time clocking.

Many people approach their work one task at a time, and concentrate on each until they complete it, however long this takes. Timeboxing is different because it encourages you to focus on time instead of tasks.

I like the idea of focusing on time on a task versus completion of a task. However, I do not have a life schedule or inherent desire to live my life in boxed time segments. Personally, that feels constraining.

Admittedly, having retired from corporate life and now entirely focused on my own writing, media content, and other communications and community projects, I do not have a corporate overlord pushing me to complete X, Y, or Z before the “big meeting” or anything like that. My time is now my own. That influences how I approach what I want to get done in life and how. My self-created time clocking method seems to work better for me, or at least it has for the last few weeks I’ve been trying it.

Might I drop this approach too in favor of another someday. Of course I might. That tends to be how these things go. Few of us stick to anything like a productivity system for the long haul. We like variety. We like to change things up. That applies to how we get things done in life too.

But for now, this seems to be a nice compromise between my desire to do certain things in life but still maintain maximum freedom of time in which to do them.

Rather than designate time segments (boxes) to what I do, I set a minimum amount of time to work on something, and I allow myself as many segments of time as needed to reach that minimum.

For example, if I decide that I want to write for the equivalent of one hour each day, five days a week, which totals five hours per week. I focus entirely on the length of time spent on that activity. I could write for five hours straight on the same day (I can never do this). I could write for one hour each day for five days. I could write for a half hour each sitting for 10 sessions. I could write in varying time length segments but if they total five hours for the week, I will have reached my “time clock” minimum.

I keep track of my time in my notes app which is quite easy to do since it syncs in real time between my phone and laptop.

Does this approach fly in the face of some of the other approaches I’ve written about in the past? Absolutely. That’s kind of the point. Life is about experimentation. One of the things I think we should constantly experiment with is identifying what we want to do and how best we can do them while maximizing the joy while doing them (so often the joy part is left out).

Time clocking keeps me moving forward, but it gives me maximum flexibility to front load or back load my weekly activities if necessary, or to pick up and put down tasks throughout my week if the total time spent meets my self-imposed minimum. My minimums are relatively arbitrary, and I admit that.

In “My Chaotically Organized Life,” I outlined my own personal daily process which has been tweaked and modified further since first posting it in August 2022. It’s still basically the process I use today though. I’ve just adjusted it over time as my life situation has changed.

My time clocking method is similar to time-based productivity I wrote about in “Allocating Time Is Better Than To Do Lists.” The difference is the time flexibility that time clocking allows. Rather than blocking off time segments and focusing on a single task during that segment, I create time minimums which you could think of as work hours if that makes the time clock metaphor make more sense to you. It doesn’t matter if I focus on a task for an entire one-hour minimum. I can just as easily do the task in four 15-minute chunks.

I am sure some reading this feel time clocking might encourage too much flitting about from this thing to that thing without concentrated focus. Well, you just described how I do most of my work. My writing. My reading and research, My learning. My community projects. Everything. It is quite rare that I sit down for a solid hour or two to do anything. Even when I was in corporate life with specific time-bound objectives and goals imposed upon me, I still chunked them into smaller time periods of activity to get them done. Plus, jumping from one thing to another keeps me from getting stuck or bored.

If you wish to diagnose me with some version of attention deficit disorder, go ahead. But I think the level of my productivity is rather robust overall. Clearly what I’m doing works well as have other approaches I’ve experimented with over time. Ultimately, the proof is in the output and its quality, and I stand by mine as rather damn good.

What does my weekly time clock minimum look like? These days I use four keywords to organize my thoughts, directions, and tasks: body, mind, people, stuff. I’ve concluded that for me those four words encapsulate 100% of what I do in life. They keep me on track. Note that I construct my time minimums based on a five-day week because I believe we all deserve days during which we have absolutely nothing planned because that’s how we rejuvenate.

Body:
2 1/2 hours of exercise

Mind:
2 1/2 hours of reading
5 hours of writing or other content creation
2 1/2 hours of learning

People:
2 1/2 hours of fun social time
2 1/2 hours of community project work

Stuff:
2 1/2 hours of cleaning, tossing, gifting stuff, or doing paperwork

That adds up to 20 hours, and that’s my personal “work week.”

Again, this is “my” approach. All productivity systems were made up by someone. We tend to forget that.

Look at the agile development methodology that so many software companies have adopted. It was created by 17 software developers in 2001 as a specific approach to developing software. A company I formerly worked at adopted it. But shortly after adopting it the company realized pure agile (abiding strictly by its guidelines) probably wouldn’t work for various reasons. What they ended up following was a drastically modified form of agile. Agile works for some. Yet others are reporting that agile has not proven to work best for them and they are abandoning it. Some are even predicting the outright death of agile.

One week I adjusted my minimums to more heavily weight getting rid of the clutter of stuff I have accumulated since I’m preparing for an apartment move soon. I did an hour a day dedicated to stuff for that week. I reduced my other category minimums so that the total was still 20 hours. I will not give up valuable free time and that’s why I stick to the 20-hour maximum.

That’s how these things go. We can change and adapt or discard entirely such systems as we wish. Productivity systems of any kind can be as trendy and fickle as the latest hot color walking down the runway at New York’s Fashion Week. The bottom line is you do what works, and that means you do what works for you when it comes to getting things done in your life. Maybe give time clocking a try. Give other approaches a try. Create your own new approach. There is only one “best” practice and that’s to do whatever it is that gets the things done in your life you want to get done while keeping you happiest and most fulfilled during the process.

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