AL #038: The New Year's Resolution to Rule Them All
AL #038: The New Year's Resolution to Rule Them All
Why Time Tracking is the ultimate meta habit.
I've been getting increasingly cautious with taking on ambitious New Year’s Resolutions.
Over time, as one after another optimistic New Year’s Resolution turns into a failed streak, you start to question the whole concept as a vehicle for behavioral change.
I've found it more helpful to realize certain principles are true:
Changes to environment are more permanent than an attempted introduction of a new habit
It’s more useful to free up time from bad habits then to force new ones into your schedule
Tracking habits is more effective than planning goals around them
Things should be fun rather than tedious. Introducing ball sports for cardio is better than forcing yourself to run on the treadmill while trying to be “productive” on your iPad
Visibility is the best form of inspiration. Observing your Netflix hours can have more impact than a gym subscription
I find myself slowly typing this on my new Dygma Defy keyboard (which is very painful to get accustomed to and feels like I'm learning to touch type or use vi again).
P.S. This is why this newsletter will be a short one.
But I know I’ll figure it out because it’s an environmental change that I cannot work my way around.
The only way forward is complete mastery.
But there is one habit I've adapted this year that I think would help many of you as well…
Tracking Time
After reading Dan Martell’s excellent book How To Buy Back Your Time, I wanted to try out his Time Audit method which involves tracking time and then reflecting on the buckets that can be reallocated.
It has been a game changer.
I use Toggl for this purpose and it has had the following impacts on my workflow:
Being able to observe how much I work overall (far less than I would like to given the newborn)
Seeing where I bleed time and what prevents or interrupts my work
Helping me focus on a task (because you set a timer for everything I've found that it works like a Pomodoro timer psychologically)
Helping me track billable hours across client projects and allocate time effectively knowing how many meetings I have left in the week
Helping loosely estimate customer acquisition costs by tracking social media and business development hours
In addition to tracking and tagging different clients and projects, you also get a variety of reports and the ability to create your own custom analytics.
It’s a simple, comprehensive and free tool that I recommend you try out.
At a minimum, it will help free up time for all the other New Year’s Resolutions you’re trying to hit.
If you are looking for something more automated, try out Timing app for Mac (recommended by my friends at dAppling). It will not give you the focus benefits of a Pomodoro timer but will be more efficient.