When you fully understand how to use your time at work, you can cut back on unimportant activities. That is, you can do more important things, while you can leave your office in time, but how will you be able to understand this? There is one effective way to do this, and that is to prepare your activity log, which we will cover in this article.
What is the activity log?
An activity or task log, also known as a “daily activity log” or an agenda, is a written record of how you spend your time. That your "memory" is a very bad guide, and something like creating an activity log will keep your eyes open to what's going on around you.
Are you getting your most important work done at the right time of the day or not ?
The activity log also helps you to know this, for example, if you are energetic and creative in the morning, it will be better for you to get the important work done during that time. In the afternoon, you can focus on tasks that require less effort, such as answering emails or receiving phone calls.
The activity log also helps you identify non-essential businesses that don't meet your important goals. For example, you may spend the afternoons too long browsing the internet or drinking coffee. And when you realize how much time you waste on things like these, you can change the way you work to reduce them.
How do you set up your activity log?
To set up your own activity log, create a new table and fill its column headers with the following:
- Date and time.
- Description of the task.
- How do you feel about it?
- Significance (high, medium, low, zero).
Then write down everything you do exactly as you used to, without changing your behavior too much. Every time you change your activities, whether it's answering emails, making a report, making coffee, or chatting with your colleagues, write down what that activity is, when you change it, and how you feel about it (ready, disengaged, tired, energized) or whatever else.
Learn from your activity log:
Once you have logged your time for a few days, analyze your activity log. It alerts you to see how much time you have spent doing unimportant work. You will also notice that you are energized at some times of the day, and not fully engaged with work at other times, as a lot of these things depend on who you are, such as the breaks you take, when and what you eat and the nature of the work you do.
Once you have analyzed your activity log, you will be able to speed up your productivity at work by applying one of the following actions to multiple activities:
- Limit work that is not part of your job or delegate it to someone else, otherwise it will not help you achieve your goals. This work may include tasks entrusted to and performed by someone other than you in the company that may be of low wages, or may include personal activities such as sending non-work related emails or browsing the Internet.
- Schedule your most challenging tasks during the day at the times when you are most active, in this way your work will be done in a high quality and may take less time to complete.
- Minimize your shifting between different tasks as much as possible. For example, you could check or reply to emails a few times during the day, or you could work on all your bills at the same time each week.
- Limit as many personal activities as possible, such as making drinks, and rotate it among your team members, which saves your time and strengthens team spirit.
Activity log is a useful tool for how you use your time, helps you keep track of your activity changes, being alert and efficient throughout the day, and also helps you reduce time-wasting activities, making you more productive.
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