Auditing Your Time And Tasks

Last Friday I wrote about how crucial it is for consultants to have a simple, quick, and effective weekly review process. The one I use and teach partners has three components: Time and task auditing, journaling, and planning and prioritizing.

You start the process with time and task auditing.

If you look at the four components, there's not really a different way to start. You need to clarify what (and how) you got done last week to reflect on it. And we can't look at the future without understanding the past.

To perform the auditing, all you need to do is look back at your calendar and whatever tool you use to manage your tasks - a to-do list, software or app, written notes - and document:

• How much time did you spend doing client work?
• How much time did you spend doing business development?
• What was your hit rate for the new habits you are adopting?
• How many of my most important tasks did I get done?
• Which tasks I've been delaying week after week?

Make sure to document the specific KPIs you and your team use. If you'd like a template to do so, feel free to drop me a line and I'll share one with you.

Having helped +100 consultants adopt this review process, I learned the advice most need to keep in mind is: Auditing your time and weekly tasks shouldn't take you more than 3 minutes - otherwise you won't do it.

Don't worry about precisely measuring every minute of your day or each minor task you complete. There are benefits to it and you should probably do it once a year, but not every week. The key, especially when this process is new to you, is getting started.

Also, avoid tracking too much. It’s best to measure the right metrics subjectively rather than the wrong metrics perfectly. You don't need more than 4-5 numbers to understand where your time, attention, and energy went during a given week.

With that taken care of, tomorrow we can move to our next component in the weekly review process: Journaling.