When I started working as an engineer I worked for a consultancy, where the time I spent on projects had to be billed to clients. Therefore, I used a spreadsheet to keep track. It worked well. With the volunteering I currently do it was recommended to do something similar so that we are aware of when we are wasting time, among other reasons. However, I realised it was not easy to constantly go to a computer to punch in what I had just been working on. And I found it very difficult to remember when I hadn't done it for a day or more. Estimating the time I had spent became problematic and my estimates were becoming wild guesses.
I am the type of person that typically would find it easiest to work on a single project for not just an hour, not just a day, but an entire week or even longer. Certainly in the past this was how I preferred to work. Switching between tasks I would find difficult and I realised this friction was resulting in procrastination. Therefore, I tried an app on my phone called Toggl to track my time instead. Not just volunteering time but everything, even sleep. It worked a treat. I quickly became aware of when thoughts, the parrots taking over Instagram (and I mean literal parrots haha), different tasks and other distractions were sidetracking me. In fact, it worked at an even deeper level. It was like everything was being linked up in my mind into something coherent, making it easier to discard blockages following a meditation I do. And this blog post took me 42 minutes to write. 😁
