There are many software tools and apps available for time management, journaling, lifelogging, and productivity, such as Google Calendar, Evernote, Things, and OmniFocus. And of course, one can’t forget the traditional way of keeping track of what we did during the day and what we will do tomorrow—pen and paper, ideally a nice notebook and a fountain pen.
I was first indoctrinated in time management principles and practices by the use of the veritable Franklin Planner. However, as computers became more prevalent, and as recordkeeping migrated towards digital files rather than paper, I also migrated away from bulky paper-based systems and towards simple and efficient digital systems, especially those that favored David Allen’s Getting Things Done system.
But in truth, I’ve not yet come across The One True Productivity System. I think that different people have different ways of working, and so different aspects of a particular productivity system may ring true to some people, while maybe not for others. So it’s kind of like a process of continuous productivity improvement, making one productivity improvement here, and later an improvement there as our requirements change, as we come across new technologies and processes, and as we better understand our own ways of working.
Currently, I’m working on better ways to keep track of things I do throughout the day. Especially when working on multiple projects, it is important to keep track of how much time is spent on each project, and what was accomplished on each project each day. For example, let’s consider writing. Say I’m now working on a short story, a novel, and two blog posts. Each day I’d like to track the number of words I wrote for each writing project. But I’d also like to track the time spent on each project, so I can later calculate statistics on how long it takes me to produce a short story, on average, how long for a novel, on average, etc. As well as how long specific writing projects took, where they bogged down, which parts when the quickest, etc. Without data, answers to these questions would be just hunches.
My current system of logging this information manually in two text files is okay, but could be improved with automation.
Just recently I came across IFTTT (If This Then That), which is a web service that allows you to create custom recipes to do certain actions based on certain triggers.
For example, you can create a recipe to post a blog title and link as a Facebook status each time you make a WordPress blog post. Or you can create a recipe to update your Twitter profile picture automatically if you change your Facebook profile picture. Or you can create a recipe to SMS you the weather each morning.
Hopefully you see the pattern: IF THIS (trigger) happens, THEN DO THAT (action).
Quite a powerful way to automate different actions.
I’m currently using IFTTT to help me improve my time management efforts by making it easier for me to create a record of what I do during the day and for how long.
For example, so far I’ve created a recipe to automatically create an event in a Google Calendar based on the contents of an email. If I send an email with the SUBJECT field: SPARRING, and the BODY field: with Jim 2:15 tomorrow for 45 minutes, IFTTT will create an appropriate entry in my Google Calendar. Using this recipe I can also easily keep track of what I did during the day by sending similar emails, and I can send these emails using my computer, my iPad, my Android smartphone, or any other email-sending device.
But maybe you just want to get an automatic text message if rain is in the forecast. Or maybe you want any Facebook photos you are tagged in to be automatically backed up in your Dropbox account. Or maybe you want to be notified when free Amazon Kindle ebooks become available.
All this is possible with IFTTT.
I hope to create other recipes too, such as recording entries in my calendar when I make blog posts, and maybe even propagating those posts to my other social media outposts, such as Twitter and Linkedin.
In any case, I hope this discussion has given you some ideas for how you can improve on your own time management systems and processes.
As a bonus, here are some general extra resources in time management, journaling, and productivity.
If you have any personal favorites, please list them in the comments below.
