In a previous blog, I talked about ROTI—return on time
investment. The concept is similar to
ROI—return on investment—only instead of evaluating monetary investment it
evaluates the return of your time investment.
One method to assist you in determining if the time you
spend is returning the investment you want is to determine just how you are spending
your time. We all probably waste more
time than we realize. Let’s say playing
a game of Spider Solitaire (my temptation!) takes ten minutes. Ten minutes—that’s not such a big deal,
right? However, if I play ten games a
day, that’s almost two hours of wasted time!
That is almost two hours that will not gain me any return.
An easy method to determine how you are spending your time
is to do a time analysis. The first step
is to document every task you do and the amount of time spent doing it. This can be as formal as putting it on a
computerized spreadsheet or as simple as jotting it on a piece of paper.
A key is to document everything. This means documenting the time you spend on
social media, taking breaks, checking messages or emails, socializing, etc. as
well as “real” work (however you might define that). Also, track how you spend your personal time
as well as your professional time.
The second step is to analyze your data. I recommend tracking this for a week to get a
good sampling of how you spend your time.
Days differ! This can be as
complex as entering the data on a spreadsheet and color coding or developing a
graph that shows how much time you spend in each category that you
determine. On the other hand, it can be
as simple as adding up how much time you spend productively and
non-productively.
You may find that you are wasting much more time than you
thought!
The third step is to decide if you want to change anything;
if so, what; and then make the change.
Although this takes time to do, I think it will give you a
very good ROTI because it will give you accurate data to make good decisions.
