Life of an Investor

How to budget your workday - Investing Time

So, like many other blogs I have started over the years, this one almost stagnated. As you may notice, I haven’t posted for almost two weeks now. It’s not because I haven’t had the time or desire, but investing has kind of taken a back seat for the last month or so. I’ve been busy in my personal life and have not had time to pursue any real estate. Instead I will post more of a “Getting Things Done” or time efficiency post. This is just a tip for a system that I have developed to help me keep moving and getting things done at work.

Previously I have downloaded time tracking systems from the internet, but they never seemed to do exactly what I was looking for. Some tracked programs even when I wasn’t actually using them, so looking at the reports, apparently I spent 8 hours reading e-mail in Outlook. Some cost money. The first requirement is that it be free. I’m cheap like that. The main issue I see with these programs is that they only report the time you spent and don’t really help guide you while you are spending the time. I can look at a report at the end of the day and see how I spent my time, but by tomorrow I will have easily forgotten or I can just plain ignore the results.

The last few days, I have transitioned to a pen and paper method that sits on my desk next to my mouse so that I see it all day long. Basically I break up my 8 hour day into 15 minute increments for a total of 32 increments. No, I don’t schedule each time block, such as 8:00 to 8:15 — get coffee. That would be too hard to manage. I actually write down a list or all the things that I want to accomplish that day, including reading technical magazines, reading from my blog reader, breaks, actual work on specific projects, etc. I also always create a separate category for extra time blocks left over. I find that every day I need these “extras”. Then next to each category, I put tick marks for however many 15-minute blocks I want to allocate to that activity. For example, if I want to spend 2 hours during the day on a project, I place 8 marks next to it. I even have one tick mark for writing this post. Yes, it only took me 15 minutes to write this…sad, isn’t it?

One of the main benefits of this method is that I don’t have to work on the project for 2 hours straight. I can work on it for 30 minutes now, and 1 hour later, etc. I just mark off a tick every 15 minutes. This really does not affect my work and greatly increases my productivity. There is no lost time. If I run over on one project, I just mark off one of the extra ticks or have to cut back somewhere else. Hmmm…sounds a lot like budgeting money. I generally have about 3-4 marks in the extra category and it works out pretty well.

In the comments, let me know what you think. Also, if you have any methods that you use to budget your time, please post them as well.

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