As I’m working on various different projects at the moment, it’s difficult to say that each day is clearly spent on a particular project. During the week I started work on the procurement project at 12pm, but then went to a meeting about training requirements for a mobile working project from 1pm- 2pm. Then back to procurement from 2pm - 6pm.

The mental calculations are getting too complicated so I’ve set up a spreadsheet with each project as a heading, and then recording what I do and how long it takes. It’s a real eye opener.

This morning I’ve spend over 2 hours time on one particular project. That’s consisted of reading and answering emails; trying to log-in to a system (and having to raise the reason why I can’t); reading minutes of a meeting that relate to project (except they’re not complete so had to query); creating new folder structure as more reports have been added.For another project I’ve had a half an hour phone call, plus answered two emails.

It’s going to be really fascinating to see how this looks in a couple of weeks time. The next step would be to make these time sheets available on the web so that all I need to do is reference my clients when I invoice them.

Which leds to ‘personal information management standards’. And as yet, despite the growth of web 2.0, there’s nothing that exists to provide me with the platform I need to support my work activities.

Update:

And then there’s the time spent on the quite unexpected; Thunderbird has just upgrade itself forcing restart of laptop.

While using Open Office on other computer, was looking for some way of inserting objects into document to show infrastructure of a telecare project. Somehow I’ve managed to fill at least a third of the screen up with what look like blue doughnuts. Help! How do I get rid of these?

Update 2:

Well nearly at the end of day 1 with using a spreadsheet to record half hour time slots. Verdict?

  • have very clear idea of what I’ve been doing all day
  • feels more productive
  • much better idea of how much time is spent on replying to email, reading background material, phone calls
  • more focused - it feels like moving forward if spend 30 minute slots on three projects