Picking up from last Friday, the keys to solid time management are understanding where your time is spent, building a disciplined scheduling system, and setting goals.

Undeniably, goal setting is the hardest of the three to master, so you’ll work on it next week. According to an outfit named Hubstaff which did one of those surveys to impress you to buy their software, the average worker is productive for 2 hours and 53 minutes daily. (That much? Ha.)

Becoming an efficient time manager without using goals as a compass is impossible. It’s your goals that will dictate your priorities and tasks. When you learn to set and work goals, you can sneer at that Hubstaff research!

It was only a week ago we took on time management, and because it’s Friday again, we’re back at it. Remember, the goal of getting TM STRONG is to control your calendar, not letting your calendar control you.

Unfortunately, even by sharpening your eye on time spent through exercises like these, you’ll never outrun the responsibility of certain undesirable activities and duties of your job. (WHO loves CRM data entry tasks or wading through endless cloud docs and platforms to get the information you need?)

Properly managing your time includes repositioning your attitude on how you feel about your time spent. If you feel productive, you’ll enjoy your time working more. Likewise, you’ll feel more fulfilled with your work if you perform tasks aligned with your goals.

The time-tracking exercise you are working on presents the ultimate question: what will you change to improve your productivity?

One thing is sure: staying the course and changing nothing means more inefficient and, perhaps, disillusionment with your role and work. This is your chance to turn that around, but you must do the work. Time is sacred…covet it, cherish it, protect it. The good news is you can win this battle.

Today, build on the TM exercise you started a week ago by adding another week of time spent data. One week of data is good, but two weeks is better and will yield valuable insights.

Pull out your tracker and revisit your categories (e.g., "meeting prep," "external sales meetings," "administrative," etc.); ensure they’re the suitable buckets that accurately represent your time.

Review your calendar to see how it can give you answers to what you did this week. Understand your calendar will only tell you some of where you spent your time last week, so you must make some assumptions. Then, enter the data in your sheet’s "Week 2" column, and you’re one step closer to owning your time.

Analyzing the time exercise you’ve worked on for two weeks is guaranteed to give you valuable revelations and insights about your productivity.

It’s time to review your steps so far: you’ve reviewed your buckets – your time categories – and feel confident they’re titled correctly. (That’s an important step.) You’ve been over the math of two weeks of calendar reviews to get percentages that feel right per categories. Good. The data looks good enough, which is fine for now. Next, stare at the sheet for a bit. Wait for the revelations to find you…they will. Just keep staring at it. Go line by line and column by column. You might make some edits here and there on things that don’t look right, and that’s fine.

What does your time tracker say about your productivity? What insights can you glean that will change your behaviors and actions?

For example, can you delegate an hour from the "administrative tasks" category? Can you excuse yourself from a few "internal meetings" that don’t require your regular participation and throw those hours into "prospecting"?

There’s one more powerful edit you can make to your tracker that will empower you: categorize the line items on your tracker into two categories: "essential" (to revenue producing) and "non-essential." "Prospecting," obviously, is essential. "Internal meetings" are non-essential. Ideally, you’ll want the percentage balance to be about 60%/40% necessary to non-essential. Try not to be discouraged if your percentages are way off from 60/40, make the moves to change them.