For the last few years (2019, 2020, 2021) I've shared a breakdown of how I spent my time that year. It’s always an interesting exercise and it’s useful for me to analyse how I’m using my time differently year over year. Understanding how your time is being spent is one of the best things you can do to make better choices and plan more effectively for the future.
NOTE: This analysis covers the period from January 1st to December 9th. So, although the year isn’t over, it gives me a pretty good idea of how I’ve spent my time this year.
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How I track my time
My time-tracking methodology has been the same for the last few years.
As you may know, I’m a big fan of time blocking. By planning out when I’m going to work on specific tasks, this creates a nice time log and at the end of the week, I can go back and look at all the blocks on my calendar to see how I spent my time.
Time blocking is great but I also want a big-picture overview as well as a detailed breakdown of how my time is being spent. So for that, I use Timing (affiliate link). Timing is a time-tracking tool I’ve been using for the last few years to track my time. It watches the apps, websites and files you use while you do your work and categorises them into ‘Projects’.
This is what I’ve used to produce the analysis below.
Summary of my year
Observations:
- I worked fewer hours compared to last year – This year, I worked 1,418 hours (about 28.5 hours a week) which is down from 1,536 last year . This surprised me a little at first. But considering I've taken steps to grow my team and remove myself from some of the client work, this stacks up. I also don't work more than I need. If I've done all I need to do for that day, I stop. I don't find unnecessary work to do to fill my time.
- Productivity score — The productivity score is calculated based on how “productive” different types of work are. For example, in Timing, I’ve set “Client work” to be very productive. Whereas watching Netflix or playing games is very unproductive. My overall score of 86% (which is exactly the same as last year), although this really doesn’t tell me much, so I don't pay a lot of attention to it.
- Most active weekdays — Tuesdays and Thursdays are my busiest days which doesn't surprise me. These are the days where I take more bookings from clients and new inquiries and generally have a bit more on.
- Most productive weekdays — It’s good to see that my productivity is very consistent throughout the week at around 77-86% rather than dropping off significantly.
- The most active time of day — I'm generally more active in the morning (similar to previous years). This makes sense due to when most of my client calls take place. Often the afternoons are spent on less productive work and admin. When planning my time, I like to work on high-energy tasks in the morning when I find I am more focused and alert.
Hours worked per month
Here’s a breakdown of how many hours I worked each month this year:
Overall, I worked an average of 118 hours per month down slightly from 128 hours per month last year. That’s about 28 hours per week.
A big priority of mine is to maintain a healthy work-life balance and I’m always conscious of going beyond that threshold where the additional hours you put in aren’t as valuable as you start to burn out. I like to maintain ‘normal’ working hours and optimise what I can do within this time. My goal has always been to sustain (or grow) my income but to do this without working longer hours. This has the effect of increasing your ‘effective hourly rate’ or what you earn for an hour of your time.
Projects I worked on
Here are the top “Projects” I worked on. These are basically the categories of my work:
Top 5 projects:
- Client Work (359 hours, 19% in 2022 | 414 hours, 23% in 2021) — This is probably the biggest change in terms of how I spent my time in 2022. I did close to 55 fewer hours of client work this year as a result of building my team and using contractors for more of our client support calls. This has allowed me to remove myself as the bottleneck and spend more time on sales.
- Sales (360, 25% in 2022 | 293 hours, 19% in 2021) — I spent 25% of my time on sales e.g. on introductory calls, following up with leads and writing proposals. Significantly more than I did in 2021. This is evident in my revenue growth this year. By allocating more of my time to sales (by spending less time on client work) I've been able to grow revenue without working longer hours.
- Planning (184 hours, 13% in 2022 | 173 hours, 11% in 2021) — I spent about 18% of my time planning. This has gone up a little from last year as I’m now spending more time managing the team and the work that they’re doing. But isn’t that interesting, that 13% of all my time is spent just planning the work?
- Email (182 hours, 12% in 2022 | 165 hours, 10% in 2021) — This year my time spent on email went up slightly as a result of taking on my clients and responding to support inquiries.
- Content (119 hours, 8% in 2022 | 135 hours, 7% in 2021) — I spent 8% of my time creating content in 2022 (e.g. this post you're reading now). This also includes all the videos I make for YouTube that help me to get clients and sell products. This is an important time as it’s how I generate a steady volume of inbound leads for my consulting services and products.
Most used websites
Finally, here are the websites I’ve visited most often:
Observations:
- Asana (137 hrs 2022 | 160 hrs 2021), Pipedrive (266 hrs 2022 | 197 hrs 2021) and Zapier (16 hrs 2022 | 26 hrs 2021) — I should start by pointing out that the Asana, Pipedrive and Zapier numbers are misleading. While a lot of the time spent using these tools is my use of Asana or Pipedrive because I consult with clients on these tools as well, this means a lot of the time is classified as “Client Work” and not my use of the tool. What is interesting is that I spent a considerable amount less time using Asana this year and more time using Pipedrive. This is consistent with my findings above that I’m doing less client work (which is managed in Asana) and more sales (managed in Pipedrive).
- paulminors.com (67 hrs in 2022 | 66 hrs in 2021) — Basically the same as last year.
- ConvertKit (14 hrs 2022 | 35 hrs 2021) — All of my email funnels have been pretty “set and forget” this year. The only time I've needed to use ConvertKit is for a few minutes each week to compose and send me newsletters.
Closing thoughts
After going through this exercise, I’m pretty happy with the results. I haven’t radically changed how I’ve spent my time. As I said, the biggest change has been the shift away from client work to doing more sales and this can be seen in my company's growth this year. This is a trend that's continued for the last few years. And what I'm realising is that my growth has been largely due to building a team around me to remove myself as the bottleneck.
As the year comes to an end, I’d highly encourage you to look back at how you’ve spent your time. Please let me know if you learn anything interesting in the comments below!