Train Thoughts

I believe that if we track it that we can do a much better job at optimizing it. I also believe the most valuable and perhaps wasted resource we all have is time.

There are applications that track your spending, applications to tell you where you are, applications to manage a schedule, applications to track how you use your RSS reader, but nothing that actually tells me how I spend my time.

I do know that if I plan my day the night before I’m twice as productive as when I don’t. I also know I get more done when I’m swamped than when I’m not.

So imagine an application on your PC that every time you switched applications that it logged when you did it and for how long. The application would be categorized like outlook would go into an email.  And maybe even a little bluetooth sensor that made you log when you went somewhere like a meeting or lunch. After a week or two you would get a report that said how you spent your days. How much time you did each activity, when you did it, number of activities per day and the list goes on and on.

Than all this data could be aggregated and analyzed. For example, a sales team could use it to see how the top performers spend their time and help others perform better. Also, the personal humiliation of how much time I spend in my RSS reader might help me be more judicious like quicken does for how much I spend in restaurants.

This may feel like a little big brother. But. I bet there are lots of commercial uses for something like this. And if we managed our time a little better the compound effect would be enormous for each of us.