How Time-Keeping Devices Can Help Productivity
Time-tracking is always a popular method for ensuring the most gets done within a certain time span. But productivity isn’t a race, and the fastest isn’t always the best. Taking a broad general look at things doesn’t do as much good as looking at the little actions and timing along the way. The best ways to keep track of time and productivity are the old methods, with time-keeping devices used in conjunction with more modern techniques. Here’s how time-keeping devices can help productivity overall and help you better manage your employees and expenses while making good use of the data generated.
Time-Keeping Devices Physicalize Time
Clocks and other time-keeping devices have been unfairly villainized. Rather than a handy tool designed to measure the time we have for, well, everything, they’re viewed as taskmasters. But like any tool, there’s a right way and a wrong way to use them. The wrong way is to view the clock as an hourglass, watching time slip away. The better perspective is to view a timekeeper as a measuring glass, telling you exactly how much time you have. It may seem obvious, but people forget that you’re only racing against the clock in an actual race.
Time-Keeping Devices Keep Everyone Synchronized
It may be a different time in another state or country, but in your place of business, there’s only here and now. The only issue with that is, are your time-keeping devices in sync? When clocks all show the same time throughout the building—best done with Wi-Fi-synchronized devices—employees and management can better keep track of efficiency, quality, breaks, clocking in and out, and more. Inconsistent timing devices mean inconsistent performance and diminished output.
Incorporate Time-Tracking Devices With Software
Time-tracking software is another way to physicalize and chart many things that can’t be “seen” per se. Certainly, you can see your employees hard at work, but with tracking software you can gauge employee progress, stay on top of expenses and billing, notice upticks and downturns in employee output, and assess what powered the former and the latter. Time-tracking apps and other software also provide greater transparency overall—you’ll know who’s working on what and whether they’re working well.
Time-Keeping Devices Can Be Your Personal Assistant
Another way how time-keeping devices can help productivity is that clocks, timers, apps, and other devices and techniques can let you know you’re in charge of your time, not the clock. Decide on a daily schedule of work activities and assign only so much time to each one. That can mean 10 minutes on reading and answering emails, 30 minutes on a particular project, and so on. Planning will help you trim the fat of fake productivity out of your day. Timers also give you an out with interruptions, letting others know when you can help them without neglecting other tasks, and establishing your reputation as a methodical and conscientious worker.
