How Time Logging Can Transform Your Productivity

I know a thing or two about time management. At Sophie Davis, the BS/MD program I attend, students are regularly instructed on the importance of managing their time. Sharpening this skill has been excellent for my performance, but I value awareness of time as a way to maximize experiencing the things that bring us meaning and happiness on our journeys. I have developed many strategies while acquiring a bachelor's degree in 3 years, but the most important tool I've used for myself is time logging.

I still remember anxiously punching numbers into a calculator last year when I was beginning my most challenging semester. How screwed would I be this time? I projected a week filled with studying 28 hours of medical fundamentals, attending 15 hours of classes, and tutoring 10 hours for a total of 53 hours. While I understood that the puzzle and responsibility of medicine would always be one of my loves, I didn't want the rest of my life to be choked out by it.

But I chose to pursue medicine and use my time this way after all, and to complain about it made me feel like a coward. So I sucked it up, filled in my schedule, and did what I had to do. I attended all my lectures, tutored my students, and always made sure to sit down for all of my scheduled study times. But despite working as hard as I could, I felt completely lost after my first exam; a failing grade was not a good start, and I felt like I had to win a losing race with an empty gas tank.

As I thought about a solution to my problems, I began to consider that my exhaustion may not be a sign that I was incapable of my goals. Instead, as I was at my limit, it must have meant there was something wrong with my efficiency. I knew I couldn't tutor a student faster or change how lectures were presented, so I focused on the flexibility of studying. If my current effort wasn't enough, I needed a way to measure exactly how much effort I was putting into my work each time I sat down.

Enter time logging. I threw out my original study schedule in favor of a daily time goal. Each time I sat down, I would let the timer run until I was too exhausted or reached a natural stopping point, took a break, and started again. I originally used the stopwatch built into my phone, but eventually switched to Toggl, a free website and mobile app that allowed me to categorize time used studying specific subjects. In this way, I got an exact read on how much time I spent memorizing immunology or going over abdominal blood flow.

Within 3 days of timing myself, I felt freer than I ever had. Although I was unable to meet my time goal of a daily 4 hours, I realized it was because I was never studying 4 hours to begin with. When I was studying with my original schedule, there was a nebulousness of when I was spacing out or working full-throttle. By using a stopwatch that I could stop at any time, I always had the option to stop to do something else, come back, and start fresh again at maximum speed. Due to the external reinforcement that timer time was work time, I actually did way more work in less time and recovered 14 free hours each week in the process.

Further benefits of time logging became apparent over time. With each test I have passed, which is all of them, I can change my daily time goal to achieve the results I want while balancing the rest of my life. Now that I am almost done with my first year of medical school, I know exactly how much I need to study each day to pass my exams. This also means I know when I am ahead, or how much more I need to do to catch up from behind. Regularly logging has given me a gauge on what results I can expect with the effort I am putting in, and I have the freedom to decide how much is worth it for me.

Even though being a student is a specific scenario, time logging can yield benefits in various applications. For any task that can drag on for uncertain amounts of time, like writing, building websites, scheduling, or research, you can gain more of a grasp on exactly how much of that time you're actually doing the task. Keeping a regular log also allows you to form a concrete idea of how much time certain tasks will take, even for longer projects. Additionally, you'll know exactly how much more or less time you'd need to modify your current results to your liking. Although you could use wordcounts or to-do lists to measure progress, the use of time as a universal currency also makes it easier to know how tasks can fit into your own schedules. Finally, I guarantee that turning off the timer for a break helps to truly relax between sprints of productivity. So give time logging a try some time, and I hope it helps you calibrate your productivity as well.