The BIGG Successs Show
Track Your Time with this Popular Toy
You played with it as a kid; now use it to make tracking your time more fun! Find a written summary of today's show along with a link to the resource we mention at BIGGSUCCESS.COM.
Welcome to The Big Success Show. Today we'll tell you how to track your time with a popular toy. The Big Success Show with George and Mary Lynn. I have to say Mary Lynn, this is one of the most fun, interesting things I've read in a while, what we're going to talk about today. Michael Hunger, over at the Better Software Development Blog, uses LEGOs to track his time. That's awesome. It's the most amazing thing I've ever seen, I think. You know, I've built a spaceship with LEGOs, but I've never tracked my time with him. Well, it just makes me think he's really good at thinking inside the box. I guess. But he's got some great illustrations. We definitely recommend that you go check out his post, because we're going to try to create the picture with words here, but you really need to see the pictures to understand exactly what he's doing. That's right. And we do link to it on our site today at BigSuccess.com, but what he does is he puts a whole week on a single eight peg by sixteen peg base. And for each day of the week, he uses a one peg by eight peg piece that is a different color to represent each day. Yeah, and then he breaks each hour into four fifteen minute segments. So each row has a maximum of four blocks across, one for each of the fifteen minutes. Now, if you plan out an eight hour day, or if you work an eight hour day, you'll have a maximum of eight rows high, one for each hour. Then he assigned one of the nine colors to each project that he's doing. He checks his start time and end time, and then places a block for each fifteen minutes worked on that project. So if he worked on two projects, a half hour each at the start of the day, he would have a row with two colors in it, one color for each project. And the result, and he's got a great picture of it on the site. At the end of each week, he can look back and see exactly what projects he worked on and how much time he spent on each one. And what we love about this idea is that it's fun. That's what he is very fun. That's right. How can you bet that? But then he creates this 3D graphic that he can actually physically work on. Yeah, and so it's definitely not boring. And, you know, when you look at it, you just instantly get that sense of what you've been working on, just a quick glance. I mean, it's just amazing to me when you see the picture. I thought it was funny in his article. He says the one disadvantage to tracking his time this way using Legos is that coworkers will disassemble your time tracks. And that's the only disadvantage he listed, right? Oh, it'd be kind of hard not to play with it because, you know, Legos. That's right. And he's been doing this four months now, and he said it's working very well. He does point out that you could also use this to plan your week and to make sure that you're working on what you need to work on. Coming up, we have some thoughts on that and another great way to use this Lego system. Today we're talking about a great post by Michael Hunger over at the Better Software Development Blog, and he's using Legos to track his time. One of the things he points out is that you could use this also to plan how you spend your time. Yeah, and Zach got us thinking about how you could actually create two models. One could be a model for planning your work week. Here's how I plan to spend my time. And then the other model would be the actual one. And you can compare the two at the end of the week. Yeah, and I mean, it would just be an instant glance and you would be able to see how you did. And Michael's using this to track projects and how he spent his time, but you could use different categories and track your time there. For example, you could track your time, let's say, for a week to find out how much time did I spend at work? How much time did I spend watching TV or commuting or shopping, Mary Lynn? Yeah, I know. Then at the end of the week, you've just got this great visual that tells you quickly how you spent your time and you can identify time wasters very rapidly. Yeah, and another way that you could use this model, the Lego model, is to track your dieting, track your fitness regime, or even your spending. That's true, Mary Lynn, but I just have one thing to say. Let go of my Lego. You can get a written summary of today's show on our site at BigSuccess.com. We also have a link to Michael Hunger's blog so you can check out the Lego model. And don't forget to sign up for the free Big Success Weekly newsletter to get the tips and tools you need to be a big success. You can sign up right there at BigSuccess.com and you'll get our free goal planning workbook to go along with it. And you can use that with your Legos. Exactly. That's right, next time we'll talk about attracting and retaining the next generation of talent. Until then, here's to your Big Success. The Big Success Show at B-I-G-G Success.com [Music] You