So Where Does the Time Go?
I do quite a bit of teaching, both in public and on-site classes. One of the most common challenges I get to suggestions for trying new techniques is this:
"That would work in a perfect world, but I'm barely staying afloat with the work I have to do. How do you propose to solve that problem?"
It bothers me on one level because the implication is that the rest of us live in a perfect world� immune to the ravages of time pressure, multi-tasking, unbridled demands and occasional blinding chaos. Nothing could be further from the truth. Personally, I feel that I've had a healthy dose of all of these. As a consultant one of the things I pride myself on is my connection to and my experience with reality.
However, I choose not to allow the daily frenzy to totally drive my behavior. You see, I feel that even in an absolutely crazy environment, we still make choices in how we will behave. We can be victims or take a more empowered perspective. It's all up to us and the point of view we select. I know this might sound like rubbish, but it's really true.
It takes WORK to actually take control of your time.
Once you decide to choose empowerment, the next step is slightly more difficult: Where do you begin to change your focus? How do you gain insight into the chaos to make the right, high impact changes that will create momentum towards more effectively managing your time?
It really starts with data. I'll give you an example. One of the first things that PSP training asks of software developers is for them to keep a discrete log of the activities for a period of time � say a day. The point is to capture where your time goes throughout the day so that you understand the nuance of your development time and specifically where time is being invested.
Usually, some shocking revelations occur. For example, "What do you mean I�m only coding for 17 hours a week!" or "Jeez, I'm doing pretty well when you consider the meetings, status reports, design session, HR reviews, etc. that sucks up over 50% of my time!".
One of the other revelations from the exercise is that there is no way any engineer in their right mind will keep track of their time manually. While they see the tremendous value, it�s simply too painful and time consuming to do it. Out of this very dilemma of how to unobtrusively collect meaningful time data came the foundations for 6th Sense Analytics™ tools and approaches.
6th Sense Analytics painlessly collects data so that you can peer into it and see what happened to your day. In exhaustive detail you can tell -
Exactly how many interruptions you had
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Exactly how long each one was
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How long it took you to recover from an interruption � to get back "into the flow"
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Or whether you lost the flow for the afternoon
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You can also correlate your time spent with your productivity
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How much code did you produce
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What testing did you do, for how long, before checking files back in
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And on and on�
Are these insights free? Of course not. At times, you�ll have to review your project task commitments, look at your Outlook calendar or check other activity artifacts as part of your analysis. You'll also need to pull things together -- looking for patterns of good and bad practices and habits that are part of your own personal work behavior and/or your environment.
So again, 6th Sense Analytics data is not a silver bullet unto itself. But it does provide data that a curious, insightful and dedicated software engineer can use to truly understand their where their time goes and take action to adjust their work patterns to change and maximize their time investment.
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