How many times were you not able to complete a task on time?
How many times have you tried multi-tasking and at the end of the day, you end up having both the tasks incomplete?
How many times does a task take more time than you thought it will take?
How many times has it happened that you had planned your whole day with a to-do list, and you end up completing nothing from the to-do list?
Thanks to Netflix, PUBG, Instagram, we waste much more time than we expect and therefore we end up with incomplete work. According to a study conducted by the US Department of Labor, an average employee spends 2 hours per day recovering from distractions.
Now, this is for normal work, when you mix online business to it, this can go way far. You will get all the social media notifications on your laptop or computer and this increases your chances of being distracted.
Now that everything is shifted online, most of the business is carried out online. To get started with a new online business GST registration is mandatory. So with online business we have other social platforms, there are possibilities to get distracted. So the time tracking tools can help here to get away from the distractions, by tracking the time spent on each task.
The biggest disadvantage here is that when you carry online business, you do not have any supervisor or your team is hardly there with you and therefore, when you are alone, you can get distracted easily and there is no one to tell you that you should work again.
‘Time is something that what we want most, but what we use worst’ – William Penn
This is where time tracking can help you.
What is a time tracking tool?
Time tracking is a feature that is a part of the project management tool, it is found in almost every project management and productivity tools now. It is a feature that can be used to know how much time is spent on a particular task.
Suppose you have added all the tasks in the tool. Now when you start working on a task, hit the ‘start’ button to start the watch, and then the watch will work till you hit the ‘stop’ button. Once the task is finished, you can hit the ‘stop’ button to stop the watch, and then you will know how much time you have spent on a task. You can also pause the time tracking feature anytime if you want.
This way you can know how much time was taken by you to complete a task.
You might have an idea of how much time will be taken to complete a particular task, and therefore if you have more time than expected to complete the task, you can see how much more time was taken and then you can think about what you should do.
How Time Tracking Improve Your Productivity in Online Business
In reality, people do not like to track their time. It is like someone is constantly keeping a check on them and the running time looks like it is calling you to speed up, this can be a little frustrating. But, you have to understand that you are doing this to make yourself more productive. Nevertheless, here are some of the advantages of using time tracking for your online business:
1. Get to know the actual time that is spent on a task:
Let’s say that you have created a to-do list of today. You have to send follow-up emails to your clients. You thought that you can do it in an hour. So you start working at 11 in the morning and by the estimated time, your email work will be completed by 12.
But, it is 11-45 now, and you are not even halfway through the task. This happens to most of us, as we just estimate time and we set the deadlines, but actually we need more time to complete the task.
So now, when you start sending your follow-up emails, start the time tracking feature and once you complete the task, stop the feature to know the actual time that is needed to complete the task. This way you can plan your to-do list in a more accurate way.
Another thing that can happen is a distraction. If you were distracted, you will take more time than needed to complete the task. But when you have the time tracking feature running, you will know that your deadline is running fast and you should also leave the distraction and you would start working again.
If you wish to sell on amazon india or any ecommerce marketplace or want to start any other online business time tracking tool can help you to manage time by keeping track of all the tasks that have to be completed. You can add tasks and decide an ETA to complete those. You may also see the number of hours that you have spent on a particular task. So you can know whether it was completed as per the assumed ETA or not.
2. Know your most productive hour:
People have different productive hours. There is a time in the day that you are most productive at, but the time differs from person to person. You just have to find yours.
As this time is the most productive hour of yours, you should definitely work at this time to get more done in less time. You would be able to do quality work at this time. Some people are a morning person and some are night. Some can work the best in the morning hours like 8-10, and some can work the best in the evening, that is 4-6 and there is also a night person that can work the best in late-night hours.
Finding and using this hour or hours to work, can benefit your business to a great extent.
While you are working under time tracking, you will see which tasks you have completed on time and which were completed before the deadline. Then you can note this hour. If the same thing happens every day in this hour, you will be sure that this is the most productive hour of yours and now you can fix this hour to do the most important tasks to have the best results.
3. Manage Scope Creep:
Scope creep refers to the increase in the project’s requirement over time. When you receive some work, you give a budget first, and then you have to work while managing that budget. Scope creep comes into play when the client asks you to add something more in the project, when the original budget surpasses the planned one, or when you take more time than you expected.
In the bottom two reasons, the mistake is yours and you have to pay for the same from your profits or pocket. But in the first one, the client has added something extra, and many times it does happens that the client does not want to be charged for the same.
When you work with time tracking, and the client asks you to add something extra, you can track how much extra time was spent to work on the extra demand, and if more time was spend than what you can spare for free, you can show the same to the client and you can ask for the additional fee.
You can also download the time tracking report and you can send it to your client using various communication tools.
4. Calculate your working hours:
Whenever you start working on a task, you have to start the time tracking feature and you have to stop the feature once you are completed with the task. If you take a break, pause the timer and continue once you are ready to work again.
This means that all the time that is captured under the time tracking feature is the time that you have worked and therefore you can know how much time you have actually spent working. You can use the same to see how much time your employees have worked.
You can also know the workload of the employees. It can also be used to see who is working as per the time allotted to the task and who is completing the task before time and who is delaying the task. This way you will get the complete picture of efficiency and productivity of yourself and of your employees.
5. Prepare more accurate bills:
Invoicing your work can be hard. You cannot just guess and say the price, this may leave your hard-earned money on the table or you might end up charging extra and therefore this can also be a huge problem.
Through time tracking, you will know exactly how much time you and your team have spent on a task and according to that, you can charge your clients. This can also be used as proof or justification of the amount that you are charging. This way you can charge exactly the right amount and this will also help you in increasing customer satisfaction and in decreasing the customer churn.
Small scale industries have to deal with multiple stakeholders and it sometimes becomes tedious to track the work done. So with time tracking tools, those industries can track the working hours and charge accordingly. These tools generate daily task reports which shows which user has worked on which task. If the team has spent more than the usual working hours, that also can be justified in the records. Hence through these tools, an accurate invoice can be generated.
6. Better work-life balance:
Try working for 12 hours and thinking about a new idea and try the same thing after working for a few hours.
Rest is too important to be productive. A person that manages the balance between work-life is always more productive. Productivity is directly related to the mood of a person. If you are happy and fresh, you will be more productive and energetic and vice versa for the opposite.
Moreover, the ultimate goal of a person should be to work for living and not to live for work.
With Time Tracking you can see how much time you spend on work and you can compare it with the time that you enjoy your life or rest. Then you can create the perfect balance between your work and your life and therefore by doing so, you can have a positive impact on your work.
Conclusion:
Time tracking is a really effective way of improving your productivity as it creates the Hawthrone Effect. Hawthrone Effect is a studied effect that shows the change in people when the time is being tracked. As the time tracking feature runs, you or your team members will feel like someone is keeping an eye on the time that they are spending and how they are spending it, and therefore they were able to work much more than the work that they usually do. Therefore, Time Tracking is the perfect choice to improve your productivity in online business.
Author Bio:
Mohit is an e-commerce marketplace trainer and works with many e-commerce vendors across different e-commerce portals. He performs various activities for the e-commerce business owners to get productivity in their online business. He is much more interested in providing useful resources at MohitECommerce through his expertise in Online Business.
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