Guest guest Posted December 21, 2005 Report Share Posted December 21, 2005 Believe your Manager have done the year end performance review with you already. Did you do a performance measurement on your own though? You may have set some goals early this year and it’s time to be honest to yourself – if you want to improve and do better next year. No matter how good our memory is, it can always be too easy to forget the time we spent reading junk mail, talking to colleagues, making coffee, eating lunch etc. Ben is a senior developer in a software company. The first time he uses an activity log as suggested by his mentor, he was shocked for the lengthy time he has wasted on those low value jobs! Each person’s energy level varies through the day. The rule is simple -most people function at different levels of effectiveness at different times. Our effectiveness may vary depending on lots of factors such as the sugar amount in our blood, routine distractions, stress, discomfort etc, not to mention those good evidences that show the daily rhythms of alertness and energy of different people. Keeping an activity log for several days helps Ben to understand how he spends his time. Usually he uses the first few hours to read email, attend meetings, followed by lunch, doing programming/ mentoring, then have a coffee break, and continue with his development work. Other than recording activities, Ben also notes periodically throughout the day about how he feel – alert, flat, tired, energetic or whatever. So, what happen? Just like any ordinary people – Ben’s most effective working time is actually the first few hours in the morning! All he needs to do is to re-schedule those top priority tasks to be done during that ‘best performing’ period, and reschedule email checking to another time of the day. A quote to share ‘A man who dares to waste one hour of life has not discovered the value of life’ - Charles Darwin Questions Activity logs are useful tools for auditing the way you use your time. Do you know when your best performing time of a day is? Are you sure you have been doing something of top priority during that period instead of doing something that deserves less attention? You don’t need to do such logging everyday. It can be a monthly or quarterly exercise. *********************************************** "Forgive what ought to be forgiven; forget what ought to be forgotten." —Ammachi *********************************************** Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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