Using David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) method in combination with Timeular

“I learned my limits. I learned how much more I can give and do. I learned which promises I can give and keep. I learned the difference between the truth and wishful thinking.”

Joey works as a customer service agent. He’s constantly looking for ways to improve himself. He wanted to see how much time he is spending on his activities and which tools are working for him. “Furthermore, I want to see how I can improve not only myself but the workflow of the team.”

GTD-system meets Timeular

Joey’s activities are fluid and forever changing, but he was able to combine them to the eight most important aspects: Calls, Time on order entry, Meetings, Projects, Reports and Salesforce. He uses #tags and @mentions for his most valuable clients to ensure their promises to them are kept.

For planning his day, he uses the GTD-System of David Allen. He writes everything down in an Excel sheet.

He plans his day while commuting, then spends about 30 minutes getting an overview (this is what he tracks) and then works on orders, spending some time with customer requests and questions.

At the end of his day, he blocks time for current projects. As if not enough, he re-checks urgent orders and deliveries and delegates important issues to his team.

He labels his activities with the E/N/D idea. E/N/D stands for Energizing / Neutral / Draining. After finishing a task or when writing it down, you decide whether it was an E, N, or D. This helps you make sure that you don’t have a day full of things that are draining your energy.  This is key to stopping burnout in its tracks!

At the end of the week, he compares the tracked data to his initial plan and evaluates what he can do better next time.

Keeping everything nice and organized

For later reviews, Joey keeps nearly everything in files and folders. All his duties and activities are colour-coded. Whether something is saved in digital or paper form, it’s always clearly visible and therefore making his job 100% transparent. With this method, he never loses an order, never misses making a call, never forgets a tiny detail about his customers/coworkers, and it never ever gets hectic.

“More work, in less time, with no mistakes (and enough time to learn from past mistakes), structured projects and plans and the good feeling of going home in the evening, knowing, I did the best I can and am ready to do it again tomorrow. Timeular is a very essential tool, so much so I now do the same with my private life.”

Guesstimating vs estimating and the meaning of time

Joey is now able to squeeze an 11 hour workday into a more relaxed 9 hours day. This is one of several benefits of time tracking.

“I re-learned the value of time and how to spend it. The differences between someone else’s urgent and my urgent. The difference between giving a ‘guesstimate’ or a fair and accurate time. Also, I learned that you get more done when knowing what it is you’re doing. There is a certain elegant order to everything and Timeular helped my find it for me.”

Time is precious, once gone, it will never come back and Timeular let’s him make the most out of the present and the future. Joey now gets more done than ever before whilst never being stressed or exhausted

Joey’s tip on how to define your activities

Try to track one or two weeks worth of work with pen and paper (not the time spent on it, just the “it” itself), then sit down with a cup of coffee and mindmap your way to your top-8 and see if they make sense. I think 8 “big tasks” is just the perfect number of tasks to track and plan and live by.

“To track is to improve, so everything gets better the more you do it.”