Having encountered the concept of using a time tracker for the first time, unpleasant feelings about supervision and control arise. Naturally, it would seem that a time tracker would sooner cause burnout than help to prevent it.
However, such conclusions are based on misunderstanding or ignorance of the tasks solved by the time tracker. Each employee meets a variety of distracting factors at work. According to the poll by the HeadHunter agency, only 5 percent of office workers claim they are never distracted. A large percentage of their colleagues suffer from free access to the Internet, chitchat of other employees, constant phone calls, and much more. What does the time tracker have to do with this? It is simple: the software will track distractions and analyze their impact on each employee, it will show exactly how he spends his working hours. Forced overtime work, constant distractions, chaotic interference lead to broken deadlines, strain and eventually to emotional and professional burnout of employees. The time tracker will identify such an imbalance in an organization of work long before it is too late. It will keep records of productivity of an employee, his use of distracting and entertaining websites and applications, his readiness to perform work tasks. The time tracker is beneficial to the employees: it disciplines them, encourages to prioritize their work, to plan their work day, and helps to fight distractions. When the time tracker detects that an employee spends time unproductively and is frequently distracted with personal matters, there is an opportunity to help him. To reduce the impact of distractions and prevent burnout, follow a few simple rules:
- Keep a track of your time: Become a punctual person, don’t be late and finish work tasks in time. Is it very difficult? Then there is a need to revise your schedule.
- Stick to set priorities. Write down all your tasks, arrange them in order of importance and urgency and complete them in the specified order.
- Do focus on quality, not speed. Very quick solutions often cause many errors. To fix it, you’ll spend much more time.
- No multitasking. Sometimes, for the sake of meeting deadlines or desire to solve a lot of issues at once, an employee takes multiple tasks simultaneously. But frequent switching from task to task is tiring and irritating. Do not pursue quantity, focus on fewer tasks to achieve quality.
- Keep your desktop in order. Not everyone is comfortable to work in conditions of creative clutter, it can be even more distracting than chatty colleagues.
- Follow the schedule to work and rest. This makes your thinking clear and allows better focus.
With a professional approach, the time tracker is beneficial to both an employee and an employer and becomes their personal time management tool and an excellent assistant.