It’s easy to waste time on the Internet and kill your productivity. Especially if you’re waiting for a coworker to send you something, or simply not having enough structure built into your day. So, how do you know why much time is wasted? By tracking it! If you want to improve your workday, here are four ways to track your productivity.

1. Set Mini Deadlines:

Mini deadlines are the way to go. Having one large deadline in what seems to be the distant future isn’t as motivating as deadlines that are coming fast. If your job requires you to work on one or two major projects that take a lot of time, try splitting those tasks up and setting mini deadlines along the way to boost your productivity and keep you on track.

2. Hourly Planning:

Some people don’t feel that they can be productive unless they have a step-by-step, more rigorous planning method. If you feel like you’d be more productive if your day had a little more structure, try out hourly planning! There are several hourly planners on the market. Or you could use your work email calendar. The hourly planning method helps you slice up your day into well-timed chunks. That way you know when to move on from one thing to the next. This will improve your productivity if you find you often stay on one task for too long and ignore the other things you need to get done.

3. TimeYourWeb:

Wasting time online is one of the most common roadblocks to optimum productivity. One way to combat wasting time online is to use a tool. If you install TimeYourWeb, a chrome browser extension that tracks and analyzes how long you spend on every website, you can make sure these breaks don’t run over or don’t take too long that way you can get back to being productive and reduce the time you waste online each day.

4. In the Margins:

From wasted time at filler meetings to delays caused by coworkers not getting something to you on time. A lot of your wasted time will be found in the margins of your day. Try to time these daily margins and write them in the margins of your planner or in a note on your phone. By the end of the week you may be surprised at how these seemingly short periods of time start to add up! These short periods of time can’t be entirely avoided and can’t always be used to take a break (which you should do regularly if you want to increase your productivity).

So what can you do with all of this wasted time? At the very least you can use this time to brainstorm. You could also have a few small, unimportant projects set aside to work on while you’re waiting for someone else before you can complete your high-priority tasks. That way this time in the margins can be put to better, more productive use.

Using these four methods to track your productivity will help you find ways to improve it. Try them out today and see how they work for your workday.

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