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May 31, 2011

How To Define Activity Master - "Action" and "Objective"

Have you ever thought something like this?

"I can't define my Activity well."
"Sometimes it's very hard to pick one Activity for recording."

Here is a tip for you.
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In your Activity Set, don't you have both Actions and Objectives?

For example, "For New Contracts" and "For Existing Contracts", these are Objectives. In other words, these are in regards to what you did.

For Actions, "Meeting", "Mail", "TEL", etc., these are the things that you actually did.

If you have both Objectives and Actions in your Activity Set, you may run into some difficulties.

For example, if you had a meeting about a new contracts, you would need to choose either "For New Contracts" or "Meeting" for your record.

We don't recommend using Actions and Objectives together in your Activity Set.

So which one should you use?

Well, it depends on why you are recording and analyzing your activity.

If this is your reason: "I want to manage my time use for existing contracts and maximize my time for new contracts." Then go with Objectives.

If this is your reason: "I want to spend less time for emailing and spend more time for making sales calls." Then go with Actions.

FYI!


P.S.
For advanced users;)

- Mixing Actions and Objectives purposefully in your Activity Set.
Let's say you are recording with Objectives and one day you think that you might be spending too much time on emailing.
If this is the case, while continuing to record with Objectives, you can add an Activity named "Email" and record the duration of the emailing time.
Though you won't see the Objectives of your emailing time with this method, you can find out how many hours you are spending on emailing while still keeping track of time for each Objective.

- Change entire Activity Set at the beginning of a month.
Start recording with Actions first and then switch to Objectives when you get a feeling.

lifelog, time management, self-management
Time Management, Productivity, GTD... MyStats
Available on the App Store (For FREE!)

May 27, 2011

A Month Has Passed...

It's been a month since we started providing MyStats.

Guess what has happened in this month...

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- Introduced on Yahoo! News, The Nikkei Business Daily and many other sites and newspapers in Japan.

- Ranked #5 on Business "Top Free" category of App Store Japan.

- Downloaded in 38 countries worldwide.

- Opened a blog

- Introduced as #1 "New & Noteworthy" app on Business category of App Store Japan.

- Introduced on a Russian news site.

- An old friend called me up and said "I'm using it."

- Got a reply saying "I downloaded it" from a company president.
I read in Nikkei Business Magazine that he was making his own pie chart to manage his time. I gathered up my courage and tweeted him about MyStats. Then got the reply.

- Introduced as #6 "What's Hot" app on Business category of App Store Japan.

- Got a contact from a top manager of world known enterprise and explained about MyStats in his room.

- I introduced MyStats at App Store Ginza.

- Now we can see a few tweets on MyStats everyday.

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What a month really!

So what I WANT to happen in the near future is...

- Being introduce as a "Staff Favorite" app.

- To see a stranger on the street using MyStats.

- It appear in a magazine.

- To have our own event at App Store.

- Being introduced on a news site in US

- To rank #1 on Business "Top Free" category of App Store Japan.

Dreams are what you make happen.

Stay tuned!
lifelog, time management, self-management
Time Management, Productivity, GTD... MyStats
Available on the App Store (For FREE!)

May 8, 2011

Calculation: Client Meeting Time / Transportation Time

It's not a "MyStats Case" but...

I met an experienced sales rep recently. He is kind of a go getter.

This is what he told me.

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Client Meeting Time / Transportation Time

Once he recorded his time and found that it was 15% to 20%.

He thought that it was really inefficient and worked on improving his activity while he kept recording and analyzing this indicator.

Then he figured that the limit is 45% for him and he could not improve it futher.

However, while he was keeping this indicator at 40% to 45%, he was winning new contracts continuously.

So he thought that 40% to 45% was good enough for his business.

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A good number for this indicator depends on what you sell and how big your business area is, but this calculation can be useful for anybody.

Time A / Time B = Efficiency C

By the way, this person has even published a book about sales in Japan;)

FYI!

lifelog, time management, self-management
Time Management, Productivity, GTD... MyStats
Available on the App Store (For FREE!)

May 3, 2011

Case: Cello-Playing Business Person

This is a second example of how to use MyStats.

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- Record only Cello Playing time.
END
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Wow, this is a simple one!


What this person told me is something like this:

- At first, he wanted to record everything he does.
Then he thought that he couldn't keep recording in that way.

- So he decided to record only one activity that he really wants to do.

- He once heard somewhere that, "anybody can play a musical instrument if he practices it for 10,000 hours" and he believes it.

- Because he has only one activity to record which he really wants to do, it's now very easy for him to keep using MyStats.


This is a story about a serious business person who works as a marketing planner at a big enterprise and decided not to record his working hours but to record only his cello playing time which he started just two years ago.

This is quite opposite of My Case, isn't it?


lifelog, time management, self-management
Time Management, Productivity, GTD... MyStats
Available on the App Store (For FREE!)

May 1, 2011

My Case

This is how I use MyStats.

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- Record and analyze only working hours.
Eating, Sleeping, and other private hours are not recorded.

- Set the Activity Masters based on "Objectives" not based on "Actions."
Using the Activity Masters like, "MyStats Business", "Management in General", and "HR"
NOT using like, "Meeting", "Writing", and "Emailing"

- Define the monthly time allocation at the beginning of each month.
"I will have 250 hours for my work in this month."
"I will have more than 80 hours on marketing and it should be more than 30% of my working time."
"I will limit my time for HR matters to 20 hours and it should be less than 8% of my working time."

- Keep eyes on the difference between the planned time allocation and the actual time allocation.

- Change the Activity Masters for each month.
Start with two questions, "What activity I want to spend more time for?" and "What activity I want spend less time for?" and revise the Activity Sets.
* Usually the revisions are small.
For example, I was using an activity called "MyStats" which is for all of my activities for MyStats business. From this May, I divided the Activity Master into "MyStats Development" and "MyStats Promotion."
When I start a new project, I set a new Activity Master for it.

- Record in 30min range.
I sometimes record activities in 5, 10, or 15 minutes range but over 90% of my records are in 30 minutes range. (Because I don't think I can keep track of such small pieces of times.)

- Record after I finish each activity.
But to be honest, I often forget recording and record everything for that day at the end of the day.

- Record with I-think-the-most-of-the-time-was-spent-for-this judgment.
When I spent 30 minutes for MyStats business but actually some part of the time was taken by a call from somebody for something else, I just think that most of the time was for MyStats business.
At the same time, I sometimes think that "I spent this 30 minutes mainly for "activity A" but I used many small pieces of the time for "activity B" today, so I record last 30 minutes as "activity B" in order to adjust the balance.

- Intentionally use an activity called "Dandori", which means "planning" or "arrangement", in order to organize To-do.

- Don't have any Activity Master for "Transportation."
If I do any work on the way to somewhere, I record the time as that work.
If I study on the way to somewhere, I record the time as "Study."
If I daydream on the way to somewhere, I just don't record that time and keep it blank.

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I change the Activity Masters for each month as I stated above, I might be recording only private hours sometime soon, though;-)

Just FYI!

lifelog, time management, self-management
Time Management, Productivity, GTD... MyStats
Available on the App Store (For FREE!)