How I analyze my time tracking data in Notion every month

So to give you some context, I made this time-tracking notion template about a year and a half ago. I made it for myself just because there wasn’t a to-do list or time-tracking system that I liked and I kind of customized one for myself.

I mentioned it casually in this one review video that I did and people started asking me to share that with them so I created it.

Hundreds of people have downloaded it since then from that video and just one other video. Which is like me showing how to use the time-tracking template.

So the aspect that I want to share with you, is that I’ve never missed a day unless I haven’t been working or tracking my time in a year and a half.

I made this commitment where this was kind of a game system in my head where I was getting points for clocking in anything work-related that I did for myself or business-related and even reading, I wanted to get that continuing education time.

I wanted to make that valuable. I thought it was valuable, but it wasn’t reflecting on my timesheets.

It’s just like food logging. The reason in fitness coaching, we used to ask people to log their food is there’s this real connection when you just see, “Oh, this is what I’m eating all day, or this is what I ate. I thought I ate way more protein, but looks like I only ate 30 grams today”

How to Analyze Your Time Tracker

So I wanted to share my practice for how I analyze the data that I track here because I do have this ritual every month, going back and doing this, it should be more often I wish it was every week, I do sometimes do that, but every month is really when I get a chance to review, and it is that time of the month when I’m about to reset, duplicate my sheet.

I like to start a new database or sheet in Notion, where I duplicate the previous one, I delete everything in this duplicated one, and I kind of just rename it the “month”.

I have one for every month going back to the year and a half or whatever. So basically what you can do is go back and there’s a search filter that I’m looking at right here.

How to Use the "Search" Feature in Notion

Search filter and I can type in anything like, let’s say “tennis” because I do track my workouts.

That was something I wanted to incorporate. It affects My personal professional life and all that stuff and so I just wanted to log that time as well

So if I put “tennis” I can see all the times that I’ve played tennis this month. There are details in there of my scores where I played how much time was invested in all those different things, right?

So you can very quickly and easily look that up if you want to search like “post or publish”

That’s another term I use like “publish on social” or “publish social post 1”. So I can see how many Instagram posts or social media posts I ended up publishing.

Or if I just type in “podcast” I can see how many podcasts I’ve recorded, how many podcasts I’ve ended, all of those different aspects.

So that search feature is very huge when you are analyzing some of this data.

One of the other numbers that I like to look at is the total number of 10, 000 minutes. Basically, in the sum category, in the time invested column, I track it with minutes.

And I track it to the T, so I don’t round up or anything. It’s like, 29 minutes, 25 minutes, 4 minutes, 100 minutes. Even if it’s a 2-minute task, I kind of hit reset and started again and the fun part is seeing yourself complete tasks under 25 minutes under 15 minutes a lot of times.

The times here’s what you’re looking for at least what I am when I scan through this is like what took me over 25 minutes and why?

So a lot of times it’s justified. I was in the deep work zone. It made sense, but it’s like, “replying to my client’s training and sending him equipment recommendations from home setup.” He asked me for that. That took me 37 minutes.

That was yesterday at 5:50 PM. Then I did that.

I also, this is something else that, I don’t do as good of a job at this, but I do this at the end of the month. Sometimes it’s tagging everything, which is like, you should do this as you go along it just makes it way easier and I should get into the habit of doing this better.

The tags feature where I have let’s say fulfillment.

So when I’m delivering client projects or I’m handing off client projects, writing briefs or dealing with a revision, anything related to that, that is in the fulfillment category.

If I tagged all my fulfillment tasks there, I can easily, filter it down by fulfillment and see all of those tasks.

If my goal in a month, like more marketing, was kind of my goal.

I want to do more of that for my YouTube channel, and more for podcasts. So if I tag my marketing tasks with that tag. that I already have built, then it allows me to see how much time I invested there.

Product Engineering

Another one, hard for me to invest time in, but important to me, and I want to track it, is product engineering.

I call it that because it’s like whatever your product or service is, even if it’s a podcast and it’s just free content, you’re trying to tweak and figure out the best way to display it for the end user so that they can have, the best user experience possible.

So that’s another thing, a tool that if you use the tagging feature, pays off at the end of the month where you can skim through all this very quickly.

Another thing I look for, I don’t delete blocks where let’s say I started the task and I got distracted or I didn’t do it.

I walked away or I ate lunch or something. I would leave that blank and then that shows me like an unfocused day.

Or if I have a lot of those blanks, it means I’m getting pulled with calls or something random or just not sitting down and focusing if there’s a lot of those blank cells.

So I do leave that in there. That’s something I kind of scan for.

And then the other thing I scan for is the document icon.

So any document icon or emoji next to the cell of like tasks, means that I have more notes inside.

So I kind of hit open and it expands the sheet and I can quickly see what notes I took when I was working on that task or thinking about it.

Where this comes in handy is the next tracking or analysis aspect, that I do, which is something that I started this part. I haven’t been blogging for a year and a half.

To-Do List Template

I just started doing this in the past couple of months, which is having kind of this to-do list cell or template that I built within this sheet.

And it’s essentially dividing my agenda up into all those different segments, fulfillment and retention, marketing, sales, product engineering, admin, home, and fixing garbage disposal is a task here.

All these different things that I don’t want to forget I put on here.

And the reason I like using this is because I can do it as a to-do list where I check it off and it crosses it off and it’s kind of satisfying.

So what I like about that is at the beginning of each day, or some point in the day, or even the night before, it’s the reset for the day, where I hit the new cell, I hit that template, I call it to impact action items to-do list, and there’s a scoff emoji next to it.

I see my goals are kind of written out every morning, whenever I reset, and then followed by, the agenda that I want to fill in what’s cool to see here is how at the end of the day You know because now this is a guiding post.

It’s like okay now hit new cell and work on that first item and that second item.

It’s crazy when you get to the end of the day how many things you don’t get to right you realize, and this is why I do the time tracking template.

It’s like a to-do list system is different than a to-do-done system.

Something that gets done.

So the time tracking thing allows you to track while you’re actually in motion, but the to-do list planning allows you to just see. What’s on my mind, what do I want to get out? What’s important? What are just some nice things that I want to work on?

And every day when I migrate this, cause this is a bullet journal technique where you kind of write and migrate things that translate to the next day or it’s like, Oh, it didn’t get done the day before. Seeing that at least I feel like, “Oh man, why didn’t I do that? It’s been a week.”

And I haven’t worked on that demo slide deck that I wanted to, right? It keeps getting pushed every day.

And then it’s like, boom, finally, when you do it, you have the data to go, “Wow, man, I planned for this.”

Even some of the videos that I’m filming, I went back. And this month, it’s like I went deep into the action items thing because I have this note section and I dumped all of them there.

And I was like “Wow, I planned all these back then. It’s taken me this long to actually record it like I’ve been meaning to record it for so long and took me a while to get to these ideas”

If you’re data-driven It’s a way where like you can’t fool yourself.

What are the benefits of implementing this time tracking sheet?

And it’s just nice to see it laid out front Instead of paying for a coach or consultant or somebody to yell at you if you just set up this time tracking sheet I truly believe that you can have a lot of learning just from seeing what you do in a day.

And the commitment you have to make I think is just taking it seriously being honest and tracking as much as possible.

When you forget, you put that in your notes and you can watch the video of me explaining the full system.

I’ll link that in the description below. However, I wanted to use this video to establish a framework for analyzing the time tracking sheet.

Once you start using this template every month, be able to have a practice, or even you could do this every week.

That helps you stay even more on track because you can recalibrate week to week. And see what was the error this week?

Where did I go off track compared to some of my goals for the week?

Versus at the end of the month, it’s like, okay, four weeks have gone by. But, once a month, minimum this is kind of the analysis that I do and I try to do it a little bit more often and I just kind of look for these things.

What are things that are for me to do and how much time did I log doing some element of those things?

So if you’re somebody who has felt in the past like a whole day goes by and you’re like, man, I did a lot, but you can’t point to the 10 different things that you did that were impactful or meaningful.

It feels like it just you were doing things, but it’s hard to recall. It’s exactly what it’s like with food. “I don’t remember exactly what I ate for breakfast yesterday, but I think I had enough protein.”

And so that’s what food logging illuminates sometimes, which is what this time tracking sheet is meant to do.

It’s meant to keep me honest. And I think if you find this strategy useful and this analysis technique, you know helpful then check out the full video you’ll like that check out the actual template.

You can even just make your version by watching the screen, you don’t have to download it if you don’t want that there’s a link to that below hundreds of others have done so and they’ve liked it.

Let me know if you have any comments on this because I’d love to make more.

Honestly, this is one where I know a lot of people are still interested and I wish I made more to help those of you who are still using this.

My goal was to help you track your time for whatever goals are most meaningful to you. So it might be creating content. That takes a lot of time, when you start doing that, especially if you’re trying it consistently.

Tracking your time is important. And it keeps that whole excuse on as well. “Oh, I don’t have time for this.”

It’s like, okay, well, let’s take a look.

It’s just like having a bank account statement or a food log. You can go back to it, and the best part is you don’t need to share this with anybody.

This is a private thing that you can look back at and reflect on at the end of each month.

So let me know if you have any questions at all on this.

I’ll be doing more videos explaining how I kind of use this template every single month and every single day.

So again, thanks for hanging out. I appreciate your time.

Check out this and more free tools at Podmahal.com and in the description below and I will see you next time.