Stop Time Tracking, Start Value Tracking

Time tracking is a pain, but value tracking could be fun!

Last week, I traveled to London, Paris, and Lisbon, and participated in three different events. As usual, I wasted a lot of time getting tickets for trains, waiting on metro stations, driving around in taxis, standing in security lines, walking around airports, boarding planes, trying to find venues, and recovering items that I accidentally left behind (as usual). I estimate that the traveling last week cost me around eight hours of lost productivity.

Was it worth anything?

From the perspective of a traditional employee, my eight hours of travel time are worth exactly one day of a steady salary. After all, I get paid for the time I spend doing my job. Traveling to events is just part of the job. In terms of money earned as a salaried employee, the hour that I spend arguing with an airport security agent is worth as much as the hour that I spend doing a presentation for an audience. It makes no difference to my bank account.

Of course, the notion that we’re getting paid for time is far from satisfactory to most creative knowledge workers, even those with steady salaries. Most people that I know would rather feel they are getting paid for value. But can we make that value measurable and visible? Let’s try!

The notion that we’re getting paid for  time is far from satisfactory to most creative knowledge workers.

The first thing we need to do is give up the idea that we can measure value in euros or dollars.

Each of the events in London, Paris, and Lisbon were valuable to me. I met new people, expanded my network, promoted my business, discussed strategies, learned new things, and had a good time with my colleagues. For me, these activities were valuable. And I’m also confident that my participation added value for others. I cannot measure that value in euros or dollars but I can certainly indicate value on a range from “total waste of time” to “super-important I did this”.

Let’s use a scale of discreet numbers from -3 to +3, which means we have seven options to choose from. Seven numbers would be large enough to use as the basis for statistics and analysis. (We wouldn’t be able to calculate much if we only had two states: valuable and worthless.) Seven is also a small enough number to be useful to people. (It’s just three positive numbers and three negative numbers, plus a neutral one in the middle.)

So, we define the following range of values:

• +3 = super-important I did this
• +2 = quite good I did this
• +1 = somewhat valuable
• 0 = neither valuable nor worthless
• -1 = somewhat worthless
• -2 = not a good use of time
• -3 = total waste of time

We cannot discuss value without expressing value for whom. When I go for a 15K run in the forest, I see that as a valuable activity (+2) for me. When I spend an hour of my time reorganizing file folders, I consider that valuable (+1) for my team. And when I spend an hour writing a perfect newsletter that helps us to raise a lot of capital from the crowd, I see this as super-important (+3) for both myself and for the company. Not surprisingly, the time that I wasted while traveling this week was neither good for me (-2) nor for my team (-1). But the negative value of the travels was more than compensated by the positive value of the events.

We can represent the distinction of value for me versus value for others with a two-dimensional grid. I call it the value grid:

The value grid shows how valuable an activity was for me and how valuable it was for others. By using two dimensions of seven states, we end up with a “playing field” of 49 cells or boxes. For each activity that you consider valuable (or a waste of time), you pick one of the 49 boxes.

Note that it’s possible to pick cells that indicate conflicting interests. When I spend half an hour repairing a document that somebody on the team messed up by mistake, I can consider that a waste of my time (-1) but it will be valuable for the team (+2). And when I prioritize to go running over attending a team meeting, I consider that important for me (+2), and I accept that the team may be a bit sad that I’m not available for them (-1).

I have been experimenting with value tracking for three weeks, and I can report that I find it quite… valuable. The two-by-two grid is visually pleasing, and, when used on a software platform, it opens opportunities for gamification and social interaction.

Time tracking is a pain, but value tracking could be fun!

Value tracking will soon be a new component of our Mind Settlers app. Would you like to try it out? Sign up here.