Where does the time go? A journey from Viva to Ora
Where does time go - a simple question I asked myself again, a week into my journey as a full-time parent and self-employed at a startup.
Luckily the startup I happened to be part of had the build-in functionality I was looking for and I thought it might be an interesting way to showcase this recent update and catalogue my first month with the team.
When I asked our Product Leader last week about how I was using Time Tracking, he told me it wasn't the intended purpose.
Yet, here I am four weeks later with the summary and a better understanding of what stay-at-home moms and dads(not very commonplace in Bulgaria) go through in the formative years of newborns.
I also have honest insights for my team about where the work time went that are easily accessible and reportable.
MICROSOFT VIVA SPARKED THIS INTEREST
I first started exploring this topic, mid-year. Four weeks after I returned to work from month-long paternity leave - my first Microsoft Viva report was in my inbox.
I was working from home but I wasn't much help to my family - as work consumed much of my time.
Viva enlightened me that within Microsoft's Systems, I spent 106 hours collaborating and onboarding new team members in the past four weeks. With 33 hours being outside of the normal working hours.
This is fairly normal as I covered multiple time zones and had around ten direct reports, with two new members joining the team in my absence whom I needed to get to know.
Beyond Microsoft, we also use a platform to contact industry leaders. In most cases, these people have no familiarity with my company, as our team was usually one of the first to reach out to new markets and accounts. I have also always been active on LinkedIn as I believe it's critical for my role.
I spent the next few months trying to be of as much help to the new team members and my team leaders, as I prepared myself for a new frontier which I've been mulling for some time.
In the end, to not take a risk with this new endeavor I wanted to hit our targets for the year and save up for the lean months ahead.
NEW FRONTIERS - TIME TRACKING WITH ORA
When the opportunity arose to join Ora.pm and support them in this critical time, one of the key reasons I joined was my belief in the product. Although I was familiar with Ora - I was not an expert by any means(still learning).
I used boards for recruiting processes, and goal setting, and did have an ongoing collaboration with the founders within their boards and channels as an advisor.
Time Tracking wasn't on my radar as a feature until this new update in October. When I read about it - I immediately identified it as a solution to ensure my family was the main priority and strike the right work-parenting balance. Parents need to stay focused and attentive when playing with their small kids, so one of the actions I've followed is Mobile/TV/PC during Family time - I turn myself offline entirely.
Each person has an effective time where they are attentive, productive, and focused. For me usually, productive time is about six to ten hours per day and it differs every day depending on many internal and external factors. When taking up this new role I wanted to ensure that over 50% of my time was dedicated to providing care and attention to my loved ones.
SIMPLE ACTIVITY BOARD
Through the creation of a simple board, I made entries for every single action that was taking place more than once. And this is how I started to track where the time went. We offer users the ability to toggle between a board, list, table, or even calendar/timeline.
Once you have a task created you can either start a timer on any task you are working on or (like me) manually enter the amount of time when you have finished doing it.
This was not the intended use of Ora Time Tracking but it helped me further understand it and demonstrate Ora to the many people in my network. Some of you might be as insane as me to even consider spending four hours manually reporting your day-to-day activities for all I know. While others might want to peak into the mind of a Mad Men.
MULTIPLE CUSTOMIZABLE REPORTS
Now that I had a simple board it was time to add custom labels and task types. This allowed me to generate separate reports depending on what I wanted to focus on.
I also added Actions to each list so that automatically any new thing I put into the board would be assigned to me and would receive the appropriate label based on the list it was in.
领英推荐
As I built this reporting it became clear to me how powerful it could be when fully leveraged by teams or business owners who had Ora.
There are additional reports I don't use in my specific case like no filter, member, milestone, billable, and completed.
The reports could be coming from data across a variety of different boards a team is working on unlike mine which is purely to track time.
You can invite observers such as partners, clients, and contributors. Share with them high-level insights on anything that's part of your reporting - while every individual card can be opened and the full information displayed with any images, videos, comments, or actions undertaken within it.
For my usage, it gave me the ability to go down the rabbit hole of each action I was repeating throughout the last 27 days.
FAMILY TIME
In the 27 days I tracked as of writing this article, I've spent on average four hours a day in family time or 110 hours total.
As a father, the main thing I've taken on is trying to go out in the park daily for fresh air and nap time. Playing and spending as much time as possible one-on-one with Dafi so her mom could rest. Taking care of all the heavy diapers, washing, and clothing. Cooking healthy meals as much as possible.
There are a few occasions when Granny is over and helps and that's where you generally see me spending the least amount of time on the family.
FIRST MONTH AT ORA
Top Five Work & Upskilling Activities
Early on I had identified the type of content I wanted to make and wanted to make use of the LinkedIn community to validate it. As a first step, we added a skilled graphic designer to the team that would help as we started to learn to create our videos.
Was very happy to get the whole team involved in the process. From feedback on the short things, we started to make, to taking part in a video interview about the future update, podcast with #dgtek, and giving suggestions for future content. Everything so far has helped me identify our next steps
The whole team is busy working on our next update, so I understand that it's key we can generate insights on Ora without their help.
I made Ora central to any activity during this time - creating new boards in addition to the ones we had for Video Content, Affiliates, Account Plans, Individual To-Do's, and special boards for video recording.
The next step is to make everything a repeatable process that we can add to but first I wanted to understand how much actual time I have. So this period provided a benchmark for the upcoming weeks and months.
CAN THIS HELP YOU MASTER YOUR OR YOUR TEAMS TIME?
Time is always there, unfolding every second before?you, whether you manually track it or not. We are the ones choosing how to use it. Perhaps by understanding how you and your teams are spending time, you can master it and help you achieve your goals.
As a first step, you have to be transparent to yourself and your team.
Have trust that if you are honest with yourself and others - they will better understand your processes and priorities, making collaboration easier.
For some an individual action can take a second while for others it could take days, realizing each other's gaps, strengths, and weaknesses can help any team but it starts with honesty and transparency.