Review of RescueTime

RescueTime is a cloud based tool for measuring time spent using your browser, and has an optional feature to measure documents and offline time.  I didn't try the offline time, but did use the document feature.  It categorizes your time spent on each site into various categories like social media, news, search and reference.  Just having this, done "automagically", as they call it, can be a huge help in boosting your productivity.  I found the categorization to be more accurate than I expected, and required only a little work to adjust it.  The software requires that you install an application that runs in the background, but you set it and done.

So what do I do with it?

You've installed the app and collected some data, and now you have some pretty charts on a website.  What now?  The thing that I didn't really play with too much, as I could take it or leave it, was assigning a point value to each of the categories.  The website will chart all of your activity, and then you can assign a value as to whether you think it it a productive task or not, on a sliding scale.  Then at the end of the day, you get an overall score.  To me that's OK, but I'd rather try to target the amount of time that I need to spend in each category, then manage those buckets as a percentage of total time spent.  So, if I think that I need to spend an hour a day doing email, then it doesn't matter if it's a 1 or 2 in terms of productivity since I have to do it.  So, instead of a sum of your -1's and 1's telling you if your productive, you should see if you're one hour of email is turning into two hours, or if you're improving and trending toward half an hour.

What do I do with these KPI's?

Once you start to develop a few KPI's the real questions start.  The urge will be to want to do something at every time the KPI is below the average.  It's estimated that 95% of variation in a system is caused by the system itself.  So, since the whole reason for having the KPI is to know when something is out of whack, you'll be doing nothing 95% of the time.  Want to know how to create a crisis?  Try to find out why your KPI is "below average" every single time is goes below the line.  The goal here is to know what is normal variation and what is out of whack variation.  You are the best one to know this, but try to know it before you react.  There are many statistical methods for coming up with the limits to normal variation, but for a quick a dirty start to managing your first KPI try to eyeball the line chart and estimate the usual high and low points for your system.  Now, every period that you look at your KPI, you have to ask is this inside the normal system?  If the answer is yes, then your response should be, ok, everything is normal and I should not do anything.  So many times, managers want an answer to the reason the KPI is above or below the average every week when their team reviews their performance, when the real answer is everything is normal and that is why the number is what it is.  It's up because its up and not because you are a star, or its down because its down and not because someone screwed up.

Stop multitasking!!!

For years now, the idea of multitasking has been seen as a productivity enhancing activity.  But, anyone who has tried to talk to someone on the phone who is also doing their email knows that they are not either productive or effective at either task.  We should think of multitasking as doing multiple tasks badly.  You don't save any time usually, and most often it will add time to your overall day.  AND, you'll have to redo many of the tasks because there will be so many errors, because your attention cannot be on two tasks at once.  I have been in call centers before when people were trying to answer technical support calls and read a book at the same time.  How well do you think that support rep understood the customer that was on the phone?

We should be clear that there are delays in some processes, and during those delays filling that time with something productive is a good thing.  THIS IS NOT MULTITASKING.  This is time management, which is good and will enhance productivity.  Start enhancing your effectiveness today, by not jumping to a new task anytime that your computer system has a 10 second delay (10 seconds isn't enough time to switch to a new task!), making to-do lists and staying on each single task until it is complete and please, for the sake of all of us, don't talk on the phone and do email at the same time.

This idea also transfers to talking on the phone and driving at the same time!!!!

What is a KPI?

The real question is, why are they important?  A KPI (Key Performance Indicator), is really anything that you use in your company to tell you how you are doing.  Large companies can have as many as 50 in one department, and many of which can be an average of other metrics.  Many of the small companies that I have worked with only have two, revenue and profit.  Both ends of this spectrum are dangerous.  The first scenario can easily result in "death by numbers", and the second leaves you with no where to go when the main KPI's need further investigation.  I've been in both of these situations and you only end up feeling left in the dark.  The idea here is to find something that can help to be a guiding light for you to keep an eye on the direction that your business is heading.  Obviously, for the small business owner, revenue and profit are VERY important, but what we really want to do is to find some key benchmarks that are the drivers of these two metrics.  I can't tell you what your KPI's should be, but I can give you some direction about where to look.

The first place to start looking is the profit and loss statement.  If there is one category that's making a big dent on either side of the P&L, then that's where to start.  If you are in a business where salary is a large part of your expense budget, then productivity has to be one of your main KPI's.  How to measure productivity can take a library to discuss, so I won't discuss that here, but see my post earlier this week for a quick start.  One quick note; It's easy to get focused on one thing that is really important and not notice other things that start to affect the bottom line, so don't go overboard on any one KPI, or any one group that might only affect one side of the P&L.  On the revenue side, you could have an infinite number of KPI's depending on the type of business that our are in, but one that is likely to affect many companies would be related to leads and lead conversion.  Again, the idea here is to find what drives your business, then measure it and investigate ways to improve it.

If you've already identified the top KPI's in your business, then please share.