Workflows: Analyzing Your Time - Navigating Status Tracker Reporting Features

Welcome back! When it comes to tracking performance, everyone has their own approach. Some focus solely on the number of completed tasks, while others prioritize meeting due dates. But at SkedPal, we believe true productivity lies in something deeper: are you spending your time on the right things? The things that truly move the needle for you? That's what we're here to help you optimize. In this video, we'll explore how SkedPal reports and metrics provide valuable insights into your time management, focus, and productivity zones, all centered around helping you spend more time on what matters most. By analyzing this data, you can identify areas for improvement and make informed decisions to enhance your workflow. Let's dive into how you can leverage SkedPal reporting features to measure and improve your productivity, focusing on the impact of your time, not just the quantity of tasks.

To truly understand your productivity, SkedPal provides reporting dimensions, which are essentially the 'lenses' through which you view your activity data. Think of them as categories that allow you to analyze your time from different perspectives. Let's explore these dimensions:

First: Activity Type: This dimension categorizes your time into 'Focus', 'Ad-Hoc', and 'Away'. It reveals the balance between planned work and reactive tasks. Ideally, you want to maximize 'Focus' time, reflecting your dedication to planned, goal-oriented activities.

Second: Parent Dimension (Outline Hierarchy): This dimension allows you to track time spent within your Outline's hierarchical structure. For example, you can see the total time spent on a specific project or within a broader category like 'Client Projects.' This provides granular insights into time allocation across your organizational structure.

Third: Zone: This is a core dimension in SkedPal. Zones represent your key areas of focus and importance. By tracking time spent within these zones, you can ensure you're prioritizing activities that align with your values and goals.

Fourth: Meeting (Fixed or External Events): This dimension tracks time spent in meetings, helping you assess the efficiency of your meeting schedule. It allows you to see both individual meeting durations and aggregated meeting time over specific periods.

Fifth: Tag: If you utilize tags to categorize your activities, this dimension allows you to analyze time spent on tasks associated with specific tags, such as 'Design' or 'Marketing.'

Now, let's look at the metrics that are used to measure your activities within these dimensions:

First: Time Spent: This metric represents the duration of your activities, calculated from their start and end times. It provides the raw data for analyzing time allocation across different dimensions.

Second: Star Rating: If you use the star rating feature to evaluate your focus or flow during tasks, this metric provides a summary of your ratings. It allows you to track your focus levels and identify patterns in your productivity.

Alright, now that we have a good grasp of the metrics and the different dimensions we can analyze, let's get practical and see exactly where you can find these insightful reports within SkedPal. The first and easiest way to take a look is right here in the desktop app. Head over to the Status Tracker, and then click on the 'Activity' tab.

Once you're there, you'll see a button labeled 'Charts'. Go ahead and click on that.

The first thing you'll want to do here is select the date range you're interested in analyzing. Once you've selected your date range, you'll see a chart appear below. If you hover the mouse over the colored sections, you'll see the dimension and metrics details of each section. Notice the tabs right here at the top of the chart. The default view is 'Activity Type'. This means the chart you're currently looking at is breaking down your time spent across those different activity types we discussed – Focus, and Ad-Hoc. If you click on these other tabs, you'll see charts specifically showing the breakdown of your time spent within your different Zones, and also a breakdown by your Favorites.

Now, if you're looking for even more detailed and granular control over your reports – perhaps you're comfortable working with spreadsheets like Excel or Google Sheets, or you need this data for client billable hours – then this next option is perfect for you. Right here on the main Status Tracker screen, you'll see a 'Download' button. Click on that.

Just like with the charts, the first step here is to specify the date range you want to export. Now, you'll notice a new and very important option: 'Line Item' versus 'Summary'.

The 'Line Item' report gives you a highly detailed record of every single time you changed your status within the tracker. This provides a very granular view of your day. If you're not interested in including your 'Away' time in this detailed report, you can simply check the box to exclude 'Away' status. And here's another really powerful way to filter this line item report: if you're only interested in your 'Focused' activities that had a specific tag attached to the task, you can specify that tag right here.

On the other hand, the 'Summary' report provides an aggregated view of your time. It groups your activities by the Parent Task – think of this as the project level, area level, or any other main heading in your SkedPal Outline – as well as by Zone and Activity Type. Let me clarify the parent aggregation a little further. If you've worked on multiple individual tasks that all fall under the same parent task in your Outline, the time spent on all those individual tasks will be totaled and appear under that single parent task name in this report. However, if your tasks come from different parent tasks in your Outline, they will each be listed separately under their own unique parent task title.

And that brings us to the end of this video on SkedPal's reporting features. Remember that the real power of these reports lies in how you apply them to your own unique circumstances and goals. Take some time to explore the charts and the downloadable data, and really focus on understanding where your time is being spent – are you dedicating enough time to those high-value areas and zones that truly matter to you? Then, use that insight to proactively plan and prioritize more of those impactful activities in your schedule. Remember, as the saying goes, the first crucial step in improving anything is to measure it and understand it. We truly hope this series of videos has given you a solid foundation for leveraging SkedPal Status Tracker to gain deeper insights into your productivity and ultimately achieve more of what's important to you.