Track Results; Not Time

Many clients and companies rely on time tracking either for billing or to measure and improve productivity. What they don't realize is they may be hurting themselves in the process.

Billing for time spent is focusing on the wrong metric. Focus on results and value delivered instead.

While time tracking can be used with other things to improve productivity, it can also backfire on improving more than it can help.

It doesn't matter if time tracking benefits people more for being quicker or slower. Either way, they will be motivated to work in a way that negates any benefits of time tracking.

If someone is rewarded for working quicker, they will inadvertently rush and sacrifice quality. They won't spend time experimenting to find the best results.

If someone is rewarded for working slower, such as being paid hourly, people will tend to work slower. They won't go out of their way to find ways to automate or optimize parts of their workflow. They may spend too much time experimenting to find the best results.

Once time tracking is removed from the picture, people will no longer be motivated to work in opposition to the goals time tracking and the company were trying to achieve.