Planning and tracking productive time
with no technology

Planning and tracking productive time
with no technology

IT IS A

Time management hypothesis

PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION

Analogical wooden board

MATERIALS

Wood, wire
and glass

WHY I DID IT

Because I’m
a nerd

This is an analogical time tracker that allows to manage activities that require the same type of effort

The Challenge

Create a physical board that allows to organize activities in order to be more productive.

My Role

Creating a theory by studying time and productiveness, and finding a visual, interactive and material way to bring it to life.

First, the concept.

The first stage of the project was all about learning. Analyzing how I spent my time, I realized that I was much more productive if I changed my focus into something else every few hours instead of doing the same thing for long hours

So I came to an hypothesis:

We are more productive when we interleave activities that require a similar effort

Then, creating a system

Thinking of a logical structure for organizing time with this pattern

Design a touchable experience

Thinking of a structure, of shapes, materials and movements.

The board allows to

Plan

Adapt

Learn

A tool for planning

Plan ahead by setting the activities to do and general time availabily on the spiral

Each bead colour represents an activity.

Assign a color for each activity.
Each bead represents an amount of time dedicated, for example 1 hour.

Bridges and tags mark the limits of working sprints.

We might have more availability one day than other. These tools allow to mark the end of a working sprint and beginning of the following.

Plan ahead on the spiral!

It’s time to place everything. Mark available hours each day and what activities will be done. But remember: the key is to interleave colors!

Adapt

Time to follow the schedule!
But what if things don’t go as we plan?

Glass beads represent unexpected events.

Estimate the amount of time the unexpected event took and place glass beads in the spiral on that date. 

Slide, move and replace as you live the moment

Unexpected events, over- or under productivity can happen! Decide what will happen with the activites than were ran over by this.

Track the time you lost or won 

Move the time tracker every time you lose time by unexpected events or win time by solving things faster.

Learn

Track successfull and unsuccessful activity sequences on your booklet to learn what works well for you.

Track your experience and learn!

Register what sequence of activities works for you and what doesn’t and learn from it.

And be the most productive version of yourself. Cheers to self study!