This article could have also been titled "How Bryan Bailey—Minister of Media at First Baptist Dallas—Challenged Me to Use an App to Look at My Data Which Forever Changed the Way I Work," but that's pretty long and Church Production Magazine has journalistic standards.
The e-mail conversation with Bryan Bailey started out talking about efficiency.
Specifically, how DO you get things done at a really large church with a mostly volunteer staff?
(It's a topic with which Bryan has some experience.)
Bryan wrote: “One of the most important issues to tackle before you complain to leadership about being overburdened or asking for more staff is to ensure that you and your team are working at the highest possible efficiency. Many times, we consider ourselves to be ‘red-lined', but if we really dig into our workload, we might just find that we need to be organizing our work lives in a better way. One tool I use to help with this is Toggl. ”
Toggl is a time tracking tool designed for freelancers to keep track of billing, but it also works great for tracking how much time you spend each day on different projects you work on.
In a web browser, you simply answer the question: “What are you working on?” and press play on the timer. When you change tasks, you tell the timer what you are working on next. Because it keeps a list, you can toggle between tasks making it easy to use even for chronic multitaskers.
Bryan went on to share that, “Data is important. I would find myself collapsing into my seat on the train ride home thinking, ‘What did I even do today?' With a time tracking app, you can easily see how you're spending your time, and then you can start to make decisions on how to better organize your work. It also provides real data for the number of hours you work. You might think you worked an 80-hour week, but in reality, when you take out that 2-hour lunch break, the 4 coffee runs per day, and the water cooler conversations, it's really closer to 50. In addition, you may find that you are spending an inordinate amount of time on one or two projects like meetings or maintenance of gear. If so, you can use this to show leadership that you need some help in these areas. Because Toggl (and other apps I'm sure) allows for shared workspaces, this is also great for you to help your staff recognize how they are utilizing their work day and provide some transparency for everyone on the team. Rather than micro-managing, you can simply take a look at weekly reports and then guide your folks to more efficient or higher priority uses of their time. “
It occurred to me that Bryan was strategic to take a look at the data. It also seemed especially courageous to share it with his team.
I was encouraged and challenged at the same time. (After all, what would my data say?)
I couldn't help but be curious so I started using the Toggl app.
And I was shocked at what I learned.
For one thing, I discovered that a simple task that I was sure only took me fifteen minutes, takes a full hour to complete because there are so many steps. Toggl also revealed that I am neglecting a really key area in my marketing plan. Because Toggl has the ability to assign tasks to projects and use tags, you can categorize your tasks into different areas (which in my case, revealed a deficiency).
After tracking for just a few days, you can begin to see patterns, such as how many hours you are actually productive in a day, where you allocate your time, which priorities are being favored and which are neglected. And—if you are using it as a team—it can also show you where you are understaffed.
Which is what happened for Bryan.
“Data is my friend when going to leadership or other team members to explain the need for changes,” writes Bryan. “After I'm sure my paid staff team is operating on all cylinders, I can then determine where our deficiencies are and how to best make up for them. For example, if everyone is functioning at near 100%, yet we still can't get all of the video projects produced as desired, we need to ask questions like, ‘Do we need to hire another full time editor, or can we supplement with contract labor?' Or, we may need to look at the process and policies for creating videos for ministries and possibly tighten the approval process so that we're not generating so much content.”
The digital world offers a tremendous amount of power when it comes to giving us data about our own behaviors.
But it takes courage to look.
After all, we might have to acknowledge that 2pm latte.
