Find Out How Much Time You Spend Editing Documents

Editing documents consumes time. Business coaches and trainers, attorneys and realtors have many templates and documents that need just a few edits each time they present them to a new client.

While those “few small changes” may not appear to swallow hours out of the day, for many business owners, time is money. Many administrative tasks grab a few minutes here, a few minutes there. Have you ever stopped and examined your day to add up all those “real quick tasks”?

One task you can easily calculate: document editing and writing. Microsoft Word keeps track of how much time you spent on that document. The timer is ticking while the document window is open and in front of other windows, even if you’re just thinking and not actively typing. Once you save changes, the program calculates the total editing time in whole minutes. The timer also adds minutes spent by others who might edit and then return the document. Google documents also tracks time, along with revisions and at what time each revision was made.

Organizing professionals ask their clients to add up the amount of time spent on a task because the answer is often surprising. A task that one might estimate to be “about 10 minutes” might have gobbled up 30 precious minutes of the day.

Editing documents is certainly one task that may take longer than estimated. Business owners busy with other things may suddenly realize it’s time for that meeting but the documents aren’t ready. Batches of templates that all need just a few “quick” changes may be costing time.

Business owners ready to spend more time working with clients and less time preparing documents can turn to Argosy Business Solutions for:

● Editing documents ● Document preparation ● Writing ● Transcription ● Proofreading ● Typing ● Emails ● Blog posts ● Newsletters

How to Calculate Editing Time ● In Google Docs, click on the “all changes saved in drive” to see a full revision history with times. ● In newer versions of MS Word, click the office button (yellow/orange logo), then hover over “prepare.” A new menu appears. Click properties > document properties > advanced properties > statistics and look for “total editing time.” Need more help? Find instructions with photos.