A day-in-the-life review of one role

Key takeaways

A day in the life analysis walks through one role's typical working day, hour by hour, with the person who does it: what they open first, what interrupts them, what they finish and what they carry over. It takes about an hour and shows the rhythm of the role, including the fixed slots and the interruptions that make tasks easy or hard to move.

• Walk through a typical day hour by hour.
• Use yesterday's diary and sent email as prompts.
• Note fixed slots, interruptions and carry-overs.
• About 1 hour per role.

How is this different from shadowing?

Shadowing watches the work live; a day-in-the-life review reconstructs it afterwards from records and memory. It is quicker, less intrusive and covers the whole day, including early and late tasks, but it misses the small automatic steps shadowing would catch. Use the review for most roles and shadowing for the heaviest.

• How to identify tasks suitable for outsourcing
• Job shadowing: sit with someone to map their tasks

How do you run the review?

Sit with the person and their diary, inbox and task list from yesterday.

• 1. Start from first login: what did you open and why?
• 2. Walk hour by hour through what you did.
• 3. Note each interruption and what it was.
• 4. Note what was left unfinished and why.
• 5. List each task with its trigger and minutes.

• A calendar audit: find the tasks hiding in your diary
• The cost of context switching in a small team

What patterns should you look for?

Look for tasks that happen at the same time every day, such as morning order checks, which suit a provider working ahead of the UK. Look for interruptions that break deep work, such as phone queries. And look for tasks that always get carried over, which show where capacity runs out.

• Tasks that suit overnight work in another time zone
• Important but not urgent: the work that never gets done

What does this look like in practice?

A pattern we see: a project coordinator's day starts with checking overnight emails and updating trackers, is broken by a steady run of phone queries, and ends with timesheet chasing. The first and last parts of the day are both strong candidates.

• See client work
• BPO Solutions for UK businesses

Day-in-the-life checklist

• Use yesterday's records as prompts.
• Walk through the day hour by hour.
• Note fixed slots and interruptions.
• Note what was carried over.
• Add each task to the long list.

• Job shadowing: sit with someone to map their tasks
• A gemba walk for office work

Next step

Book an hour with one team member tomorrow and walk through today together, using their diary and inbox as prompts.