Time management and time tracking: ideas to handle both
Written on March 24th, 2011 by Vincenzo Vecchio
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We often read about time management and tasks management. I have to say that GTD has really changed the way I work and the way I manage my time in general. David Allen has done a great job at putting into simple words a great process and approach to work/life management.
Following the GTD success, many software applications are now available that really help you in managing time and tasks with the GTD process in mind. I have previously posted a few articles about interesting apps that can make your GTD time management easier, such as To-Do Lists & Tasks Management.
Although these apps are all excellent for managing your tasks I have found that none of them put together time management and time tracking.
What about if you have the following requirements?
- track the amount of time you work on your projects
- track the time you work on each task or type of task
- bill your customers according to the time you spend on their project
Unfortunately none of the software I’ve tested really put together these two aspects. It would be great if you could write down each of your tasks, insert an estimated time-to-complete and then actually track how much time you have spent on that particular task.
I’ve found a few apps for time tracking that are very well thought:
All three offer a limited free subscription, which I would give it a try. The last two also offer a free iPhone app that lets you track your time on the go. But syncing your favorite GTD system with one of the above mentioned time tracking apps could be really time consuming. If you have very few tasks that are not updated very often, then you could also consider the possibility to manually update your time tracking application with the data in your task management software.
An interesting solution I’m (still) evaluating is to use Google Calendar.
What I’ve found viable is to create as many calendars as projects you have. A good idea could be to create calendars named “PROJECT XYZ – TASKS”. When you want to insert a task within that particular project you just add an event into the calendar. In case you have sub-projects you could name the tasks “@SUBTASK: task”. Quite trivial up to this point. But how do we track time?
Well, here is where Youcalc comes in. Youcalc is a very interesting software that can be hooked to you google calendar. After you have created your free account, you can start tracking:
- the amount of time you have spent on each calendar
- the number of events you have on each calendar
Although it seems like an interesting (and free) solution, it still has some bugs I’m trying to sort out:
1. you have to decide if you can manage to copy your tasks from your GTD app to your Google calendar
2. inserting your tasks only into Google calendar could be dangerous if you don’t complete those tasks, because they won’t show up anymore in the future
3. you have to decide if the tasks in your calendars are SCHEDULED or COMPLETED tasks
I would be tremendously happy to hear about your opinion or some alternative solution.
- Categories: Life
