Keeping track of where my time goes has been so important as I’ve recently transitioned from “full time in the office” to “full time at home” to “freelance all over the place”.
These two tools have let me stay accountable to where my time really goes.
Tool 1: David Seah’s Printable CEO Series (old school)
I say “old school” only because it uses pencil and paper, but it is definitely modern and a gorgeous way to plan out your day. These printable CEO and day planners make it so easy to work on a project especially when you are jumping back and forth between tasks. They are a joy to work on cause they look so hot. David has definitely thought through usability and what it’s like to have ton of work to do and to focus on what’s important. You will need to have a colour printer to get the full effects these awesome planning sheets.
Tool 2: RescueTime (new school)
When perhaps I let my pen and paper tracking slide, RescueTime always has my back. It’s a neat little app that constantly runs and records which programs you have open. You can then review the time you spent in each and “tag” each application or URL. Tagging what you do is the real brains behind the operation, because you can also assign a tag a “level” of productivity from -2 to +2.
For example, when I see my own blog URL in the list, I tag it with “blogging” and I give blogging a productivity level of +1. Then, you can easily see how productive you are over time (for example, on my list, youtube.com gets a -2 on productivity).
I’ve been thoroughly impressed with the program’s intelligence and its ease of use. It’s saved my butt more than a few times, when I tried to remember what I was working on the day before.
Usability-wise, I feel the app could use a little more ajax in their app to aid with multi-tagging items, but overall the information it gives me is invaluable.
