According to an official government website, the average life expectancy for women in Australia is 84 years. I guess that makes me officially middle-aged since I celebrated my 44th birthday yesterday. In any event, I have much I want to fit into the life that I’ve been given and I have a particularly busy program at present.
Last week I decided to go back to keeping timesheets to monitor how much time that I devote to various activities including blog writing, blog surfing/FB/e-mail, teaching, designing, creating, Guild volunteer work, promotional stuff, Twelve by Twelve exhibitions and so on. I am using Harvest Time Tracking – a web-based timesheet software application. Harvest Time Tracking offers a free plan for one user (that would be me) and two “clients” (I distinguish between my personal work and my volunteer work). You can add as many sub-activities for each client as you like and generate various reports that give a breakdown of the time spent on each activity in the relevant period. Because it is a web-based application, you can use this program anywhere so as long as you have an Internet connection and a modern web browser. In addition, I have loaded a special widget on my main PC so that I can simply click on the timer on my desk-top when I stop and start activities.
Other web-based time keeping and project management applications that may be useful include:
- 14 Dayz – online time tracking for teams;
- Base Camp – online project management tool including managing files, to-do lists, milestones and messages; and
- Shotgun – tracking and scheduling
Let me know if you have experience with any similar programs that you have found effective.
Incidentally, this short blog post has taken over 30 minutes to write so that gives you an idea of how even an easy task can eat into a day.
Helen Conway says
I have to say that my initial recation to this post was to roll my eyes and think, once a lawyer always a lawyer’ recalling my time recording days back as a solicitor. Then I glanced at the clock and reaslied how long I had been messing about over breakfast playing on the net with nothing to show for it… except this little gem of course. I shall have to check it out and see if it gets me into better habits.
Diane says
Happy belated birthday, Brenda! I hope you and the LK celebrated well! As for time-keeping — one of the great things about part-time lawyering, as far as I’m concerned, is that I *don’t* have to keep time of the non-work stuff! But it’s nice to know there are all of those programs out there for those who want to track their time. I work on a PC with Windows Vista, and I have a windows “widget” for the desktop that is a stopwatch. So when I”m working, I just start it, pause if my work is interrupted, etc. It does help me measure my work time and it’s really simple. I do the time-sheet part myself, then.
Brenda says
I don’t plan on keep timesheets on an ongoing basis but it is really instructive to see how much time goes into the myriad of “little” things that fill our days. The timesheets have confirmed that I am effectively working almost two full time jobs. I now know where to prioritise my time and where to be more ruthless!