Reading David Allan’s ‘Getting Things Done’ persueded me to follow a style of tracking items with OmniFocus but it doesn’t include any timetracking capabilities.

Searching around the web brought me to the website of David Seah and specificaly the Emergent Time Tracker.

‘Why’ you might think, ‘It’s the digital Age! Use an App!’. Nope, won’t do that because it becomes a hassle to startup the program/website, switching application, etc…

Just writing it down ‘analog style’ it’s quick and easy, minimal effort, no program crashes and also applicable with other tasks not computer related.

Every morning I start with a fresh sheet, fill in the date/start time and look on the previous sheet for things I didn’t finish. Then I look in OmniFocus to sync the various items done/to be done. If a phonecall call comes in or just got an idea I jot it down directly. If I’m distracted I fill the box with a dash.

On the end of the week I’m flipping through all sheets of that week to summarize the spend time so I can bill my customer. Didn’t find a program that suites me yet to do the billing, but for now it’s doable.

On my previous job it also helped me to tell the mangement that, even I was assigned several tasks with a deadline, I couldn’t finish them because I was interrupted constantly with ‘Fire Fighting’ tasks. Because I could now prove it, they realised it and altered procedures so I could Get Things Done™.

So it definitely helped me to focus on tasks, let me know what you think about it! ☯