Who Keeps Stealing the Time from my Work Day?
Every morning you walk into your office and immediately begin cranking out emails, checking your to-do list for the day and making things happen. You look up ten minutes after you arrived at your desk and it’s somehow already noon. NOON?! Where did the entire morning go?
If this situation sounds familiar, you’re not alone. One of the biggest complaints of business owners - particularly new business owners - is that they don’t have enough time in their day to get everything done. However, we have a theory. Although it may be possible there is a time-eating monster lurking in your office, the alternative notion is that you aren’t sure exactly where your time is being spent and therefore aren’t using your day effectively.This is especially important for companies who charge their clients by the hour; by simply guess-timating how long it takes you to complete a project, it’s completely possible you are giving away a chunk of time- and therefore labor- for free.
Tracking Down Time – for Good.
The good news? We have a few solutions for you! There are numerous time trackers out there, but often times they’re clunky to use and simply not user friendly. You want to be sure you don’t spend too much time on tracking your time…I’m pretty sure that would be the definition of insanity. Here’s a look at our top 5 favorite time trackers:
- Toggl. This system is super intuitive. The color coding, client and project features make it super simple to use. You’ll be up and running before you know it. The best part? It’s free for up to 5 users. Track away!
- My Hours. My Hours allows multiple people to work on projects at once, delivers detailed reports of time spent and is free for individual use. For each additional user, the cost is $2 per person, per month.
- RescueTime. Through this site or mobile app, you can set daily goals, block distracting websites (Facebook, anyone?) and even set an alarm to alert you when you’ve spent a certain amount of time on an email or project. The Lite version is free, and the Premium version is $9 per month ($72 annually).
- My Minutes. You can download this app via iTunes and begin setting Daily Starters to alert you of what you need to accomplish that day, apply time budgeting to specific tasks and create tasks that should be repeated at various times or days. The app costs $2.00.
- Everhour. Everhour was built with teams in mind. This system incorporates tagging with the @ (to indicate a specific project) or # (to designate a specific type of task) symbols. Reporting is super detailed with this system.
Are you using your time effectively but you simply don’t have time to execute the inbound marketing, advertising, or creative services your business deserves? Call us at (207) 622-0111 and we’ll come up with a game plan that works for you.
