Time tracking blog

Michael Hunger was searching for a way to track his day.  He finds that task tedious and inconvenient.  Some of his suggested time tracking methods came in the form of software:

• Spreadsheets
• Plain text files
• Browser based time tracking
• Outlook/iCal
• Popup applications/widgets asking for the current task (hmmm…has he not yet found TSheets?)

And others in the form of the physical:

• Sticky Notes
• Paper
• Tally sheets
• Notebook
• Diary/filofax

All are ok solutions.  Naturally, we’re a bit preferential to the application/widget genre, but let’s hear the man out.

What Michael stumbled upon in his daily ‘blue hour’ (time he spends reading in a café before work) is a childhood toy that we all know: Lego.  He quickly realized that events in iCal look remarkably like building blocks of time.  The transition from playing with his daughters legos to iCal’s block of time to Lego as time tracker is simply genius.

With a box of 600 legos purchased from Amazon, Michael set out to track his day in a colorful desktop form.  What he found was that there was a wide variety in color, length, and width of the 600 pieces.  By using the ‘one row’ blocks, Michael builds he day (literally) by segmenting 1, 2, 3, and 4 studded pieces to represent 15 minute blocks of time, 15, 30, 45, and 60 minutes.  By stacking these individual blocks of time on top of each other, he builds a project (color) coded map of his time throughout the day.

Using a ‘one row’ piece to represent the day, Michael lays bricks on top of this ‘day ruler’ so that he can see what he did, and where in his day he did it.  Each day of the week is then coded by a rainbow color scheme.  Red, orange, yellow, green, and blue represent Monday – Friday.  At weeks end, he then uses his lego blocks to enter the data in a timesheet software package.

Michael has found that by using the Lego time tracking system, he can even pre-plan days by using temporary bases and allotting time via the same color coded method.  Benefits include (in Michael’s own words):

• it works (for about 4 months now)
• I have something to play with while pondering stuff
• it looks great
• it’s incredibly fast with no overhead
• planning is possible

He is however quick to point on the one disadvantage:

coworkers coming to your place and disassembling your time tracks

He’s recently updated the original post with an announcement of a small java application that will work in conjunction with a webcam or phone so that the time block is automatically entered in the week’s end timesheet.

This is a fine example of independent ingenuity when it comes to personal time tracking.  Certainly this will work while sitting in a closed environment (read…office), but has little practical application in the mobile work.  You might be hard pressed to pull out your Lego block set while sitting in economy on the next flight to Atlanta.  The Lego system can and will only work for personal time tracking, as just with the time clock or paper and pencil sheets, there are almost certainly time fudgers that would take advantage of the system.

As always, TSheets remains your one stop, easy to use, corporate wide time tracking solution. With widgets, gadgets, and iPhone apps, we’ve got more ways to track time than hours in the day!

Now….off to the TLabs to talk to the Time Scientists about the Lego app integration….

Oooooo baby!  Can you feel that?  Do you smell that?  Do you FEEL that?  It’s football time baby!  Whether you’re a fully-fledged Monday morning quarterback, or just the casual observer, there’s no doubt about it, Football season is well underway, and a hallmark of Americana.

While there’s a vast majority of folks who are perfectly content watching a game or two on Sunday with the occasional Monday night game, there’s also another breed that get up early on Saturday morning to do all the weekend chores (maybe this might be your ‘get up early’ motivation that Jared was talking about), and line up Saturday afternoon to scout potential NFL great via the college ball lineup, spend most of Sunday analyzing quarterback pass and rushing percentages, and start watching the clock around 4pm on Mondays in anticipation for the last juice of football for the week via Monday Night Football.  And then there are the fantasy football players.

While I personally am not an active participant in fantasy football, I do assist a few of my buddies in stat collection, player ranking, overall performance statistics, etc.  99.44% of this is on my own time, but I have been known to head on over to ESPN around midmorning on Thursdays to double check the lineup for the coming weekend.  And there you have it.  I said it.  I spent company time, looking into football.

If you consider the $9.2 billion loss that Challenger, Gray and Christmas are predicting, Fantasy Football seems to be a downright crime.  It’s all too easy to find similar reports around the net that fantasy football costs employers lost productivity and un-focused workers that spend hours each week either physically doing, or at least thinking about their fantasy football teams over the 17 week period.

Now where did I put that Red flag – I want a Coach’s Challenge and review on this one.

Luckily armchair warriors, I’m here today to provide you with a bit of armor against such BS.  CC Holland of bnet.com thinks the same way I do, and ran a nice article about fantasy football NOT contributing to lost productivity.  CC Holland is a personal favorite of mine, and she’s written for the LA Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Law.com, ZDNet, Cnet, and the list goes on.  In other words, this is a voice of authority.

We both agree that Fantasy Football not only does NOT contribute to lost productivity, but rather contributes to overall office comradery, AND includes the positive benefit of “Take a short break, do something else, and then come back and tackle this task with a fresh set of eyes and mind”.

Tom Van Riper at Forbes puts it in a slightly different light:

Clearly no employees ever engaged in any downtime on the job prior to the days of the Internet and fantasy sports. How managers must long for the days when no workers ate lunch, used the restroom, chatted around the water cooler or ran an errand during a typical eight-hour day.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, and probably the one most of us can relate to, a guy named Bentley posts to the Football Guys Forums:

The problem with a study like this is that they assume that people would spend their time doing something productive if there wasn’t fantasy football. It’s been my experience that people inclined to #&$* off are going to #&$* off.

So in summation dear fans of the gridiron, I’m not going to encourage you to spend hours and hours of company time pouring over QB stats and figuring out your starting lineup (that’s what commute times are for), but also, don’t feel guilty for the occasional “Man, we’re getting nowhere with this.  Let’s take 5,” and go give your fantasy team(s) a check.  Who knows, perhaps Bill from accounting just got a whole new take on the budget projections given that Brady is out for the season, and Green Bay sans Favre is still leading the charge in the NFC North.

I wasn’t always an early riser.  Many a morning has come and gone in my life where the sound of the alarm has either been turned off without a second’s thought, or has repeated itself, seemingly forever, with a push of that magical little button labelled ‘SNOOZE’.  Now, however, I regularly rise in the early hours.  Only recently since coming to work for TSheets, have I really stopped to analyze what it was that helped me make the transition from a slothful servant of sleep to an early morning evangelist.  Working at a company that eats, sleeps, and breathes time tracking and timesheets tends to make you a little more aware of how your time is spent throughout the day.  So, for your benefit, I’ve compiled a list of things I believe will help you establish the habit of waking up early [1].

Commit to a trial period for waking up early

It is daunting to make a permanent change in your behavior and most people give up before they ever begin.  They don’t believe they can sustain the change.  According to the ‘21 day habit theory‘, it takes at least that long to form a new habit and have a good chance of it becoming permanent.  Most people give up on a new resolution simply because they feel that they won’t have the wherewithal to stick to their new behavior for the long haul.  But if you know from the beginning that this is just going to be a “try it and see” type of exercise, then it makes it much easier to stick to your guns.  That way there’s an end point, a summit, where you’ll be able to stop, take a breath, and reevaluate how it’s gone so far and whether you want to continue.  I recommend at least 21 days, that’s only 3 weeks that you have to do it; then you get a chance to decide how to proceed after that.

Establish a morning routine

This is important.  If you wake up early and don’t have anything in particular to do, you might make it downstairs to your couch and promptly fall back asleep there.  You need a repeatable routine that will get you through the first 10 or 15 minutes of the morning, long enough to get past the grogginess that comes after getting up, so that you start thinking a little more clearly and begin feeling like it wasn’t so bad waking up early after all.  I generally come downstairs and eat a bowl of cereal while reading through the latest stories on Slashdot.

Wake up at the same time every day, no matter what

During your trial period, you need to wake up at a consistent time, regardless of what time you finally fall asleep the night before.  This may be painful at times, but it is important for two reasons. (1) You will be training your body to wake up at a particular time, and (2) you will learn how much sleep your body needs each night.  If you get too little sleep one night, you’ll naturally be sleepy earlier the next night.  Over time you’ll get a feel for how much sleep you need in order to wake at your target time.  The amount of sleep you need each night may fluctuate slightly depending on your activities that day.  I’ve found that I do well on between 6 to 7 hours of sleep at night – and I’ll go to bed earlier or later depending on whether I’ve played hard that day or not done much.

Get out of bed immediately

When your alarm goes off in the morning, how many times have you said to yourself, ‘Just five more minutes..’ ?  If you turn off the alarm or hit snooze and start to indulge yourself in self-talk, the minutes will quickly slip by and before you know it you’ll open your eyes and 15, 20, or 45 minutes will be gone.  Not to mention the strange dreams involving fried chicken and Ed McMahon that you’ll most likely encounter (or is that just me?).  Wake up and get out of bed and start your morning routine immediately (see #2).  Your mind will eventually catch up to your body and you’ll be grateful for all that you’ll be able to accomplish in the wee hours of the morning.

Start your day with an enjoyable activity

Make sure that you’re looking forward to whatever you do early in the morning.  If you’re dreading it, it will be too easy to talk yourself out of getting up.  However, if you can’t wait to do it, getting up isn’t a chore, it’s the gateway to an enjoyable day.  Think about all of the hunters, golfers, fishermen, runners, etc. you know that practice their craft before the sun comes up.  You don’t have to make it a party, just put something you’ll enjoy as the first thing on your list, then once that’s finished, you can move on to whatever else needs to be done.

A while ago I decided to track my own sleep habits for a couple of weeks using the Freelancer version of TSheets.  During this period I was setting my alarm for 6:30am, but getting out of bed if I woke up earlier.  Here’s a screenshot of my efforts.

Good luck becoming an early morning evangelist – share any other tips you have in the comments below!

[1] Sometime in 2006 I was trying to change my ways and make waking up early more of a habit in my own life.  I Google’d “how to wake up early” and found this post by Steve Pavlina on becoming an early riser.  I wanted to mention it here because it influenced me greatly and thus influenced the content of this post as well.  I recommend giving it a read.

Technological advances have a way of creeping up on you. It’s not until you begin reminiscing about “Ya know…when I was your age,” that you begin to realize how old you sound to people just 10 years younger than you are. I can only imagine how I’m going to sound to my grandchildren when telling them about the days of yore, and how things used to be:

• “Our computers were so big that we had to carry them around in special bags that nothing else would fit in, and we were lucky if the batteries would last 3 hours without having to recharge. They were called ‘Laptops’”

• “Before you could travel into space you had to be accepted and train at N.A.S.A. They would spin you around on some machine at a bazillion mph so they could check whether you’d pass out or blow chunks during the actual flight.”

• “We would rent videos to watch and then we’d have to return them the next day or pay late fees.” “…videos are what we had before there were DVDs.  They were made of electromagnetic tape, and required a massive analogue machine to play them via our cathode ray tubes.” “…what do you mean, what’s a DVD?!!”

• “Our cell phones used to allow us to do only one thing. Talk.”

• “When we first began using Email, we were only able to send text – and we didn’t have any fancy schmancy formatting either! It was all PLAIN text.”

• “Fossil Fuel based Petroleum Gas only cost $4 per gallon, and that was all our cars ran on.”

• “When I first started connecting to the Internet, it was done over a plain old telephone line at 28.8Kbps. At that time we were pretty much limited to 2 choices, America Online or Compuserve.  Doing the math here, that means it would have taken you roughly a year to download a movie to your computer.”

• “I had to drive; not fly, not port, but drive 30 min to/from work where I worked in an office with 1 inch walls separating me from my co-workers in what was called a ‘cubicle’.  You kids remember that classic horror film ‘Office Space’ I showed you?  Well…it’s not fiction!”

• “Once they arrived in a ‘portable’ format, I could only talk on my cell phone for about 700 minutes a month, or I’d get charged for every extra minute that I used.”

• “We used to use paper timesheets to do time tracking.”

I may be looked upon as a dinosaur someday by my progeny – but I’ll still be taking pride in my ability to whoop them at Asteroids, Missile Command, and Frogger..

An interesting proposal. Can time be sexy? We had a brief discussion about this over at the TLabs the other day which led me to think on it overnight.

Time. What is time? What does time mean to me? What does time mean to you? Everybody’s got time. Coffee time, time to walk the dog, commute time, relaxation time, serious focused work time, dinner time, TV time, game time, bed time. It’s all about time. In today’s hectic go go go world, have we managed to parcel out time and fit it into individual compartments? And if so, do these parcels then have a value?

If you could put a value on time, what would it be? Would your work time be more valuable than family time? Would time out on the open water be worth more than the time (and money) spent maintaining the boat? Would the time you put in on the deal-winning proposal have more value than the time you spend mowing the lawn?

Seen through these eyes, it’s not hard to visualize that time in itself is a very valuable commodity. Other valuable commodities might include that hot new Porsche 911, the classic Oyster Perpetual Rolex, Gold Bullion, Diamonds, etc. More often than not, a number of these items are purchased not only for the pleasure and enjoyment of the purchaser, but also to some degree to impress, even attract others.

Wikipedia redirects sexy to Sexual Attraction. An excerpt from the definition reads:

Certain aspects of what is sexually attractive to humans may differ amongst particular cultures or regions…or simply by the preferences of the individual.

Since we’ve already proven that when seen as a commodity, time can prove to be one of the most valuable objects known to man. Flashy sports cars, designer watches, shoes, clothes, etc. can all be used just as male peacocks use their impressive plumes to attract the opposite sex.

If we’re to use time as valued currency in today’s world, pair it with peacock feathers used to attract a mate, well then friends…time might possibly be one of THE sexiest things I’ve ever seen!

Not completely sold on my Freudian analysis of Time=Sexy, Head TScientist Brandon Zehm set off to prove my theory with his fancy pants calculus adding machine gizmo. After hanging around the TLabs waiting room for a few hours I decided to call it a night. The next morning I arrived with the following written on the whiteboard behind my desk:

As I’ve already stated: Time = Sexy.

500 Clams. Smackers. Bones. Loot. Booty. Mullah. However you want to call it, Matt Rissell and Co. over at TSheets are men of their word, and I’ve got the cold hard cash in my pretty little hands.

While I’ve already mentally spent that reward, I think the MORE rewarding point of the entire ‘are you a rock star copywriter’ contest is the opportunity to work with a great group of folks, working on a great product. We had a conference call the other day via everyone’s favorite VoiP medium, Skype. Not only is Matt Rissell running a heckuva good show over in Boise, but I honestly believe him to be a general all round good guy that has a great product and clearly knows how to position it in the market.

Now having the inside scoop, all I can say is ‘Watch This Space!’. Matt informed me of a few juicy new goodies that the time scientists are brewing up in the TLabs, and all I can say is, whoa Nelly! Hang on to your hat, ‘cause things are about to get real interesting, REAL fast. Ok fair enough….let me throw you a bone. Let’s just say that the dev team has been having a blast with certain mobile devices that play music, make calls, and come from Cupertino….stay tuned!

In addition to the regular articles from the TSheets team, it looks like yours truly will be herding all the cows back home in what I like to call Uncle DT’s weekly roundup at the ‘Save Yourself a Whole Lotta Time and Money Corral’. In other words, if you happened to miss some key points from any other article during that week, no sweat, I’ve got you covered.

Finally, I’d just like to take this space to thank Matt, Brandon, and AJ for giving this slightly offbeat writer the opportunity to not only join the team, but to interact with all of you, and hopefully present what at some times can seem only like technical jargon in good ol’ fashion down-home terms.

I was driving home recently when I glanced over at the license plate of the vehicle next to me, and saw the letters ‘MUADIB’ on it.  I’m enough of a Sci-Fi junkie that I immediately recognized the name of one of the greatest sand-worm riders of all time.  If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you can read a little bit of history on the Dune movie here.  From my recollection, Muadib was the name of the guy whose eyes glowed blue from inhaling slightly narcotic spices on some planet that was actually just one huge desert. 

The spice actually turns out to be made from excretions from the giant sand worms that live on the planet.  Muadib learns how to ride these worms and he’s able to kill people using only his voice (I’m guessing he was a bass).  Other than that I remember a really cool knife fight in the movie and that they wore special suits which allowed them to recycle and drink their own sweat.  Not hard to see why someone would pick ‘MUADIB’ for their license plate – who wouldn’t want to be associated with giant worms and drinking your own bodily fluids?

Something I don’t think many people ever think about is how they’ll tell time in the future.  How confusing would it be to grow up on a planet with two suns like Luke Skywalker?  And can you imagine the jet lag that would come from travelling millions of light years in a single day?  I’ll bet the watches will be really cool in the future.  Much better than the TV/watch combo I yearned for when I was a kid.

image courtesy of i4U.com

We all know that TSheets is excellent at tracking time for businesses and professionals alike, but it’s also great at tracking time for non-business related activities. For example, you can easily adapt TSheets to function as a workout/exercise log.

Here’s how to use TSheets to track your workouts:

• Sign up for a free single user account.
• Setup job codes to function as “Activity Codes.”  Some examples include: running, lifting weights, stretching, hiking, cycling, skiing, etc.
• Track your workout time proactively or retroactively.  Huh?
  • Proactively: Clock in with your TSheets account using your activity code before you start your workout, then clock out when you’re finished. This is easily accomplished with your mobile phone using our mobile version, or if you’re using an IPhone, our IPhone version.
  • Retroactively: Perform your workout, then afterward use the Time Slider to record your workout.
• Use the notes feature to record any workout specifics.  Such as: weather conditions, mileage, heart rate, calories burned, how you felt, etc.
• Run reports to summarize your workout time, broken down into activity codes.

Why should you track your workout time?  Accountability.  By recording your workout time, you’re creating accountability to yourself.  This is a huge step in helping you reach and achieve your goals.  Not to mention the excellent bragging rights you’ll have with your friends/family when you show them how many hours you worked out last week.

We often hear that “time is a precious commodity”, and we shouldn’t waste it.  Sometimes I think it’s taken for granted just how much one can accomplish in a short period of time.  Take a look at what can be accomplished in just 38 seconds:

• A 6 year old can completely solve a Rubiks cube
• A marijuana user gets arrested every 38 seconds in America
• Spice Girls’ London Tickets Sell Out in 38 seconds
• It takes Wal-Mart less than 38 seconds to earn $470,000 dollars.
• Tyson won a fight in 38 seconds
• A full pitcher of water can be filtered in 38 seconds
• You can completely beat MineSweeper in 38 seconds

Time is definitely precious, but I don’t believe I would consider it a commodity.  I wish it were – I’d be first in line to find someone who could sell me more of it!  Unfortunately, there is no way you can gain more than 86,400 seconds in a day.  The only thing you can do is make different decisions concerning how you spend it.  One of the most effective means of improving how you spend time is by simply being more conscious of how you’re using it.  Each time you punch out on your timeclock, try taking just 38 seconds to reflect on what you accomplished that day.  You might be surprised at what this little exercise will do to improve your next day’s work.

My friend is driving along a highway in Wyoming and sees a huge bull elk standing off the road about 100 yards with his head down.  Thinking of the photo opp, he quickly pulls over, gets the camera out and starts walking towards the elk.  Then, the elk lifted his head – with a cougar attached to his neck!

After shooting these photos, my friend waved his hands and got the attention of the cougar.  He then let go of the elk.  Paused.  Glared and pinned his ears back at my friend, who dirtied his shorts. But then the cougar took off.

The elk, slowly meandered away thankful to see another day: