Do you track your productive work time? What is your process and what are the benefits for you?
I just started time tracking at the beginning of the month, so have done it for just a week. I am in the explore phase and there are many little experiments and side projects and initiatives I've added to my plate that I am hoping time tracking will allow me to see what % of the time I am spending on each category of activity that is important to me(coding vs. writing vs. connecting/marketing, etc.). So far it's a little tedious, I've been using pen/paper and writing down what I did every 30 to 60 minutes during my work day.
Do you track your time and % of time you allocate to different category of business building activity? Do you use any tools? If you've been doing this for a while, have you gleaned specific benefits?
I am just using a very simple Excel document where each week is a sheet. I have a Date, Start and End timestamp and a Description field and couple of calculated fields. I am also calculating the number of minutes worked each day.
I found to shortcuts (Ctrl-; current date) and (Ctrl-: current time) really useful. After a while it becomes automatic and it helps me to stay on track as I am working from home.
Yes. I use toggl.com to track my time at my desk. I used it heavily when I was a freelancer and billing my clients hourly. Now I just use it to try and stay productive and see how many hours of work I can get done each day on each task. It's become a habit.
cool, good to know! habits are good :)