Time Management/Tracking

[shoecake]

Hi,

(Wow.. after previewing this post I just noticed how HUGE it is... Please excuse the size.. maybe it will help to highlight how much time i waste writing to forums)

I've not been very productive over the past year, I've spent a lot of time developing my hobbies and the more social and family side of my life (which is important part of being happy!) However, I'm now planning to really focus on my Indie Game business, I'm really happy with the way my business has grown over the past two years and sales are very good which is quite surprising given the fact that I've not worked very hard at all this year!

So, I'm looking at ways to measure and monitor my working time to try and reach a happy medium between working hard and relaxing. The time I spend on actual work is unknown, the time I spend of leisure and personal activities is unknown. The unknown makes me feel guilty (that I'm not giving my business enough focus) or worried (that I'm going to burn myself out!)

Two years ago I decided to keep a record of my sales each day so I can plot a sales chart showing how sales rise and fall each week/month. The simple fact that I can see how the current month is going compared to previous months makes me work harder (particularly the marketing & sales side) to try and maintain a comfortable level so at the end of each month I often see a slight rise on previous month. I'm always competing with previous targets. I get a little obsessed with it but I think it's fun and helps me to focus on improving sales.

I'm now thinking about setting up a similar system that tracks my work time. I'm not expecting to work harder each successive month but I want to avoid 'lazy months' where little work is done. Even though I work 6-7 days a week I'm very sure I'm nowhere near doing 40 hours a week. Some days I work only 3 hours, other days I might do 8 or more. What I really need is a way to monitor this work time so I can give myself monthly, weekly or daily targets. Hopefully I will find a weekly/monthly level of work time that feels comfortable to me. Maybe it's only 35 hours a week, maybe it's 45 or 50?

I understand you can't really put too much emphasis on hours worked or sales made. I'm really just after some rough monitoring so I don't slip too far behind. I also think monitoring work/sales and aiming for realistic targets works for me.

So, to my question... Does anyone here use any work time recording methods? It could be software, it could be a stop watch or clock. I'm just interested in any methods you might have used to record work time. I've used software like 'MS Project' for managing progress of projects but thats not quite what I'm after. I just want to record how much time I spend doing actual work. It's not quite as easy as it may sound....

My typical day goes something like this: Wake up, make breakfast, read email, respond to work related emails, respond to personal emails, read forums, do some programming, chat to friend on irc, do some graphics work, chat to friend on msn, do some web development, walk to shops, do some programming, read emails, respond to work emails, read forums, chat to friend on irc, do some game testing, make lunch... etc. The evenings I will either go out with friends or carry on doing more work, chatting to friends or general time wasting computer activities. I may spend anything between 5-16 hours in front of the PC. I've no idea how much actual work i do! :confused:

My dream time tracking application would be something that monitors the currently active window and knows if it's work or personal activity. For example the VisualStudio window would be work, the mIRC window would be leisure etc. I may even decide that 'Indiegamer Developer Discussion Boards' window is classed as work and certain parts of Outlook would be work and certain parts leisure. You get the idea. This program would then know how much time you spent doing various things and could give you a rough idea how much work you've been doing. Of course that doesn't include non-PC jobs but I'm more interested in tracking time spend on actual "game development" and also time wasted on stuff like IRC and Half-Life 2! ;) If anyone has come across something that can record time spent in various applications please let me know!

Aside from the application tracking idea, if anyone has advice on time management and tracking (maybe i need to be more strict and turn off mIRC and ban myself from forums for long stretches of the day!) please feel free to give me some tips.

Cheers,

Paul

[shoecake]

In a follow up to my original post. I just had a search for Application Time Tracking software and found something called Worktime (http://www.nestersoft.com/worktime/) that looks quite similar to what I described! I'll give it a whirl and let you know how I get on.. Anyone know of any alternatives?

It's typical, when you have a brain wave for a killer app idea, 9 times out of 10 it already exists! :p

[Vectrex]

well a good idea is still a good idea :) and it's kinda cool that if you think of something great then a quick search can bring up the exact thing you were thinking of :D
Cool program by the looks of it

[paulm]

I couldn't find anything I liked, so I began rolling my own web-based tracker some time ago. I like rolling my own web tools for some reason, as I always manage to find a way to incorporate them into a greater whole. It never got finished, as I'm incorporating tools in phases, and there's just too much to put in at once.

I've seen professional timekeeping software on the Mac, but obviously it costs a pretty penny. My friends at a graphic design studio used to use a program, and of course, the onus is on the person working to 'Start' and 'Stop' when it is appropriate.

If you know PHP, it shouldn't be hard to make your own, if you have the inclination.

Cheers,
Paul.

[luggage]

I'm quite interested to try out that time tracker software. I'm a bit scared of what the results might be.

My day goes pretty much like yours. I usually just go day to day, if I feel one day I haven't made as much progress as I like I try to put a bit of extra effort in the following day.

Not exactly scientific.

My biggest problem is stopping my day slipping round. I'll be working on something in evening, feel wide awake and spend an extra hour or two finishing something off. This means I get up a little later, then the same thing happens again. Before I know it I'm working nights. Then it takes a fair bit of effort to get it back on track again.

[shoecake]

I think the most important feature of a 'Time Tracker' program that would suit me is one that knows exactly when I start and stop with a particular application. I often flip between work and leisure activities and theres no way I could possibly be hitting Start/Stop by hand.

Some people might think mixing work tasks and leisure activities (moving between Programming, IRC, e-mail, Forums, etc.) is bad and for the most part I would agree. I'd probably work more efficiently if I banned IRC during work time. I did already stop running MSN Messenger to avoid all the distractions. But for me, being an Indie is all about the flexibility of work schedules and organizing my day exactly how I want. I just think it's about time I monitored it so I know when I need to cut back on the time wasting :)

That 'Worktime' tool is quite good but has a fair few issues and shortcomings. Maybe I've just missed a few options. Its almost what I was after anyway (Automatic Start/Stop on applications currently in use, including pausing when theres no key/mouse activity for a set amount of time.) I'll spend a bit more time with it anyway.

[mrfun]

I'm a happy licensed user of Smart Worktime Tracker (http://tracker.aklabs.com/), I just let it run all the time and then have it generate neat bar graphs and stuff every month or so.

It's really interesting data to look at. You can customize it to track certain projects, so I know how much time I spent updating older games or whatever. (it can detect the active project in MSVC)

I used to have it buzz me if I spent more than 5 minutes surfing - but after a week or so I disabled that. :o

[shoecake]

I'm a happy licensed user of Smart Worktime Tracker (http://tracker.aklabs.com/)
Cool, I'll check this out too! Thanks.

[monco]

This seems like the tail wagging the dog. Schedule your work items for a project with real, hard dates. Preferably in short iterations...every week, every two weeks...something like that. As you approach or reach those dates, evaluate if you're ahead or behind and adjust your schedule accordingly. If features creep in, schedule them, don't just try to cram them in the current iteration.

Doesn't matter if it takes one or eight hours a day of real work, if you hit your targets you hit them. The short iterations allow you to adjust quickly to delays/accelerations in the schedule.

[shoecake]

I don't think it's possible to run my business to a schedule of 'hard dates'. I work on one or two games at a time. I have marketing and end user support to do for three/four projects. I maintain two websites (one for my games business, and one for a another business venture.) I have ongoing research to do on various businesses I'm involved with. If I was purely a game developer and my job was simply to finish projects then maybe things would be different.

Sure, some of the more predictable work can be done around milestones and dates but most things I do (like marketing and support issues) don't fit into date based schedule. Even if setting dates was possible, it would still be interesting to see how much time is spent working. Monitoring can only be helpful as far as I can see.

I set milestones and hard dates for as few things as possible. I see time scheduling as a bad thing if taken too far. I'm not interested in scheduling, just tracking.

[Michael Flad]

I did try those two tools some time ago but for me, there was just too much noisedata generated. I often use a lot of different tools while working on one project like, code/texteditors, mapeditor, different IDEs (Visual Studio, Komodo etc.) PhotoImpact etc.

Later I found www.allnetic.com Worktime Tracker and registered it - it is way more manual than the other tools but I guess it just takes some time to get used to activate the tasks one's working at. As a benefit you get things like hierarchical Tasks structures so you can have different levels of tracking. Maybe not the right tool for your purposes, but you nevertheless might have a look at it.

Michael

[formfarbeminze]

So, to my question... Does anyone here use any work time recording methods? [...] I just want to record how much time I spend doing actual work. It's not quite as easy as it may sound....

i do use 2 tools.

first, every evening as the last working step i do plan my day in advance. i have appointments and i have other mission critical tasks like eating something. when those areas are covered, i do fill in the gabs with 'work-chunks'. chunks of 2 hours or 3 hours do work very well for me. i do have three categories for types of work and i try to get something out from each category into a given day. these categories are: a) earning a living, b) keeping things organized and c) sharpen the saw. there is a fourth category, routine jobs, which tasks are organized as appointments.

this daily planning gives me inner ease (comes from knowing what lies before you on your way), a balance between the various areas of life and last but not least a certain pace in getting things done.

the second tool i use to track my working time is basically a even simple version of the thingie joel proposes in his article at http://www.joelonsoftware.com/printerFriendly/articles/fog0000000245.html

i do use daily planning since... ... i can't remember when i started this. the other thing i do use since about a month. i am happy with my system and our performance so far.


My typical day goes something like this: Wake up, make breakfast, read email, respond to work related emails, respond to personal emails, read forums, do some programming, chat to friend on irc, do some graphics work, chat to friend on msn, do some web development, walk to shops, do some programming, read emails, respond to work emails, read forums, chat to friend on irc, do some game testing, make lunch... etc. The evenings I will either go out with friends or carry on doing more work, chatting to friends or general time wasting computer activities. I may spend anything between 5-16 hours in front of the PC. I've no idea how much actual work i do! :confused:

i had those problems as well. i did overcome them mainly by being honest with my calendar: for example when i spent the last 2 hours surfing the web i state so in my calendar. when you do this and you are commited to your goals, you will change yourself when you see your 'pattern' in your calendar. or maybe not. i don't know for sure, but for me this kind of 'pressure' worked very well. another benefit: you get used to think more about what you write into your emails, forum posts and messages.

My dream time tracking application would [...] Of course that doesn't include non-PC jobs but

but this isn't necessary: you are a geek ;-)

Aside from the application tracking idea, if anyone has advice on time management and tracking (maybe i need to be more strict and turn off mIRC and ban myself from forums for long stretches of the day!) please feel free to give me some tips.

clearly i do think you should get that least minimum of discipline (and i the case of a 'freelancer' also self-respect (just my humble opinion, don't take it too heavy, please)) and get used to manually notch things down. thoughts, ideas, time-stamps, whatever.

[MrPhil]

I just use excel and keep it simple:

Date--Start-----End------Total---Notes
12/10 10:31 PM 11:48 P 1.28 Did miniapp1 tutorial, played with UltraEdit

You can add cool calulations and graphs once you have this basic data.

I started a graph of my weekly hours and discovered that the weeks that look like big peaks are always followed with weeks that look like mine shafts. So now I'm trying to work on my pacing because 10 + 10 > 15 + .5 :rolleyes: