One thing that’s been working well for me lately is the harvest time tracker. During my recent year in private practice, one thing that I did appreciate is the time-tracking software they had. I didn’t like billing clients, but I did like the ability to track how I spent my time. It kept me on track and accountable, and I think more productive.
In my new job there’s no requirement to track your time, and you are not supposed to install any software on your work machine, so I’ve had no way to track time. Recently however I discovered Harvest (getharvest.com) which makes time tracking a breeze. It’s a paid service, but there’s a free option, and it’s one of the better time-trackers, web-based or otherwise, that I’ve seen.
Saved as a google chrome application shortcut and with my favourite launcher Launchy, I can fire it up quickly and start tracking time.
It’s a paid service but there is a free account option which limits you to only two projects. However, under each project you can identify different “tasks” so I just have one master project called “Work” and then I have all my actual projects just as different tasks that I track.
It also has report-generating and invoicing features which those who actually want to charge for their time wil find useful, but it is good just as a basic personal time tracker as well to track your own work performance.
