Track The Time Blog

Something I’ve been thinking about lately is the cost of commuting. If your daily commute takes 20 minutes (round trip), as mine does, how much time are you really spending per-month, and per-year behind the wheel?

Let’s do the math.

There are 251 working days in 2013, and assuming 10 days of vacation per year it’s safe to assume the average person will commute 241 days out of the year.

Therefore, we come down to total time behind the wheel in 1 year: 80.33 hrs. DANG! So, yeah, for a short commute like that, the average person spends two-work-weeks behind the wheel. Tragic.

You could be spending more than 160 hours, or a months worth of work-time behind the wheel every year if you have a 20 minute one-way drive.

So, what is the true cost of commuting? Well, add in gas and lost-time and it could be significant. Is it really worth it to spend that much time in your car?

What time tracking application do you currently use for your business? There’s definitely a lot to consider, and I think everybody is looking for something a little bit different.

Here’s what I have been looking for:

• Logging of time with start and end date stamps – I need to know when this time was logged… not just the day it was logged.
• Easy invoicing – either in the service, or really great export options to Excel or another invoicing app – like Freshbooks.
• An OS X app – it’s 2012 people, I need to do this on the desktop. Also, iPhone apps are great and I like that as a bonus.
• Daily report – I posted a few years ago about how I work, and one of the things I love about Complete Time Tracking Pro is the daily report. It’s beautiful and shows me the gaps in my time logs.

So, what are some of the apps I am considering:

• Complete Time Tracking Pro – have used this for over 5 years – awesome Windows app, but it’s time to move on to something that’s a little more modern, and web based, and has an OS X desktop app. I know certain people (yes, you) will think it’s crazy to move on, but I’m not so convinced that another app will really reduce my productivity or reduce my ease in invoicing.
• Harvest – seriously considering this as a viable option.
• Toggl – looks really nice and I like some of the interface ideas they have implemented.

I may do another post in the future about my selection. If you’re interested in this topic, check out my article from 2010 about my obsession with time tracking.

Pretty cool looking app – http://www.eisenhower.me/
I’m going to give it a try this week.

Organizing Is Often Well-Planned Hoarding. The key paragraph:

“No matter how organized we are, we must continue to care for the stuff we organize, cleaning and sorting our methodically structured belongings. When we get rid of the superfluous stuff, however, we can focus on life’s more important aspects. Said another way: We can spend the day focusing on our health, on our relationships, on pursuing what we’re passionate about. Or we could, of course, reorganize our basement again.”

Interesting results from a two-year study of tax lawyers at an undisclosed Big 4 firm.

Some great ideas at this Quora answer.

Keeping as much state persistent across sessions as possible. I leave all my editors, browser windows, etc exactly the way they are so I can pick up and resume where I left off. This means I usually never shut down my computer, preferring to put it to sleep or standby where possible.

Everything else in your day – is not important. You just have to do these two things. Nothing more, nothing less.

http://mindfolder.com/blog/30-minutes-day/

The average work week in US is 43 hours. To be precise, it is on average 8.6 hours per day worked.

Working 11-12 hours is definitely not common. Of the few people I know who do it, all do it voluntarily.

People consistently overestimate the number of hours they work, particularly if they work more than 40.

Source: http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2011/06/art3full.pdf

This is so true: Burnout is caused by resentment

When people have to make sacrifices for work – like missing their child’s soccer game – they end up being resentful. She is proactive with her employees to make sure they don’t experience lots of resentment-causing activities. If being at tuesday night dinner with friends is the one thing you need to keep you happy, you should be there every week.

My friend Andrew shared with me a sweet video – 14 Life Lessons From He-Man.

An interesting post about what makes a good time entry.

The good ones are clear and descriptive. They include more text and i can understand what was worked on even if i wasn’t following the project day to day.

Related blog post about over-committing.

How to graduate college faster

Instead of using some elaborate organizing system, I stuck with a very basic pen and paper to-do list. My only organizing tool was a notepad where I wrote down all my assignments and their deadlines. I didn’t worry about doing any advance scheduling or prioritizing. I would simply scan the list to select the most pressing item which fit the time I had available. Then I’d complete it, and cross it off the list.

If I had a 10-hour term paper to write, I would do the whole thing at once instead of breaking it into smaller tasks. I’d usually do large projects on weekends. I’d go to the library in the morning, do the necessary research, and then go back to my dorm room and continue working until the final text was rolling off my printer. If I needed to take a break, I would take a break. It didn’t matter how big the project was supposed to be or how many weeks the professor allowed for it. Once I began an assignment, I would stay with it until it was 100% complete and ready to be turned in.

Lots of good discussion here.

Help for teachers to balance their work and private lives. How to organize to-do lists, paperwork and time to best help teachers get more done.

http://youtu.be/SuhGwaZiNIk

How do people spend their time?

MARGARET THATCHER, a former British prime minister, reportedly got by on just four hours’ sleep a night. Such deprivation would trouble many people, and certainly the French, who sleep for nearly nine hours on average, according to a report by the OECD. True to stereotype, the French also spend the most time eating and drinking of OECD members—indeed, they eat for almost twice as long as the Americans. The Japanese appear to have a tough time of it, working by far the longest hours. However, they also devote less time to unpaid work such as household chores and childcare, activities that account for around one third of the OECD’s GDP.

From The Economist.

Watch Ricardo Semler give a talk about “Leading by Omission.”

“Every one of us can send emails on Sunday night, but how many of us know how to go to the movies on Monday afternoon? If you don’t know how to go to the movies from 2 to 4, you’re in trouble because you’ve just taken on something that unbalances life, but you haven’t rebalanced it with something else.” — Ricardo Semler

A few years ago I read the book Maverick by this man, and it was really good and got me thinking about a lot of topics.

About the Lecture — If successful business depends on innovation, wonders Ricardo Semler, why are automobiles made essentially the same way today as they were in Ford’s first assembly line 100 years ago? Parallel parking is one of “ the stupidest things we do,” says Semler, “If we had a day, could we not by tomorrow afternoon figure out a way to make a car” that handles better in this common situation — or, on a grander scale, escape from the “silly concept” of oil dependent transportation altogether? The problem, Semler figures, is that there’s “something fundamental about organizations and … leadership that makes it almost impossible for people inside a business to change their own industry.” Industries are based on “formats that are basically legacies of military hierarchies,” says Semler, which neglect or deny the power of human intuition and democratic participation. In Semler’s own firm, there are no five-year business plans (which he views as wishful thinking), but rather “a rolling rationale about numbers.” A project takes off only if a critical mass of employees decides to get involved. Staff determine when they need a leader, and then choose their own bosses in a process akin to courtship, says Semler, resulting in a corporate turnover rate of 2% over 25 years. “We’ll send our sons anywhere in the world to die for democracy,” says Semler, but don’t seem to apply the concept to the workplace. This is a tragic error, because “people on their own developing their own solutions will develop something different.

Interesting TEDxBoulder video with Grant Blakeman. He advocates minimalism for a better, full, life.

How much do freelancers actually make an hour? (It’s a lot less than you think.)

A nice printable timesheet PDF.