Mastering time management with Toggl

You're gonna get used to clicking this.

I drive 70 mph.* It takes me thirty minutes to eat a meal. I still send postcards and the occasional letter. Now that I’ve slowed my roll, I’m finding that I need to speed up—in writing.

It  just shouldn’t take an entire day to write a blog post. Especially when my favorite blog pounds out an average of 8 well-written, engaging and insightful posts a day.

So between wanting to figure out how long specific posts take, wanting to accurately determine time spent on projects and wondering whether I spend far too much time commenting on Facebook, I found a little tool to track time.

From their website: Toggl is an online time tracking tool. It features 1-click time tracking and helps you see where your time goes. Free and paid versions are available.

I’ve been using the free version for about a month. It’s fricking awesome. You can access your time tracker in three ways:

• online
• desktop app
• phone app (Available for iPhone and Android phones. No wi-fi needed.)

I love it because I can record time spent on every task and client. There’s a tool called Autopilot that nags you to work. It learns what desktop applications are associated with what projects. At first, it asks you what you’re working on like a two-year-old asks, “Why?”  Then it calms down and starts asking if it should turn off the timer when you’re liking everything on Facebook.

The free version is awesome: you get time tracking, projects, 5 users and a weekly time report. The weekly report is proof to the 80/20 rule.

The paid versions range from the Solo account at $5/month for one user to the Max at $79/month and 40 users. With the paid plans, you can track your earnings and mark projects/tasks as billable.  You also get a task planner and ability to integrate with Basecamp, RSS and iCal.

My biggest issue with Toggl is that I forget to start it sometimes. That can be remedied by the ability to add time into your tracker. I don’t but am getting better at recording my time.

I’ve discovered that it takes less time to do copy writing related writing than thought (2-4 hours). The 24 Hours in blog posts are the most time-intensive (8-10 hours). My current project is a whopper of a time commitment.

There are a number of time trackers out there. Let me know if you are keen on any. For now, I love Toggl.

 

*ish.

Plan B

When I travel for fun, it tends to be on a space available basis. That means, if there are open seats on a flight, I get one.  If there isn’t or they need my seat for a paying customer, I get bumped from the flight.

Often, this way of travel can be fun and easy.  On occasion, during the holidays or during unexpected weather or airplane conditions, this way of travel can turn into a nightmare. 

Unless you have a Plan B.

In this case, I map out a minimum of two other routes to my destination.  Or, if the destination isn’t important, I map out other destinations on flights leaving around the same time. I check the departure monitors to see where the gates to my alternate routes are.  There have been many times where I’ve gotten the last seat on the last flight of the night because I was already running the 200 yard dash from Concourse C to B while other passengers, were still staring at the departure monitor trying to figure out a course of action.

Last night, I got my first rejection letter for a submission. I was oddly proud.  Maybe I’ll nail it to the wall a la Stephen King. Having a Plan B works here too. Since I sent my submission straight to the top, I would have been surprised if they accepted it so I noted three more publications to submit the poem to.

Rejection received yesterday. Submission #2 is in the mail today.  Added side effect is that the rejection doesn’t sting so much when you’ve got other options lined up.  I guess it’s like dating.

So here’s the deal.  For every single thing I pitch, I line up three people or places I will query.  It keeps the momentum going and my ego less bruised.

Eating Disorder

Don’t lie, you’re dieting. And, like me, you are probably weighing, measuring and doing more math than God intended us to do.

Luckily, there are a ton of recipes on the internet, complete with full meal plans for a day, week or month. Luckily, there are also instant calorie counters that measure how many calories you need in a day to maintain your current weight and to tell you how little calories you should be eating to lose those stubborn ten pounds.

Unluckily, the numbers don’t match.

I tried seven different calorie counters.  All take in information like age, gender, activity level, height, current weight and goal weight. My results span 600 calories. At 5′ 2 1/2″, an extra 600 calories a day is the difference between whether I fit into my jeans or, gasp,  need to go up a size.

I’m finding that researching on the internet yields a similar experience. You get a tidal wave of information that leaves you in an informational swarm akin to tangled seaweed and deflated soda bottles. Everyone is an expert and not a whole lot of it is unsubstantiated. So how do you sift the real info from the IMHO?

For concrete facts, I rely on sites that put their money where their mouth is: they cite their sources. I go to the uncontested experts in the field. Nutrition.gov and the USDA sites cite their sources and spend much of their resources on nutrition information and data.

For more objective things, like Yelp and Lonely Planet reviews, I’ll look for people who are similar to me. It doesn’t really matter if a healthy food restaurant gets 500 rave reviews if someone says, “salad only contains two ingredients and there aren’t any vegetables on the menu,” I will probably opt to not eat there because I like veggies on my plate.

On the most part, if you use the internet for preliminary research then back it up at the library or bookstore with journals, magazines and books, you’ll save time and be assured your facts check out.