The Best Free Way to Make a Time Log on your Palm
Where did all the time go. How you “spent” your time is an impartial and yet 100% accurate ongoing forgone conclusion. You can’t change it. How you “spent” your time is not inherently bad or good nor is it inherently right or wrong. (You may want to notice your tendency to favor one of these over the another - either way can be a pitfall). However, how you “spent” your time is always true and it is never false. So given there is nothing you can do about how your time was spent in the past, your only opportunity is to alter how it could be spent going forward. For example, one of the first things you could do with regards to this issue is answer the question “Am I going to continue to read this post or am I going to do something else?”
You see, already you’ve made a decision and there was no way of escaping it. You just decided a second ago to continue reading. What I also did in the last sentence (besides pointing this out) is bring awareness to how you decided or chose to spend your time. I, and maybe several other people, can get to the end of a TV show even before we even “chose” to do it. In fact, some of us are working at the jobs we do because it just happened. So the first step in going in a different direction is to stop going in the current direction. Stopping gives us the opportunity to reflect and become aware of how we have spent our time. A time log is a really good way to bring awareness to how we’ve spent out time. One of the best time log programs for the Palm is called Time Sheet and it’s free. This program is particularly suited to those who work a job with a regular schedule
There have probably been dozens of these types of programs but rare is the genius programmer who actually takes into account how to make this intuitive. The secret sauce is the drop down menu. You have a 3 way easy select system. In, out, and choose task. You just select from a list of predefined activities and you are tracking your time at work. In and out is just like punching in and out with a time clock. Lunch and break times can be accounted for within that period with a distinction called “non working time” which is also tracked. You can track overtime and keep a running balance of how much more of a 40 hour work week you need to complete. This Palm program will even give you charts and hourly breakdowns by day, week, month, and even year. All this is available as well as customizable chart options.
Awesome program and free. This is perfect for managing time at work with preset beginning and end times. How you spend time within those periods is what timesheet is all about. Click here to visit the site. Feel free to email this post to a friend using the “email this post” link on the site.
April 27th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
Another great app that uses “fuzzy logic” to show how are days are spent with a great desktop app is Life Balance (www.llamagraphics.com). This app has a helpful manual, some tutorials, etc. Also, they have a coaching program that you can avail of if you can shell out the dough. The app isn’t free but worth every penny, if use it regularly. Check’ em out.
May 4th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
I have used Timesheet for several years to track all of my work time, and I love it. It is a very well thought out app that holds up well today, even though it hasn’t seen an update in three years. It is my personal “punch-clock”. However, I also use Life Balance/DayNotez to track all the details in my life. They are a great combo to keep track of all 1001 tasks that need to addressed ‘yesterday’.
March 13th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
I have been asked about what tools I use to maintain my timesheets. I have tried several tools, but they could never capture what I wanted and the way I wanted. I would in fact encourage every software professional to design his/ her own timesheet and only then think about the tools. Keep it simple so that it is not a lot of effort to record the data and give some small amount of time to put in the details. I usually set the marks while working and add in the details at end of the day or on the next day.