I don’t know about other writers, but time can get away from me SO easily. When I’m sitting down to write, one of two things happen–I’m either so far into the zone that I have no concept of how much time has passed, or I space out while trying to figure out a scene or character, and suddenly I have no concept of how much time has passed! When I’m frustrated, time stretches out into infinity, and when I’m really churning out the words, hours go by in a snap.
The same thing can happen for me at work, where I also write and edit. I try to keep a handle on my hours by writing them down, but it’s so hard, especially when I can get pulled off into any direction at any time. I’ve been on the look out for some tools to help me both personally and professionally.
Call me crazy, but I like to know what I’ve been spending my long hours working on. If I’m running through my to-do list for a story, or for work, I both want and need to see how much time I’ve spent on any one task. At work, it’s for billing purposes, but at home I want to see how efficient I am depending on what I’m doing. There are many time tracking utilities out there, but I wanted one that I could use no matter where I am or what platform I’m on, and I wanted it to be free.
The one I’ve had the most luck with so far is SlimTimer. It’s web-based, free, and just plain works! I have it loaded in the sidebar of Firefox, and as I add a new to-do item (usually in Remember the Milk), if I need to accomplish it today, I add it to SlimTimer. Then when I’m ready to roll on it, I just click the task. When I’m done, I click the Stop button and then check it off as completed. It’s so easy, and it’s really helpful! It even has reporting that allows you to invoice, see your timesheets, and more. I’m really loving it.
So how do you manage your writing time?
Word Counts - Today: 0 | July: 616 | 2008: 5,089
Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
The Host: A Novel
One Hundred Years of Solitude
The Buccaneers (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)
http://crazyfan.wordpress.com/2006/06/26/jesss-white-knight/#comment-30 (ha, ha, ha!) Feel free to share on that thread on Yehoodi! I would share it myself although I am not a swing dancer, so I don’t feel right about registering just for this…
Cool blog you’ve got there, btw!
Hi Jess,
Another tool for time management is Fanurio http://www.fanuriotimetracking.com. Fanurio has a few reminders to help you start, resume or stop the timer. It also has idle time detection and it can be used on Windows, Mac and Linux.
hi Jess,
thanks for the URL - seems to be a good thing!