Logging hours¶
I have got a question:
> How do you track your working hours efficiently? As a physical worker?
When you work physically, let’s say as a carpenter, and you work on multiple projects during the day or the week, how can you make it as easy as possible to track you working hours and assign them to the correct project?
For myself I seem to have solved this with a terminal application that allows me to quickly change between customers, work and context and gives me an overview whenever I need it.
But without constant access to a console and not even working on a computer, how can you lower the threshold and make it as easy as possible to track your time?
I am aware of a couple of electronical solutions, apps, programs, whatever you might want to call them. They all require access to a computer (phone or PC of some sort) and multiple steps to track you time and switch between jobs.
You need at least the information of
When do I start?
What to I work on/whom for?
When do I finish?
My approach cut this down to just a single command usually. Let’s say I work for customer A and I want to start tracking.
I just type this into my console
customera_work
If I forgot to do this, it’s still one command to track starting at e.g. 08:00:
customera_work 0800
When a meeting starts, I switch over to tracking the meeting.
customera_meeting
Then I can get started right away. At the end of the day I just stop the clock and I’m done.
Lowering the effort down to just one command made it possible for me to keep continuing tracking the time.
But I work on a computer mostly. How could I solve this when not working there?
My guess is that digital solutions are not the key here, but only serve later in making the data useful. I am considering a kind of notebook of some kind. Just tracking the same information as I would digital.
Customer |
Time |
|---|---|
A |
08:00 |
B |
10:00 |
Finish |
16:00 |
That would be enough information to construct a time table out of the information and log the hours. Maybe a comment column would be required as well, to keep any additional information that might arise?
Customer |
Time |
|
|---|---|---|
A |
08:00 |
|
B |
10:00 |
-15min discussion |
Finish |
16:00 |
The goal should be to keep it as simple as possible.
Then the question would be: tracking all work in a single book or splitting it up into e.g. sheets for being able to separate customers? I try to think from the perspective of somebody working with it. What would be easier?
And where to store it? If you are working out of shop, you can just assign a corner and keep you paper stashed there. Otherwise you would have to carry it with you, what would limit the possible size and weight.
I am still not sure that this is the best or easiest way of tracking. You still would have to transfer all the data over into your invoice system or whatever you use, but that could be done when writing and actual invoice is required.
Possible solutions are as different as the might that might use them. But it should be somehow possible to sew them together, I think.