I have a new favorite tool and its called Toggl. It’s a time tracker tool that you can use through a mobile app, on the web or directly from your desktop. One of my goals this year is to create more structure to my days and one way to do that is to know how much time I spend on various tasks.
Then I can find ways to speed up the process by creating systems or decided whether this is something that I should be delegating out to someone else.
Using Toggl for Personal Productivity
One of my favorite benefits of using Toggl is making myself more productive. I can have my Internet window open with two tabs – one for app and the other one for whatever I doing like checking my email.
All I have to do is click start and stop, the data is save and I get to tag that entry with a category that I previously set up. I can even add a description of I was doing for future reference. When I want to avoid the distraction of getting on the Internet, I can use the mobile app.
You can still use the app to track your time even in airplane mode. You will get a little message at the bottom of your screen saying the “Sync with server failed”, but once you reconnect, you can re-sync and all is good.
You can also add the data in manually but why would you. The whole point is to stop wasting time, right?
As I mention you can tag the time you clocked with a category or project and a client. There are a total of 15 colors from which to choose from. For example I mark anytime spend browsing social media (the project) as red and I’m the client.
This comes in handy when they send you a weekly summary of how you spend your time the previous week. Of course you can pull the information on your own anytime and make your own reports.
Using Toogl for Business Productivity
These reports are great for my business as well. As a WordPress VA, my clients pay for a set block of hours per month and assign me variety tasks. Each week I provide them with a work report including what I’ve completed, hours used, and hours left.
This helps my clients determine how much work they truly have and they can revise their package by decreasing hours or delegating more work. For me I can tell how long it took me to do a particular task so I can find ways to make the process faster and become more efficient.
My recommendation
Toggl is great productivity tool. They have a paid option which comes with more features such as having more team members (free account allows only 5), keep track of billable hours/rates, priority support, and more that has been tailored businesses and teams.
For my needs the free option fits the bill at the moment but if those needs change I wouldn’t mind paying for it. You should try it for a week straight yourself to see how it goes. You can sign up via the website or an app (iOS/Android).