[WEBINAR] Why track time and time-off? How to do it efficiently?
Book a demo Try for free

Discover where my time goes 🤔

Ever get that feeling at the end of a day or week where you knew you were busy but don’t quite know what you achieved? Or perhaps you just don’t know where your time goes. It’s normal – humans are pretty bad when it comes to estimating time. So it’s a good job Timeular can help you be very good at it 😄

Here’s how to get started…

1) Select activities

What we’re interested in here is to start with broad categories. This can be done by activity type

e.g.

  • Phone Calls
  • Email
  • Meetings
  • Slack
  • etc

Or some other denomination that makes sense, like client or project.

Don’t worry much about granularity at this point – as you get used to tracking you can add tags to apply context and sub-categorize entries and, over time, become more granular with the activities if needed.

2) Start tracking!

It might feel strange at first but you’ll soon pick up the habit, especially as you start to see data being populated in the Timeular app, becoming even more motivated to carry on.

It usually takes users a few days to build a habit, then becomes second-nature.

Be forgiving with yourself at first if you miss entries.

3) Perform a weekly retro

One day tracked is a start, 2-3 days is the beginning of a trend and a full week is great.

Our users find weekly reviews to be useful, especially as the data is right there in your face in the calendar screen of our app.

Stay curious when you dig into the data. The chances are something surprising will leap out at you. If so, read our guides on I’ve got my time data, now what?. The what next? will dictate how you approach setting goals and tracking subsequent weeks.

Remember – changing activities and mixing things up in Timeular is encouraged.

If you’re confident that you’ve got the ‘average week’ of data and you’e identified something worth changing, consider picking your next ideal outcome in this guide for tips on setting up what to track to achieve it.

How long should I track for? 🤔

Short answer – for as long as it’s needed to get awareness of where your time is being spent.

It’s best to continue tracking until you meet your desired outcome and then pick the next outcome that makes sense for where you’re then at.

Our philosophy is that time tracking is much like staying fit – you may need a short bursts of high intensity exercise at times and at other times it’s a case of staying in shape with less intense but regular activity.

A lot of our users find a weekly cadence of 1) setting a tracking goal → 2) tracking it → 3) reviewing and identifying change → 1) setting a new goal (etc) to be a good rhythm.

So, look to the week ahead and then ask yourself the question again. Remember, it takes a few days to ingrain the habit of time tracking when you’re starting out.

Tips and final words of encouragement 🙌

  1. Start by figuring out what’s your most important time management problem that you’d like Timeular to help with (rather than just starting to track random activities).
  2. Don’t try to track every little thing, or be a hard-ass about stopping the clock when you go to the bathroom or get more coffee.
  3. It’s hard to track 100% of your time right away, start easy and track the big things first. Be easy on yourself if you missed little things.
  4. If you have a Timeular Tracker put it somewhere where you see it often – it’s a great physical reminder, e.g. below your monitor or next to your phone
  5. If you don’t have a Tracker put a Post-It or sticker near your monitor as a visual clue to track
  6. Adjust our reminders in the Settings > Reminders & Emails section, e.g. we have a start of day reminder, long time entries reminder aka. Pomodoro reminder, and many others that assist you in our daily workflows
  7. Get used using our CMD+E (Mac) or CTRL+E (Windows/Linux) Quicktrack shortcut to easily start and stop tracking out from any app
  8. Easily fill in gaps in your timesheet and edit wrong time entries with drag and drop functions

Need more help? Get in touch with us and we’ll be glad to help.

What do you want to achieve next?

Go back to Guide: get started with time tracking.