Success story
How Ally reduced disruptions fourfold with Timeular
Ally is an engineer and an author. While coding, she found that she was frequently being disturbed and that multiple unplanned tasks were coming her way, delaying her from her actual work and preventing her from staying focused.
She had to hand in a timesheet for her work and provide her boss with the number of hours she worked for different clients which she describes as being “more like a random guesstimation.”
Fewer disturbances & better estimating
Within one month of using Timeular, Ally built the habit of tracking her time and it was worth the effort: “On average, I started being disturbed four times less than before.”
Ally tracked the times that she was disturbed to see how much time they added up to in total. Whenever someone interrupted her she switched to the ↯ side assigned to her Tracker. “This was amusing for my colleagues and they were like ‘oh, oh, she’s turned the Tracker to the flash!”
Timeular’s insights showed her just how much she was being distracted while working, and so she made the decision to say no more often to things that were coming her way. Timeular’s charts helped Ally practice discipline and to see her progress over time.
Alongside the insights, Timeular stopped Ally from using guesstimations and instead create accurate timesheets for her work, generated by a macro that works with the .xlsx export.
How to use #hashtags for client billing
With Timeular, Ally tracks different activities for her work and the freelance life.
The other activities that she doesn’t need all the time are just tracked in the app.
She tracks Regular Work, Deep work (Getting Things Done), Calls, Breaks, Meetings, Unplanned, small activities, external appointments, travel time, and education/training. For her freelance life, she tracks writing, editing work, timeline work, research, and backstory.
Ally’s tip: Look at your data. Again and again.
“Track meticulously, but also look at your data. Don’t just let it rot there.”
Ally emphasizes the importance of looking at the data you get out of time tracking as “you will only be able to improve something if you reflect on what you are currently doing.
“If you’re working in an office environment, you’ll be shocked how little of your day is spent on actual productive work,” Ally laughed.
BIO
Ally is an engineer and an author. She started using Timeular a year ago.