Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Keeping track of time worked
If you're a contractor or a freelancer, then it's more than just somewhat important to keep track of the hours that you spend on a particular project. There are several ways to do this. Most contract and freelancer writers I know enter their hours and a description of the task into a spreadsheet. A couple of friends who use the Emacs text editor like using the Tracker extension.
I've tried both methods, and a few others, and wasn't really satisfied with any of them. The one application that does the job for me is Taglog. It tracks the time I spend on a particular project, and lets me enter information about the project -- like information about where I am at a certain point in the project, when I expect to complete the job. My favourite aspect of this program is that I can tag an activity by it's type. For example, research, interviewing, writing, editing.
OK, the interface isn't pretty. But it gets the job done.
I've tried both methods, and a few others, and wasn't really satisfied with any of them. The one application that does the job for me is Taglog. It tracks the time I spend on a particular project, and lets me enter information about the project -- like information about where I am at a certain point in the project, when I expect to complete the job. My favourite aspect of this program is that I can tag an activity by it's type. For example, research, interviewing, writing, editing.
OK, the interface isn't pretty. But it gets the job done.
