Day 1 of Timeular time tracker

I got a friend who’s an affiliate marketer, actually a lot of my friends are affiliates. His name is Graeme and for the past 6 months he’s mentioned and raved a few times about this device called Timeular. 

He says it helps him track and manage his time but more importantly, gives him the data to reflect on his days and weeks. Graeme has a lot of different websites so now he’s able to track how much time he spends on each of them. What he says helps is understanding better which sites are worth spending more time on and ditching ones that don’t seem to give him the ROI.

At first I kinda said I don’t think I need this as I can use other time tracking apps and none of them have stuck with me. In having chats with him about how he organizes his work week I did learn a few things where I felt at least tracking something might make me realize how I could have better days and weeks in terms of performance.

First thing I did after that chat was print a half sheet of paper with the work hours of the day and write down what I’m working on. The first thing I noticed was I wasn’t taking as many breaks and as the day wore on, my performance dropped. 

So I started to make sure I had breaks and those ranged from going for a walk, a bike ride or doing some other errands I needed to get done. I felt after doing that I was more conscious of how important breaks are for us not just on a daily basis but periodically whether extended to weekends or taking a whole week off.

A long time ago I used to just work all the time without any real vacations and it wasn’t until I did houseboating that changed things for me. The time off definitely helped recharge my batteries.

In the past few months I’ve hired a business and performance coach at bcoached.co and I’ve found I’ve made improvements in my work space but I know my afternoons are sluggish as the messages get quiet in the day. 

Ok I’m going off on a tangent but were still talking about tracking time and I want to share my day 1 of the tracker. I’m writing this on day 2 and tracking my time while writing this first thing in the morning. 

My day 1 I only didn’t start using the tracker and app until the afternoon as I had to decide what to label all my activities as. I broke them down into emails, sales, writing, creative, design and a few more items. I put those funky stickers on my device to give it some personality and to hopefully help me remember which sides are which.

After using for a couple of tasks I think I’m ready to say that I’m hooked on this thing. This Timeular device has basically done gamification of work. The only thing that is missing are the rewards I get for achieving certain milestones. 

So here are the big takeaways of my use of Timeular and why I think it is here to stay for me and something I would highly recommend for anybody. 

Focus on 1 task at a time

I’ve got too many different things I can do at any given moment and all it takes are a few messages to get derailed. With Timeular I’m now more focused on finishing a task before I put the device back in the upright position so I can then focus on something else. This entire process is causing me to be more mindful of doing just one thing at a time. If I have too much random activity well I probably won’t track it. 

Focusing on tasks that matter

I waste enough time on social media where half if that time are business related chats. That said I find I’m being more mindful of not wanting to do that and I feel like that hole in my day won’t look so great in my reports on Timeular. 

My first day’s results might not look amazing but I wanted to get back into writing and yesterday I knocked out 2 articles and today will be my 3rd in less than 24 hours. 

What doesn’t get measured doesn’t get done

It might be an old expression but it rings very true today. If you don’t know how much time you spent on something, how do you know if you are doing enough of something or too much?

In other time tracking apps, I find them not fun and tedious. They might record things like how much time you spent on facebook but if you are doing writing tasks, you won’t get the full picture.

At least Timeular let’s you break down your tasks into as many sub categories as you want. For example I’m doing writing today but I can tag this article for #affiliatedir and my other articles I can tag for #statsdrone. 

Convinced after 1 day?

I only needed yesterday afternoon to know I’m sticking it out with Timeular. I see why my friend raves about this and I might get a few more of these devices for other people in my company. So this article is just about my Day 1 of Timeular and it was all I needed to become a fan.