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Timing 2019.1: Undo Support and Usability Improvements
We are happy to announce the release of Timing 2019.1! Read on for the update’s full release notes.
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How to Get Your Employees to Start Tracking Time
In order to make smart, informed business decisions, you have to be acutely aware of how you are spending your time.
Freelancers tend to have a more innate realization of this, since the impact of time spent versus value received is more obvious. After all, it’s imperative to a freelancer’s direct income that he or she properly bill clients for hours spent working or projects delivered.
However, this concept also applies to larger businesses—actually even more so. If being conscious of time is important for a single worker, think of that significance as you multiply the amount of people working.
Productivity and awareness are critical to a lean team, and the impacts can seem more apparent on a smaller scale. But with a bigger team, the seemingly minor effects of wasted hours can add up—creating a big hole in productivity and earning potential for a business.
That’s why being cognizant of how your employees are spending their time each day can have such a colossal impact on your bottom line.
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MacSparky Video Guide for Timing now available!
We have partnered with David Sparks (also known as MacSparky) to create a five-part video guide on Timing! The first few videos offer a great way to get started with Timing, while the later ones dive deep into Timing’s more advanced features such as rules and manual tracking.
In particular, you will learn:
- How Timing can help make your time tracking easier and more accurate.
- How you can categorize your activities in Timing, letting you see exactly what you worked on at any given time.
- How you can manually capture time entries and calendar events or meetings into Timing.
- How you can set up your projects for maximum efficiency.
- What more advanced, “power user” features Timing offers.
Read on to watch all five videos!
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Becoming a Champ at Time Tracking
Time is arguably the most valuable currency in life. We are all allotted the same amount of it in a day, but we never know how much of it we will have in a lifetime. That’s why it is so precious.
In order to live a fulfilling life, we must be extremely cognizant of how we are spending our time each and every day.
Many of us would prefer to spend our time with family and friends, enjoying the simple pleasures of life, and feeding our brains.
However, we can’t do all those things without financial stability. Though money certainly isn’t the most important factor of life, it does award us freedom and security. Which is why time tracking is so important not just in terms of work, but our whole lives.
Maximizing productivity in our work lives means we are giving ourselves the opportunity to not work harder, but instead work smarter. Once we master this, we find we are able to spend less time making the income we need to live a balanced and rewarding life.
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How to Become a Freelancer (When You Already Have a Full-Time Job)
For a long, long time people have sidetracked from their primary jobs to do a little something extra. Whether for financial reasons, exploring a hobby, or personal fulfillment, it’s not out of the ordinary to feel the itch to branch out on your own a bit.
Thanks to more digitized communication, having a side hustle has become a lot more attainable. It’s also made it so that tapping into a secondary source of income isn’t confined to just having a store on Etsy (though that’s cool, too). Nowadays, you can take almost any talent—especially one that translates across digital properties—and use it to your advantage by becoming a freelancer.
Though freelancing may sound attractive (we mean, who doesn’t dream of ditching the 9-to-5 grind), we understand—and recommend—the need to dip your toe into the water before diving in headfirst.
Keep in mind that being a freelancer requires a certain kind of personality—one that is driven, organized, and realistic. But we know that has y-o-u written all over it, so let us share insider tips on how to get rolling.
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The Top Reasons to Track Time, Unrelated to Work
When we think about time tracking, we mostly think about it being a best practice for work purposes.
Tracking time boosts productivity, allows freelancers to accurately bill clients for projects, and gives us a better sense of how long a task may take (which can help both with planning and developing scopes of work).
But did you know that tracking time is also essential for your life outside of work?
Regardless of what fills your hours and days, time management is something nearly all of us struggle with.
We all have a lot of responsibilities and expectations, both from external and internal sources—work (of course), family obligations, friendships to nurture, personal health and wellness, and the daily maintenance of life.
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It’s Time to Take a Hard Look at Your Productivity
We hear a lot about productivity and how it’s one of the “secrets” to success.
After all, productivity is the basis of working smarter, not just harder (though working hard is certainly an important quality to embrace). This drive and mindset helps to complete projects or reach milestones within optimal timeframes.
And being productive is not just about spending less time on tasks—it’s more about maximizing the time you are occupying in a more valuable way. In doing so, you’re able to avoid jamming hurried work into a specified amount of time, and instead produce good work.
Productivity is definitely a hot topic in our society, especially since the introduction of modern technology. With all of our devices, notifications, and access to content, it’s easier than ever to give in to distractions that take your focus away from a particular task.
Even if you adhere to deadlines most of the time, it’s still helpful to take an audit of your productivity levels (or lack thereof) and put a process in place to improve them.
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How to Prepare for Time Off as a Freelancer
Ahhh vacation. It’s a beautiful word, isn’t it?
For many of us it prompts images of palm trees, colorful drinks, and long siestas.
The North American definition is “an extended period of leisure and recreation, especially one spent away from home or in traveling,” which we all know is parallel to a “holiday” in other locales around the world.
Basically, as an adult, it’s supposed to signify no work—sounds blissful, right?
As humans, we are meant to take time to recharge our batteries and fuel our souls with the people and things that make us happy. And not to say that work doesn’t make some of us happy (because that’s kind of a big goal in life), but it also occupies so much space in both our schedules and our minds that it’s healthy to get away every once in a while.
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Handling a Client Payment Dispute
Being a freelancer means you’re your own boss, right? Yes! Well, sort of.
Even though you are technically your own boss, you still have to answer to and impress clients—plus abide by their timelines.
Depending on the kind of freelance setup—maybe you do many projects for a multitude of different clients, or perhaps you spend the majority of time freelancing for one—it may sometimes feel like someone else is running the show.
No matter the situation, there will always be someone you are reporting to in some capacity, even if it’s just to receive and hand off assignments.
Being that this is a bit of a unique scenario compared to most manager-employee relationships, it can feel a little awkward when a payment dispute comes about. (Who enjoys conversing—and especially arguing—about money? Yuck.)
However, it’s your livelihood we’re talking about! It’s a big deal, and we’re sure it means a lot to you. That’s why we took a deep dive into those pesky potential payment disputes and have provided our advice and solutions.
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How to Become a Mac Power User – quickly and easily
It’s no secret that Apple’s Mac is the king of computers. (And it’s no secret that we are huge fans, being that we developed a Mac-centric app and everything.)
Maybe that’s why, according to Statista, 5.3 million Mac computers were sold worldwide between July and September 2018 (yes, just in a three month span).
The geniuses behind Apple’s technology continue to lead the way in innovation, efficiency, and clean design. And the Mac is a powerful machine, capable of much more than the average user would even realize.
That’s kind of the beauty of the Mac—it’s able to keep things uncomplicated and uncluttered for the laymen, but dig in deeper and there is a whole other dimension of proficiencies that a user can spend endless time trying to discover and remember.
In some more tech-savvy groups, mastering the Mac’s shortcuts and stretching its legs is a badge of honor, earning you the unofficial title of “Mac power user.”
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