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How to Track Employee Time Effectively: Manual vs Automatic Time Tracking
To track or not to track… That was the question.
Not anymore.
To track manually or automatically – that is the question of today’s importance. Because of poor time tracking habits and, consequently, untracked time, US companies lose $8.8 billion per day.
Image author: Annie Spratt
Businesses still face burdensome disagreements around employee work hours and struggle to decide how to monitor the latter efficiently. Let’s take the controversy around old-fashioned paper timesheets vs digitally-driven solutions for worker time monitoring.
Are you still using paper timesheets or have you already switched to digital methods and productivity apps?
You’ll definitely change your mind in favor of automatic tools after reading this article. Dive in.
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Freelancing Red Flags: 16 Signs to Abandon That Problem Client
Freelancing is more popular than ever, which means more people and businesses are using freelancers to meet their needs. It’s a tremendous time to be a freelancer as nearly every industry is embracing this work model, especially since the pandemic.
But while many of your client relationships are healthy, productive, and lucrative, some just aren’t worth the trouble. As a freelancer, it’s smart to identify your problem clients and abandon them quickly. The sooner you call it quits with a bad client, the sooner you can start working with a good one.
How do you predict if a client will be a problem? By looking out for red flags that indicate the arrangement won’t be pleasant for you. This article lays out the top freelancing red flags and what to do if you spot them.
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The 7 Best Time Tracking Tools for Freelancers
Any successful freelancer knows that time tracking is an absolutely critical part of finishing tasks and projects on time. Though you can easily try to track time by hand–taking manual notes on an app, or even with old-fashioned pen and paper–you’re a lot more likely to succeed with time tracking software. Share on X
In theory, time tracking software helps you to succeed at getting all the juicy benefits out of tracking time, like successfully completing tasks and projects on time, managing your work hours well, and gaining insights into your work life that ultimately help you to become a better, more lucrative freelancer.
In the following article, we’ll take a look at the seven best time tracking tools to help you get the most out of time tracking.
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Timing as a Time-Tracking Alternative to Timely
If you’ve been following this blog for any amount of time now, you know what we’re all about: time-tracking, optimized time management, and productivity-monitoring. We’ve put our heart and soul (and blood, sweat, and tears) into crafting what we think is the perfect time-tracking application: Timing.
Still, we’re not so naive as to think there aren’t time-tracking alternatives out there. In fact, you might be using one of them! And since we do our best to stay impartial, we think it’s valuable to compare alternatives and give you a fair breakdown of why you might choose one over the other.
In this article, we’ll take a look at one time-tracking app in particular – Timely – and assess its pros, its cons, and how it stacks up to Timing.
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Time-Tracking: How to Use it with Your Personality Type
If the phrase “time-tracking” gives you an immediate sense of relief and calm, it’s because you enjoy order, structure, and maybe even a few rules and regulations. You’re most likely a type A personality (or a “3” or “1” on the enneagram).
On the other hand, if “time-tracking” makes you cringe, it might be because time management makes you feel a little constrained. You’re probably a type B (or a “7” or “9” on the enneagram).
In any case, type A and type B personalities will certainly approach time-tracking with a different set of ideas, emotions, and expectations. That doesn’t, however, mean that time-tracking – whether used for your personal or professional life – is right for one type and not the other. When wielded correctly, time-tracking can be used by any personality type to achieve great outcomes. Share on X These include increased productivity and efficiency, more goals reached, and ultimately, a more effective professional life (and higher income).
And who doesn’t want that?
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Using Time-Tracking to Stay Focused at Home
If you’re still working remotely as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, then give yourself a pat on the back. You’ve made it over two months carrying on your professional life as best as you can from your kitchen table. You’ve probably faced distractions and challenges you never thought possible – like screaming toddlers, toilet paper crises, and conflict with your spouse/roommate/partner over who has to go to the grocery store. Still, you’ve made it this far. The question is, have you used time-tracking to do so?
Automatic time-tracking software can be a game-changing strategy for anyone working from home – whether you regularly worked remotely even pre-pandemic, or your job is transitioning you to a permanent state of work from home. By automatically logging your working hours and minutes, automatic time-tracking helps you stay accountable to your goals (and employer, if applicable), focused on the task at hand, and perhaps most importantly, aware of your own productivity.
Here’s how automatic time-tracking with Timing can help you slay your goals and keep winning the battle.
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Case Study: Using Time-Tracking to Optimize Results & Grow with Wahm Workspace
Bianca Johnson started Wahm Workspace to provide virtual assistance for creatives who want to spend a little more time on their craft, and a little less time on things like posting on social media, responding to emails, or bookkeeping. You can imagine then, that as the lead VA in her own business, Bianca has got a heavy administrative load herself. What’s her secret to staying on top of the ball with multiple clients and a near-endless list of tasks? Time-tracking.
That being said, it hasn’t always been easy to find the right kind of time-tracking tool to measure, label, and organize hours spent on tasks like inbox management or web development. “I tried them all,” said Bianca of various time-tracking tools. Finding most of them “clunky” and unhelpful, however, led Bianca on a quest for the perfect time-tracker: a tool that would give her optimized results while still allowing her to remain mostly hands-off.
When Bianca discovered Timing, she found an automatic time-tracker that produced fine-tuned results. Unlike the majority of time-tracking tools, she didn’t have to continually switch gears throughout the day to make sure her time-tracking app was accurately capturing her working hours and minutes. Not only that, she discovered that Timing generated powerful, detailed reports she could use with clients in a range of situations. Finally, she found she could take on more clients (and more income) by utilizing a few simple strategies to optimize her results.
Here is how Timing has helped Bianca to scale up Wahm Workspace and get better results for both her and her clients.
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Time Tracking for Video Editors & Podcast Producers
Editing video and audio content is uniquely detailed work. As anyone who has spent two hours working on a 5-minute clip knows, there’s a lot that goes into producing that video or Podcast episode. That’s why professionals like podcast producers and video editors need extraordinary focus, meticulous attention to detail, and lastly, a keen sense of timing.
But these creatives don’t just need to know how to time things right. They also need external tools to help them track their own working hours. In this article, we’ll take a look at why automatic time tracking can be so beneficial to video editors and podcast producers; specific time tracking strategies for these creatives; and features to look for in a time tracking system.
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Time Management Hacks for Self-Employed Professionals
Kayla Matthews, a productivity-obsessed writer from Pittsburgh, has been writing for nearly a decade about self-improvement and business efficiency. You can see her articles on sites like MakeUseOf, Inc.com, Information Age, and her blog, ProductivityTheory.com.
Are you managing your time in the best ways? Self-employment and remote work can come with an abundance of benefits. But they can also come with the pesky issue of time management.
Time management isn’t just about time, either. It overflows into productivity, profits, stress, planning and so much more. Finding a balance in it all is the most important thing you can do.
Whether you have been freelancing for years or just started working from home due to the current crisis, read on for hacks that will help you with time management!
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The Full-Time Employee’s Guide to Time-Tracking
As a full-time employee, your pay isn’t necessarily connected to the specific amount of hours you work. That being said, time-tracking – keeping careful track of how you spend your working hours – may not sound like a valuable use of your effort.
Time-tracking, however, has the potential to transform your job, help you meet your goals, and give you powerful leverage with your employer.
Knowing how many hours you’re spending at work, and what exactly you’re doing during those hours, can help you:
- Increase your productivity
- Take control of your work schedule
- Get richer insight into your in-office and out-of-office working hours
- Gain leverage to ask for a raise or change in position
- And more…
In the following article, we’ll look at specific ways time-tracking can help you achieve the above, and potentially more.
