In a previous post, I concluded that working on fewer projects per day is ideal. On most days, this idealistic goal isn’t much of a reality. The workday is full of interruptions.
We built multiple timers into Intervals because we need — as do many other small businesses like us — a way to account for a fragmented workday. One of our Intervals customers puts it like this:
Leaked time is one of the biggest issues I have.
Intervals keeps track of your multiple timers in the footer of any page. When a client calls while you are working on a task, you can easily pause the task timer and start a general timer. Phone calls and emails were two major leaks of our time. Using multiple timers, we were able to capture, and bill, those moments dispensing our expertise.
The multiple timers in Intervals aren’t effective until you’ve trained yourself to stop and start timers throughout the day. It takes a little practice, but is extremely effective in accounting for those small moments of lost time. After adopting Intervals and multiple web-based timers at Pelago, we decreased our workflow and increased our billable time by 30%.
Hi John… this is exactly what I’ve been doing since the beginning. I’m a producer, senior project manager, senior writer and editor… so many hats, so little time. Leaked time? How about a thousand little streams threatening to break the dam? I’ve got a stack of timers, both task-related and general, taller than the hotels in Dubai. But I’ve gotten really, really good at starting and stopping them… almost like conducting a classical music concert with a hundred instruments.
Like you say, at the end of the day you just apply them all. That’s the part I’m still getting to grips with. By the end of the day I’m generally way too wiped to apply anything but a pillow to my face…