Mathemagenic

The second of my recently found GTD tools is SlimTimer (via Alex Halavais).

Purpose: web-based time-tracking and reporting

• add and edit tasks, task tagging
• easy timer to start/stop a task
• all kinds of reports on time spent
• sharing reporting (also per tag) with others

Why I like it

Everyone says that proper time management starts from tracking how you spend your time. The way it worked for me was on paper (I'm so paper based with those things :) - just list with tasks list, start and finish time and a column for main projects/types of tasks I was interested to record. Was useful, but didn't last long since calculating overall time spent on things was quite a but of manual work.

Now I have something easy - one click and it's starts ticking, another one and it stops. Easy to use even when I switch every few minutes. Also good to start before going to a meeting. It took a bit of installation (I use Windows tray option).

Caveats: It works for me since I don't have many offline tasks. Those I have are bigger chunks of time easily attributed to a project and recorded as an appointment in my schedule. I deal with those in several ways: manually add them to have an accurate estimate in the report or just ignore them (since I'm more interested where the time in front of the computer goes and I look at the records in my schedule anyway for official work time reporting).

Tricks - don't have many yet, except of one:

• If you are as stupid as me and can't figure how to start the timing a task - click on the name of the task itself and not on the checkmark on the left (that one completes the task).