Ask HN: What do you use for time tracking? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What do you use for time tracking?

13 pointssoapdog10 comments

Hello Fellow HNers,

I've switched jobs and on my new job I will be given a great amount of freedom with my schedule. I will need to present my time spent on each task and project. I though about building my own timetracker tool but then, there are probably hundreds of tools out there. My only need is to be able to track time on multiple items and to be able to share this data (preferably online) with my bosses so they can track my progress. Anyone here using one of those new time tracking tools? Any recommendation?

Thanks Andre

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I use pen and paper for that. One reason is that having to stop and make a written note raises the costs of changing activities, which can help keep me on track. Naturally, this won't help much if you can't remember (or be bothered) to actually do that, but it is an alternative; actually, I found the notebook lying off to the side of my desk to be a decent reminder in itself to make notes.

Harvest (http://www.harvestapp.com) has been great for us. Simple, effective, and works.

I agree! Tick(http://www.tickspot.com/) work just as well for me.

Hamster (http://projecthamster.wordpress.com/about/).

This looks great but I'm not on a Debian system. Is there something similar for OSX?

I've had some success with Toggl: https://www.toggl.com/

I say some success, because I generally find time tracking to be an annoyance and not an accurate way to gauge performance. I prefer measuring outputs to measuring inputs.

I would second this whole-heartedly.

If you track time, you will find that some clients will question every single second. "So you spent x minutes finding stock images?! That means I paid you $x just to look?!"

Just set KPI goals that you'd like to be measured against and track performance on a weekly basis.

Another happy Toggl user here.

I've used RescueTime (http://www.rescuetime.com) in the past, and it's great for automated, general time tracking. Sadly the Linux client hasn't been updated for ages so I don't use it anymore.

http://www.toggl.com/

I was a big fan of Toggl when I was being billed out by the hour... I never needed to share the data but they claim it's very easy to do.

http://www.goot.us/ - Tracking time is as easy as creating a calendar entry. Then, it aggregates the time based on tasks, etc.

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