I say for the CEO or Manager but in reality these could be used by any worker looking to be as productive as possible each day. I, for one, find myself looking more and more at information or news sites from RSS feeds etc., as of late. This time, while valuable for keeping up to date with what is going on my industry doesn’t really drive my business forward. So with that in mind here are two little tools that will help you be more productive each day.
TaskBlase is a small windows app that hooks into outlook. Basically you set a task that you want to do and click start, when you get that task done press stop and repeat. Each of these tasks and time spent on it is summarized in your outlook calendar. So if you use a timesheet application like 1time your can easily update your timesheets. You don’t need to be using a timesheet application to find value in it.
I think it helps you set a task and just focus on that task until its done, like upload document A, finish review document C, create logo, reply to client X etc., or even bigger tasks like life sustaining client work. I have to say in principle its a good little app but its very rough around the edges. I think it could integrate with the task bar instead of being a stand alone app. For me anyhow I had problems moving the app around the screen, useful all the same though.
The next one is a FireFox extension called TimeTracker; a very simple extension that records what time you spend browsing each day. In the options menu you can filter work related web pages and at the end of the day you’ll see how much time you have wasted looking at other websites. It is pretty amazing and somewhat depressing all at once. It works really well though.
I find them useful anyhow and while I sometimes forget to start the TaskBlaze the Firefox TimeTracker is very useful. I think competing with others in the office to have the least amount of wasted time might be the most effective, well for the competitive ones anyhow.
