The most important question when getting started with Timeular is what activities/tasks to track. While this is a widely individual topic, we'd like to give you some guidance and best practice by giving you examples of what works for us and many users. Check out our blog to read more about how others use Timeular and learn from their experience. Ready? 😀
Three basic things to get started
We call things to track activities. You start and stop tracking activities to create time entries. Easy.
You can add notes to every time entry to describe what exactly you worked on (optional).
You can add tags (#) to every time entry to link it to a specific topic. This helps when filtering data and getting insights in what you spent your time on (optional).
Given these tools, we commonly see these three ways for tracking time that work best for users
Activities are activities 😀. So activities become concrete actions you spend time on such as Screen-Design, Meeting, Call, Eat or Sleep. Tags for specific time entries might mark clients or projects and notes describe what you are working on exactly. So a note for Meeting could be "#adobe #businesscards weekly with @Sarah". This describes a meeting with the client adobe for the project businesscards. So your activity list could look like this:
A running time entry (started by clicking the play icon or turning your Tracker) with notes might look like this:
2) Activities are Projects 🏗 such as Redesign Website, Gardening Project or Presentation Template for Customer Google. So the activity itself names the exact project you worked on. Notes mark what you did exactly such as "Incorporated Client Feedback", "Weekly #Meeting" or "Writing copy for landing page". Notice that tags can be used to mark subcategories such as #meeting or #calls. This way you can later get analytics and filter for these tags when creating reports. So your activities might look like this:
An active time tracking for the same project as before might look like this:
Activities are Clients 👨💼 such as Google, Adobe or Dropbox. Tags might mark specific projects and notes that describe the detailed activity. So a note for the activity Google could look like "Creating basic #design for #presentationTemplate". Note that tags (#) are used here to mark projects so time entries can later be filtered for specific projects. So your activities might look like this:
And again, an active time entry for the same project looks slightly different.
Or just mix the three options as you like (Client + Activity + Project). Go crazy 😜 Figured out what makes most sense for you? Great! Otherwise please feel free to reach out and we are happy to help.
Pro-Tips:
Tags can be used to mark many things beyond just projects or clients. For example, have a #private tag when you work on private projects of activities. 💸
Tags can also mention other people. By creating a tag with leading @ you can mention others participating in e.g. a meeting and filter for time entries with specific people later 😮. I know! 😀
Still not sure what to track? We suggest starting with the following and adapt them as you go:
Meetings
Calls
[Focus activity 1 e.g. Programming]
[Focus activity 2 e.g. Email]
Administrative
Delegate
Research
Distraction/Social Media/ etc.
Still got questions or feedback? Don't hesitate to reach out, we're here to help!