How do you keep time?
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For those of you that contract and keep billable hours, or even if you are salaried but keep an eye on your production metrics, how do you do it? I have 10 minutes before I can pick up work again because I prefer to use the clock to keep time. Stopwatches and those online work managers and such make me feel pressured, but I'll only start work on the hour or the half hour, and I don't even like doing the latter, if I'm being honest. It keeps things simple for me.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
I'd make a DB. They are great for organizing things! Don't use Excel, or you go to Programmer Hell. Forever!
Our Forgotten Astronomy | Object Oriented Programming with C++ | Wordle solver
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For those of you that contract and keep billable hours, or even if you are salaried but keep an eye on your production metrics, how do you do it? I have 10 minutes before I can pick up work again because I prefer to use the clock to keep time. Stopwatches and those online work managers and such make me feel pressured, but I'll only start work on the hour or the half hour, and I don't even like doing the latter, if I'm being honest. It keeps things simple for me.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
Any workday I can walk away from is a good day.
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I'd make a DB. They are great for organizing things! Don't use Excel, or you go to Programmer Hell. Forever!
Our Forgotten Astronomy | Object Oriented Programming with C++ | Wordle solver
That seems a bit heavy handed to me! :)
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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For those of you that contract and keep billable hours, or even if you are salaried but keep an eye on your production metrics, how do you do it? I have 10 minutes before I can pick up work again because I prefer to use the clock to keep time. Stopwatches and those online work managers and such make me feel pressured, but I'll only start work on the hour or the half hour, and I don't even like doing the latter, if I'm being honest. It keeps things simple for me.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
I just subtract out the annoying and frequent therapy calls from my neurotic, retired, broke, whiney, and bored brother-in-law during working hours and add the weekend hours I spend making up for those lost production hours which I'll never get back. :sigh: I'm trying to keep the peace but the negativity can rub off. :laugh: Seriously though, I've always just made up the hours to fit the work done without being too greedy. Who's got time for stopwatches? I switch tasks and deal with interruptions so many times a day it would be impossible to accurately track...or worse it would become a task of it's own! :omg: Perhaps I need an AI assistant! :laugh:
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse "Hope is contagious"
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I just subtract out the annoying and frequent therapy calls from my neurotic, retired, broke, whiney, and bored brother-in-law during working hours and add the weekend hours I spend making up for those lost production hours which I'll never get back. :sigh: I'm trying to keep the peace but the negativity can rub off. :laugh: Seriously though, I've always just made up the hours to fit the work done without being too greedy. Who's got time for stopwatches? I switch tasks and deal with interruptions so many times a day it would be impossible to accurately track...or worse it would become a task of it's own! :omg: Perhaps I need an AI assistant! :laugh:
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse "Hope is contagious"
That's a bit fast and loose for me. Not judging, but I wouldn't sleep well at all doing that. I'd second guess myself to death! :)
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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For those of you that contract and keep billable hours, or even if you are salaried but keep an eye on your production metrics, how do you do it? I have 10 minutes before I can pick up work again because I prefer to use the clock to keep time. Stopwatches and those online work managers and such make me feel pressured, but I'll only start work on the hour or the half hour, and I don't even like doing the latter, if I'm being honest. It keeps things simple for me.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
Pen and paper - I would write down when I switched jobs/projects and at the end of the day add in the finish times if there were interruptions. I always found timekeepers a PITA and a job unto themselves (says the guy who wrote a timekeeper for an engineering firm)
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity - RAH I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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I'd make a DB. They are great for organizing things! Don't use Excel, or you go to Programmer Hell. Forever!
Our Forgotten Astronomy | Object Oriented Programming with C++ | Wordle solver
Excel is a very good bit of kit - I generally start with a spreadsheet and migrate it to a DB when it gets to a few hundred rows. It can be misused, yes - but it can save considerable time in analysing data to start with.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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For those of you that contract and keep billable hours, or even if you are salaried but keep an eye on your production metrics, how do you do it? I have 10 minutes before I can pick up work again because I prefer to use the clock to keep time. Stopwatches and those online work managers and such make me feel pressured, but I'll only start work on the hour or the half hour, and I don't even like doing the latter, if I'm being honest. It keeps things simple for me.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
It's a difficult one - you get interruptions at random times, and unless you are prepared to micro manage yourself and spend considerable amounts of time documenting the micromanagement I find it's best to just work to "round hours". The clients don't complain, so I must be doing something right ... :-D
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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It's a difficult one - you get interruptions at random times, and unless you are prepared to micro manage yourself and spend considerable amounts of time documenting the micromanagement I find it's best to just work to "round hours". The clients don't complain, so I must be doing something right ... :-D
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
That's basically what I do. I work to round hours, and give myself breaks as necessary.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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That seems a bit heavy handed to me! :)
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
That's far better than heavily Excelled! :laugh:
Our Forgotten Astronomy | Object Oriented Programming with C++ | Wordle solver
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Excel is a very good bit of kit - I generally start with a spreadsheet and migrate it to a DB when it gets to a few hundred rows. It can be misused, yes - but it can save considerable time in analysing data to start with.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
Excel (and Office in general) is probably one of the greatest programs ever made. I've seen it misused way too badly, and had to clean up after that mess. In the process, I learned that I rather enjoy the up-front work of organizing DBs, and the far greater power they give you.
Our Forgotten Astronomy | Object Oriented Programming with C++ | Wordle solver
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For those of you that contract and keep billable hours, or even if you are salaried but keep an eye on your production metrics, how do you do it? I have 10 minutes before I can pick up work again because I prefer to use the clock to keep time. Stopwatches and those online work managers and such make me feel pressured, but I'll only start work on the hour or the half hour, and I don't even like doing the latter, if I'm being honest. It keeps things simple for me.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
At my last job they required us to fill out weekly timecards. They wanted time on each project tracked to the quarter hour. I found some Android timekeeping app, I can't remember what, that allowed me to setup the projects and had start/stop recording buttons. The app tracked time to tenths of hours. If I forgot to "clock out" for lunch or switch projects I could go back and edit the times as needed. I eventually got in the habit of using it reliably. Each week I would read the last week's time report from the app and record it on the company timecard. Queries for help, bull sessions, breaks and other interruptions were mostly ignored (recorded on the active project) unless it grew too long, then I would generally edit the time into the non-project bucket. It was fairly accurate once I got into the habit of using it, but I never sweated over an hour or two getting misrecorded in any particular week. I wasn't trying for pinpoint accuracy and the company didn't expect that. But, without the app my time recording relied on my somewhat spurious memory of the past week which would often forget several hours spent on other tasks.
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For those of you that contract and keep billable hours, or even if you are salaried but keep an eye on your production metrics, how do you do it? I have 10 minutes before I can pick up work again because I prefer to use the clock to keep time. Stopwatches and those online work managers and such make me feel pressured, but I'll only start work on the hour or the half hour, and I don't even like doing the latter, if I'm being honest. It keeps things simple for me.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
-
For those of you that contract and keep billable hours, or even if you are salaried but keep an eye on your production metrics, how do you do it? I have 10 minutes before I can pick up work again because I prefer to use the clock to keep time. Stopwatches and those online work managers and such make me feel pressured, but I'll only start work on the hour or the half hour, and I don't even like doing the latter, if I'm being honest. It keeps things simple for me.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
I'd tell the client what I was going to do for the week; and how long it would take. If we're in agreement and I deliver, that's what I bill (or less if it was found to be simpler). We always agreed, and I always delivered, and reported and billed accordingly. (No accounting for bathroom breaks, etc. and 99% of correspondence by email). Scheduling 101: Never plan a task that takes more than 4 days.
"Before entering on an understanding, I have meditated for a long time, and have foreseen what might happen. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly, secretly, what I have to say or to do in a circumstance unexpected by other people; it is reflection, it is meditation." - Napoleon I
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For those of you that contract and keep billable hours, or even if you are salaried but keep an eye on your production metrics, how do you do it? I have 10 minutes before I can pick up work again because I prefer to use the clock to keep time. Stopwatches and those online work managers and such make me feel pressured, but I'll only start work on the hour or the half hour, and I don't even like doing the latter, if I'm being honest. It keeps things simple for me.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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I charge by the day
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
I don't know how anyone can do that! I can't sustain a regular enough work pattern for that to work for me. A lot of days I tap out at 2 hours of work, unless I can get in the zone which doesn't happen as much on projects as I'd like. When I'm in the zone I'll work an 11 hour day no sweat. Fortunately, I tend to have enough time for my projects, even at my relative snail's pace. :) Somehow I still manage to get a lot done. I'm not sure how. :~
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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I don't know how anyone can do that! I can't sustain a regular enough work pattern for that to work for me. A lot of days I tap out at 2 hours of work, unless I can get in the zone which doesn't happen as much on projects as I'd like. When I'm in the zone I'll work an 11 hour day no sweat. Fortunately, I tend to have enough time for my projects, even at my relative snail's pace. :) Somehow I still manage to get a lot done. I'm not sure how. :~
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
My clients were very long standing ones and knew my work rate - when they felt they'd amassed a days work they'd call
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
-
For those of you that contract and keep billable hours, or even if you are salaried but keep an eye on your production metrics, how do you do it? I have 10 minutes before I can pick up work again because I prefer to use the clock to keep time. Stopwatches and those online work managers and such make me feel pressured, but I'll only start work on the hour or the half hour, and I don't even like doing the latter, if I'm being honest. It keeps things simple for me.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
I wrote my own. Using my application, I can create customers and projects and then log hours onto those projects. After that I can send invoices with a single click (per invoice). I also have an overview that shows me how many hours I should've worked this year and how many I actually worked, as well as where I'm missing those hours. The overview also shows my vacation days. It's far from perfect and it's been years in the making, but it does exactly what I want how I want it. I even used it for my (very simple) bookkeeping before I had a bookkeeper.
Best, Sander Azure DevOps Succinctly (free eBook) Azure Serverless Succinctly (free eBook) Migrating Apps to the Cloud with Azure arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript
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I wrote my own. Using my application, I can create customers and projects and then log hours onto those projects. After that I can send invoices with a single click (per invoice). I also have an overview that shows me how many hours I should've worked this year and how many I actually worked, as well as where I'm missing those hours. The overview also shows my vacation days. It's far from perfect and it's been years in the making, but it does exactly what I want how I want it. I even used it for my (very simple) bookkeeping before I had a bookkeeper.
Best, Sander Azure DevOps Succinctly (free eBook) Azure Serverless Succinctly (free eBook) Migrating Apps to the Cloud with Azure arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript
If I could work on a stopwatch type system I'd totally write a VS Code and Visual Studio extension to log hours and dump the logs to the project folder as text and/or CSV with totals.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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I'd tell the client what I was going to do for the week; and how long it would take. If we're in agreement and I deliver, that's what I bill (or less if it was found to be simpler). We always agreed, and I always delivered, and reported and billed accordingly. (No accounting for bathroom breaks, etc. and 99% of correspondence by email). Scheduling 101: Never plan a task that takes more than 4 days.
"Before entering on an understanding, I have meditated for a long time, and have foreseen what might happen. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly, secretly, what I have to say or to do in a circumstance unexpected by other people; it is reflection, it is meditation." - Napoleon I
Gerry Schmitz wrote:
Scheduling 101: Never plan a task that takes more than 4 days.
And even with those, be careful because there will be always "off-plan" events.
M.D.V. ;) If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about? Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
