My thanks to Timing for Mac for sponsoring the RSS feed this week. Timing is a utility app that runs in your Menu Bar and keeps track of where you’re spending time on your computer.
Something I said in my MacBook Air review was that my office isn’t my office, my laptop is. The vast majority of work I do is done right here on my laptop. I may be in my home office, on the back porch, out of town, on an airplane, or any number of places.
I am always seeking to be focused and intentional about how I spend my time, and that I stay focused. And they say hindsight is 20/20, which is where Timing comes in. I’ve been using this app for the past couple weeks — and by “using it” I mean I installed it and simply let it run in my Menu Bar. The app does all the heavy lifting of tracking what apps I’m active in, what websites I’m spending time on, and more. Then I can bundle those apps into “projects” (or categories, as I consider them) of work.
MarsEdit, Byword, TextEdit, iA Writer, are all in my “writing” category. Mail is it’s own category. And the list goes on. Also you can have the same app in multiple categories / projects.
You have to give Timing a few weeks to really get some good useful stats that you can look over in aggregate to see how you are spending your time, where you’re spending it, and if there are certain apps or websites you need to be more conscious of in order to be more focused and productive.
Timing is on sale in the Mac App Store for a few more days. Highly recommended.