As a freelance designer I need to keep track of how much time I spend on various tasks and projects. Until recently, I used a nifty little application called Watch It. It’s an unobtrusive app, and it worked pretty well with my workflow.
The two biggest problems with using such a bare-bones timer is it can only track one thing at a time, and you need to make sure to record the time somewhere before you restart you computer, or that time will be lost.
The Daily Grind Timer Widget solves both of those limitations. It’s a great little Dashboard Widget that allows you to set up multiple timers that you can name and color-code. You can even drag the timers up and down in the list to group tasks together. The Widget also holds any accumulated time through a restart. One thing to note is upon restart, the timers will be paused, so if you restart you computer mid-task, you’ll want to start the timers back up again when the restart is complete.
Best of all, this handy little widget is free, although donations are welcome. If you find this widget useful, you should consider dropping a few bucks on the developer.
via v1Beta
Being a freelance designer is great, though I suppose that you’d have permanent job as well… Or you don’t agree?
Hi Nina,
I’m not sure if I understand your question. I personally don’t have a full-time job. I’m strictly freelance. I think this widget is useful in both types of jobs, as it’s great for tracking time spent on any kind of task.
Thanks for the plug, guys–it’s been a while since I’d even looked at that article!
Thanks for the post Paul. I’ve been trying out all kinds of timer tools, but a widget would be far less intrusive and this one seems to have all the functions I need. I’ll definitely check it out.
I know that I’m speaking to designers here, which means you are likely on a Mac, however if there are any readers looking for a good, simple timer for Windows, I have developed a similar timer to the DailyGrind, although not exactly the same.
You can check out a trial version at http://www.milenine.com/simple_task_timer/
Here is a Windows application that mimics The Daily Grind, and like the original, it’s free.
http://michaelofthomas.blogspot.com/2007/11/on-keeping-time.html
I use the Daily Grind too, but I’ve noticed the project on the top sometimes loses some of its info. To keep from losing important information, I keep a fake project in that position.
Thanks for the tip, Susan. I had actually stopped using Daily Grind because I had some problems with it. Since then I’ve been using Timeous. You may want to have a look at that one too. It’s not perfect but it works pretty well.
I just downloaded Timeous and will try it for my next project. The rate feature looks especially useful. Thanks. :-)
I’m a Timeous convert. Now I can keep track of time, rates and totals, and brief notes for multiple projects without having to use several applications. Very cool. Thanks for the great tip, Paul.
Can someone please tell what happened to the daily grind? I had it in my old mac and now I can’t find it anywhere! All the links are broken, even the one in the app store and the theratrace.eu etc. PLEASE HELP!