Time Tracking with The Daily Grind
By paul | February 12, 2007
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
11 Comments
Nina on February 12, 2007 at 2:36 pm.
Being a freelance designer is great, though I suppose that you’d have permanent job as well… Or you don’t agree?
paul on February 12, 2007 at 2:47 pm.
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.
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Matt on February 13, 2007 at 7:59 am.
Thanks for the plug, guys–it’s been a while since I’d even looked at that article!
motherduce on February 13, 2007 at 11:05 am.
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.
Bob Teplitsky on October 25, 2007 at 9:42 pm.
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/
Michael Thomas on November 14, 2007 at 7:56 am.
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
Susan on September 22, 2008 at 11:30 am.
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.
paul on September 22, 2008 at 11:38 am.
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.
Susan on September 22, 2008 at 11:58 am.
I just downloaded Timeous and will try it for my next project. The rate feature looks especially useful. Thanks. :-)
Susan on September 24, 2008 at 1:26 pm.
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.