Hi everyone,
I start a new role next week, where there is a requirement to track time on a per client per meeting basis.
For each meeting I attend, I will need to provide time attended/actioned, with a description of the event.
I had thought of using toggl to track time, I’m wondering if anyone has any tips/workflows, on how to this?
Ideally, I’d like this to be as frictionless as possible
I actually have a shortcut that might help you. It’s made for Timery.
https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/3f07358db6864d23b275839f2dc82730
It will need to be configured extensively, but the latter half is the relevant thing. It takes in a project string, then checks if that project exists already in Timery. If it doesn’t, it asks you to assign a client to it from a list, and colour-codes that project so that each client has its own colour within Timery.
The key here is that I don’t do any manual project creation in Timery/Toggl — it all runs through this shortcut, so that it is nice and standardized.
Tim can help with that: https://tim.neat.software/
You can have multiple clients with multiple tasks (meetings would be one) and you can add notes to every tracked event.
I was just going to suggest Toggl, and also noticed that there is an Alfred extension available, so this could be an option (haven’t tried it, though)
Surely if your new employers want you to track that then it is their responsibility to provide the tool(s) required.
The “log tracked time to my calendar” shortcut used by the one I linked above is here:
https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/fe38911ca1494485bb7211ef7343ddd6
It’s nice and simple. It tries to prevent duplication by checking for already-logged events. Still, it has rarely caused duplicates for me… I think when I’ve run it on a device that hasn’t synced down my calendars recently. YMMV! No big deal to delete them when it’s happened.
I run these from Obsidian, for the record, using the Shortcuts Launcher plugin developed by the MacStories crew. Here’s the config:
I highlight some text in a note, invoke the command, and the launcher triggers the shortcut with the input string selected text → note name. This lets me create timers with my current task in the description while the note name will correspond exactly with a Timery/Toggl Project.
I use the aforementioned Toggl and Alfred setup. There are a couple nice Alfred extensions for this. One is called time, which lets you start and stop timers from the keyboard. This other is Tgl, which lets you adjust timers, view reports, etc, all within Alfred.
The existing GUI tools for toggl are all so awful that this is substantially faster in every case.
I use Timery (free) as a widget on my phone to see if I have a timer still running when I shouldn’t.
It’s a simple and effective setup. Works well enough.
