What is your experience with time trackers?

Hi, Time trackers are great tools. But only if you are NOT using it to run against the clock, and make it a push-to-action type of thing. That would just be just the best way to just miss all your targets, and just be depressed about it. That's including the team around the project and it just gonna cause more harm than good. Of course, depending on the industry, you will deal more or less with outsourced or external agencies, contractors, etc. And very often, they are out of your control, which would influence the time spent finishing one targeted task. If you are in an extremely repetitive and predictable business, then that would be the exception to the rule. I believe the only way to use these tools is to evaluate yourself or others in accomplishing a given task. Time trackers can be great management tools if they allow checking the data globally within the group. With time and experience, I got a better understanding of how much time a single task could be completed. For the same task, it would go from 10 minutes to 30 minutes, this gap all comes down to different circumstances. Nothing is rarely the same, particularly if you are dealing with people. These expected or unexpected circumstances have to be reported (clockify.me does it) since they will be part of your future library on how to deal with a certain type of task within a given time. You also have to keep in mind that the "time spent" isn't equal to "quality of work", and this can go both ways. Some may be slow but with great results and some fast while providing poor results. With enough data being gathered through all types of tasks and situations met in the business, a standard can be given on how each task has to be treated within a given time. If you can, you could manage to send the exact same task to everyone to be completed in 15 minutes before starting the day and see the outcomes. I would suggest this exercise 3 times a week, with different tasks, and see how people perform. There is a great chance you may see some perform way better than others in some specific tasks while others may do in others. Then you get to either choose to let them focus on what they do best or have a meeting and provide a presentation on how they could all benefit from each other by sharing their own skills. That's where the data previously gathered would help! Clockify can provide "project notes" and employees could consult them whenever they feel the need to seek help without bothering others. Time trackers are meant to help on building a strong team and not just to track who's the fastest at something. In the long term, you want a bunch of people who are more or less on the same page, which is healthier than someone carrying the whole thing and ending up in burnout. And you don't want the rest being discouraged at always being behind the curve. Using a time tracker as a learning tool is the winning strategy. In the end, that's a lot of work and that would require a full-time on your part to operate this kind of system. I think that's the way to go for start-ups but you will need to find someone to take care of this. I hope it helps! ;D Cheers.

I prefer time tracking so i can reflect on where and how i spent my time but also helps me when i need to invoice my clients for my freelance work. I can provide detailed report if they ask for which builds trust and strengthens the collaboration. I use timecity.io for 2 years, it simple yet powerful.