Okay, after that very blog-y title, I have a thing to share with you guys.
And that thing is a free website called Clockify. And it’s actually free. As in, completely functional with no need to spend money or sign up for a temporary trial. I mean, there is a trial, but I am not using it because the permanent free option is just that good.
It’s basically a time tracker for employees, but seeing as I’m the mastermind of my author business I mostly just use it to get a realistic picture of where my time is going. I am still learning the program and I’m sure I could really dial it in to an even deeper level of information, but honestly, this basic overview has been extremely helpful
I will say it’s not *entirely* accurate because this past week has been Newsletter heavy (I’m looking at you, Bluehost. Y’all have great tech support, it’s just a shame I need to use it so often, lol) and my writing/plotting time in the day for the past couple of weeks has been pretty much nonexistent. But still. You get the picture:
I had to hide my top secret title for Storm & Spire Book 2, of course. 😉
But as you can see, things are neat and color-coded, and it’s easy to see where your time is going.
But it gets cooler.
You can look at a week/month (that’s one thing I can’t figure out – it seems you MIGHT be limited on the free plan as far as historical info goes) and get a nice breakdown of how much time you’re wasting.
Okay this is embarrassing, guys.
In my defense, when I was drafting Magnify it would have been like 80% of the chart, BUT STILL.
I don’t see people talking about this tool much, but I’m so glad I stumbled across it. Balancing writing and marketing is a real challenge, and it’s super easy to dump your energy into things that aren’t giving you a good return on your time investment. Using Clockify is helping me to keep my eyes wide open so I can avoid those pitfalls
This isn’t sponsored or anything like that, just thought it might be a valuable tool for some of my author friends to check out.
🙂
Pretty cool! I’ve tracked my writing time on and off in the past, though I usually either used a productivity app on my phone (which has the added benefit of making sure I can’t get distracted by said phone) or a similar web tool called Toggl.
Nice!! I was kind of scared of a phone app for that very reason, LOL. Admittedly my phone addiction hasn’t been doing so hot lately. Oops. Whatever works – I can just tell for myself that when I don’t track anything, I tend to waste SO much time.
Thanks for sharing!!
🙂 Now to take my own advice and get all my time managed and everything done…